BOUND FOR GLORY

To be truthful, I never paid much attention in Physics lessons. But I did clock on to the story about that Newton guy and the apple falling on his head. How there’s this invisible force pulling everything towards the ground. Made sense to me. Not to Dylan though. He’s all like, “How can you believe in that what goes up must come down crap? What about birds? And planes? And balloons, yeah?”

I pointed out that all of those things do come down eventually but he wasn’t having it. It’s amazing he got through childhood alive, given the number of times he hurled himself off some place of elevation frantically flapping a set of home-made wings or even just clinging to a golfing umbrella. So when then those nutjob websites that he subscribes to started peddling tales about how this secret laboratory in some remote Chinese province had developed a kind of anti-gravity gel out of nanoparticles or quantum bits or whatever, he was all over it.

“The Chinese government have been using it to get rid of dissidents," he tells me. “They smother them in this stuff and they just float away into space.”

“But you don’t believe in gravity.“

“I never said that,” he replies. “I just don’t believe it’s a law.”

So next thing you know there are reports that a large batch of this gel has somehow been appropriated from that Chinese lab and found its way onto the open market. And then of course the emails start circulating offering this stuff for sale at loony tune prices. And my brother is wetting himself with excitement. So he sells his X-Box, his electric scooter and half his collection of limited edition trainers. There’s no reasoning with him.

BOUND FOR GLORY

“So how’d those penis enlargement pills work out for you?” I goaded him but he shrugged it off.

He sends off the money and a week later this dodgy looking package arrives. Which was a surprise in itself. Dylan tears it open to get at the plain tub of goo inside.

“That’s either hair gel or the stuff athletes rub on to relieve muscle pain,” I explain to him.

But he’s already stripping off and smearing it on himself. I leave the room hurriedly but a while later he comes to find me, dressed again.

“Right, it’s dried on,” he says. “Let’s go dance.”

Outside we start doing our warm up exercises but Dylan can’t wait for lift-off.

“You know nothing’s gonna happen, don’t you?” I implore him for the umpteenth time.

He’s in his own world though. “You know your trouble, sis? You don’t believe in anything. You don’t have faith in anything. So you’ll never know what obstacles you might be able to overcome.”

“Well, I believe you can’t fly,” I snap and turn away into another stretch.

Behind me he shouts, “I’m just following the science” and leaps into the air.