The Boy Who Could Fly()

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

Eric (Jay Underwood) truly can fly, and uses this ability to save Milly (Lucy Deakins) when she falls off a bridge and is knocked unconscious on the way down.

A short time after this event, Milly learns from Eric’s uncle Hugo (Fred Gwynne) that the social workers took Eric away and placed him in a mental institute, after they caught him (Hugo) drunk again. She tries to visit him but is denied because she isn’t a relative.

Eric escapes one night and returns home, and hides in the attic with Milly. However, the next day, cops and institute workers come to Eric’s home, so he and Milly escape to their high school, where a fair is going on. They soon find some institute workers that had arrived before they did, so they run for the roof. As they are cornered, Eric finally breaks his silence and says Milly’s name. He then takes her hand, and they jump off the roof and fly to the amazement of the spectators below. He flies her all the way back home to her bedroom window, but then, he tells her goodbye, and that he loves her. After kissing her, he flies away, never to return.

TV reporters, doctors, and scientists mob the town in the weeks that follow, trying to figure out how Eric could fly. Since Eric is gone, the scientists conduct tests on both Milly and Hugo, since Milly flew with Eric, and Hugo and Eric had the same genes. They also take Eric’s belongings away to a lab to be analyzed. Milly realizes that Eric knew that if he had stayed, he would’ve been taken by the scientists, too.

The lives of Hugo and the Michaelsons improve after they learn from Eric’s amazing feat that anything is possible if you really try. Hugo beat his drinking problem and got a job, Charlene (Bonnie Bedelia) mastered the computer, Louis (Fred Savage) finally got the better of the bullies that were pestering him, and Milly regained an interest in life.