“The switch to release the chemicals will be here,” he said, pointing to the instrument panel with one hand. I wished he would keep both hands on the stick, at least while we were plummeting. “You’d flick it right about here, then pull up.”
At the very last second before we tunneled into the dirt, he jerked the controls. The plane flattened its trajectory. We skimmed along five feet from the tops of the plants.
“Mark.” My voice sounded shaky in the mike.
He chuckled. “Yes, Leah.”
“Do I need to get this low,” I asked, “or is it just you?”
He laughed more loudly. Maybe it was the effect of the headphones, but he sounded a touch insane. “It’s not just me. You’ve got to stay near the crops so the chemicals don’t drift. It’s weird but when you spray herbicide on people, they call my uncle’s office to complain. And now you’re probably thinking I need to pull up again before I hit those trees.”
I was, in fact, thinking this as the dark forest rushed toward us.
“This takes practice, Leah. We’re going to die now, right? That was the last second we could have saved ourselves and we missed it, right? Count to three.”
“Onetwothree!” I shouted.
“You counted too fast.”
I kept my eyes open as the forest loomed. I didn’t want to die with my eyes shut.
“And now we pull up.”
I was in the midst of a reflex to cover my face with my arms to protect myself from the impact when he nosed the plane up, tracing the outline of an oak tree.
The plane soared in a circle over the forest. Broken pieces of his cackle came through the headphones as his voice triggered the mike to switch on and off. After he’d collected himself, he asked, “Sick yet?”
“Yes,” I said. “Mark, I’ve changed my mind. I’m really sorry but I don’t want a relationship with you. I just wanted to fly. And if I can’t have one without the other, please take me back and put me down.”
Static sounded in my headphones, then silence. Static, silence. He was breathing hard.
“Mark.”
“What did you say?” he asked, voice dripping sarcasm. “That you’re ready to go again? I heard you the first time.” He dropped the plane to zoom way too close along the highest branches of the trees.
I felt faint. All the warnings I’d heard about Mark over the past week rushed to my mind. That he was crazy. Dangerous. Used his plane as a weapon. Shouldn’t be trusted to fly with passengers. Had fallen in love with me and didn’t want to let me go.
“Mark, please,” I said, pilot voice cracking.
“I said we’d go again, Leah.” His words were so loud that I reached up to pull my headphones away and save my hearing. “Let me straighten her out and then—”
I was glad I didn’t get the headphones off. The next second, the front of the plane exploded, the noise earsplitting even through the headphones. I ducked under the debris coming at me: the top of a tree, part of the propeller. I heard it crash across the tail behind me.
We’d cleared the trees now, but the terrifying noise hadn’t stopped, only changed. With part of the propeller gone, the huge, heavy engine knocked around up front, threatening to tear the plane apart.
“Mark!”
He said nothing.
The plane was sinking fast.
“Mark!” I shouted. “My airplane!” Fists shaking, I pulled back on the stick, gaining as much height as possible so I’d have farther to fall. That way I’d have more choice about where I crash-landed.
I couldn’t move much because I didn’t dare take my hands off the controls, and I was unprotected in the open air. But I leaned as far forward and to one side as I could, twisting to look at what had happened to Mark. He was slumped over in the front seat—too far over. On the front instrument panel was a bright smear of blood.
I was on my own.
nineteen
“Mayday mayday mayday.” I announced over the radio that I was making an emergency landing. That was just a courtesy message telling other planes to get out of my way. Nobody answered, of course. There was no tower, no authority, no one to save us.
The engine vibrated dangerously. The controls were sluggish and the plane was hard to steer. I pointed the nose for the airport and hoped I would make it. All the while I was looking around for places to land—a field until we passed it, a straight stretch of two-lane road until we passed that. Puffy white clouds gathered over the ocean, a stereotypical heaven scene from a movie.
“Leah,” Grayson said over the radio. He recited the number of the channel Hall Aviation used.
I switched to that channel. “I’m here.”
“What are you doing?” We were both using the Chuck Yeager voice like his dad had taught us, but even through the radio, I could hear he was breathless.
“Mark hit a tree. He’s out cold. Controls are mushy. Part of the prop is gone and I’m about to shut the engine down. Call 911.”
The plane dipped suddenly before dashing up again. I fought the controls to steady it. Static sounded in my ears. I realized it was my own gasp, which had triggered the voice-activated radio as if I’d said something.
I turned the engine off so at least the controls would work better and I could fly the plane like a glider. The propeller came to an ominous stop. The silence in my trailer had never been as awful.
“Make a pass and let us see the damage before you try to land,” Grayson said.
“Negative,” I said. “I can’t stay up that long.”
“Then skip the airport and go for the ocean.”
