Shane nodded.

“You hang out at the library. You can speak every language. You travel with the speed of thought…”, he stopped talking and thought, staring at her slyly, “…and you’re reading my mind right now…”.

Shane jerked.

“Stop that”, she exclaimed in shock.

“You’re doing it!”, Dante laughed heartily.

“It’s impossible”, Shane said again, shaking her head.

Dante’s face turned serious.

“Some things are true whether you believe them or not”, he mumbled in a bittersweet voice.

Shane swallowed.

“How?”, she asked, her voice husky and insecure.

“You choose”, Dante shrugged.

“Choose?”.

“To fall on Earth”, he elaborated, arching his eyebrows, “You take the plunge, the tumble, the dive. You jump off a bridge. Leap out a window. You just make up your mind to do it and you do it”.

Shane just stared at him, holding her breath, mesmerized by Dante’s green eyes – so similar to hers – and realized that he was telling the truth.

“You wake up all smelly, and aching from head to toe… and hungrier than you’ve ever been…”, he chuckled, “…only, you have no idea what hunger is or any of that stuff. So it’s all real confusing and painful but very, very good”.

“Human”, Shane whispered, and Dante nodded.

“Listen, kid: He gave these bozos the greatest gift in the universe. You think He didn’t give it to us, too?”.

“Which gift?”, she replied, frowning.

“Free will, sister. Free will”.

”…As a picture of herself
She’s a picture of the world
A reflection of you
A reflection of me
And it’s all there to see
If you only give in
To the fire within…”

***

They were now sitting on the terrace, on the hospital roof. They sat there, facing the ocean and the streets, their feet dangling in the void. Dante lit a cigarette and took a long, pensive drag.

“…I couldn’t get a job. No past, no training. No I.D. Then one day, I was walking past a building site. A skyscraper. And I thought, ‘I could do that’…”, he explained, staring at the horizon.

Shane watched him attentively, in silence. She was eating from the palm of his hand.

“…You see, these people down here… a lot of them are afraid of heights, you know what I’m saying? That makes me uniquely qualified…”, he sneered, “…And besides, it feels like a little bit of home up here. And I like what I do. I’m good at it”.