“Negative. Mark will drown before they get to him.” I couldn’t swim, either, but if I survived the crash, I could probably cling to a piece of the airplane until the Coast Guard rescued me. Mark would be lost.
“That f**king—” Grayson’s voice cut off suddenly as he remembered we were on a public frequency.
I knew what he meant. This was Mark’s fault. But it was my responsibility now. I reminded Grayson, “What matters most is other people, then me, then the airplane, then the banner.” I didn’t have a banner this time, but Mr. Hall’s rule still applied. No matter what Mark had done, he now fell in the category of “other people,” and I wasn’t going to lose him if I could help it.
I heard static in my headphones again as I breathed a sigh of relief. The runway had come into view, and the long row of hangars. Flying closer, I could see that people lined the tarmac—not as many as had watched the Chinook, because it was still so early in the morning, but I was the show of the day. In front of the Hall Aviation hangar, Molly folded her arms like she was cold. Alec’s hand was on Grayson’s back. Both Grayson’s hands were on his cowboy hat. I couldn’t see them well at that distance, but I knew them from what they wore and the way they stood.
Grayson put one hand to his mouth and spoke into Mr. Hall’s radio. “Leah, you’re missing your left gear.”
“Roger.” Looking over the side of the cockpit, I saw the left front wheel of the tricycle underneath the plane had been sheared off. That meant when I landed, the left side of the airplane would have nothing to touch down underneath it.
I’d better keep my wing tip up as long as I could, then, until I slowed down.
Static sounded in my ears. Then again. I wanted to move the microphone farther from my mouth so I couldn’t hear my own breathing, but I didn’t dare take my hands off the controls.
Underneath me, dark grass flashed past, then lighter gray pavement. I was over the runway, speeding just above the asphalt. Now that the broken engine and propeller weren’t throwing the plane off balance, I could have been landing an undamaged airplane. I held fast to that denial, because it kept me calm. Too late it occurred to me that I probably should have been praying.
The plane vibrated as the right landing gear touched down.
Way ahead of me in the grassy strip between the tarmac and the runway, Grayson and Alec and Molly were running. Grayson’s cowboy hat flew off. I wished they would stay away, because if the metal ground against the asphalt on landing and kicked up one spark that lit leaking gas, the plane would explode.
I pitched the left wing up a little to keep the plane level until we slowed, but the Stearman was old and heavy and it was no use. The wing kept sinking, astonished that the landing gear wasn’t there to support it, feeling for its place on the ground.
The wing screeched, screamed, skidded across the asphalt. Slammed to the ground and bounced violently upward.
Sparks and pieces of the wing flew over my head.
The plane veered sharply to the left. The trees loomed in front of us.
I gripped the controls. The trees came fast and I was about to slam into them. In my mind I was taking off again, in control of my airplane, sailing over the trees and over the ocean and into the clouds.
I let one sob escape. I heard it in my headphones.
I was close enough to the tree about to kill me that I could tell from the bark it was the same species of palm as the one outside my bedroom.
My stomach left me. Every atom in my body was forced forward and jerked back.
The plane stopped with a noise so loud that it sounded like nothing.
No, the noise was static in my headphones, and now my own screaming. My eardrums would burst. I reached up to push my headphones off.
Warm hands fumbled across my head and in my lap. Arms wrapped around my chest and pulled.
“Leah! Open your eyes.”
I blinked at Grayson. We were standing safe outside the mangled plane, under the trees at the edge of the runway. But I couldn’t catch my breath, gasping from screaming so long.
He tossed my headphones away. He took my goggles off. He put his hands on either side of my face and peered at me. My double reflection in his sunglass lenses was weird and convex, my dark curls wild, my eyes huge.
“Are you hurt?” he asked me.
“Is Mark dead?” I croaked.
“No. The treetop he plowed through got him in the head. His arm doesn’t look right either.” Grayson nodded toward the wreckage. The plane had come to rest against the trees, almost like I’d parked it there on purpose, except that the prop was mangled, the wings were torn, the tail was torn, the left gear was gone, and the whole thing listed to the side. Alec and Molly and the airport mechanic crowded around Mark in the front seat.
Grayson put his hands in my hair. “Your head okay?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Neck okay?” He slid his hands down to my shoulders. “Anything sore?”
“No.”
“Is she okay?” Molly shouted.
“She’s okay,” Grayson shouted back.
“Grayson!” Alec’s voice was strained. “A little help!”
Grayson pointed at the ground and told me, “Sit down.” He put his weight on my shoulders.
I didn’t have a choice. I sat where he put me, flattening the tall grass under me.
“Don’t move.” He ducked under a half-broken branch hanging onto a tree by a few splinters. He took his place beside the others to help pull Mark free.
Way off in the distance behind me, sirens wailed. Above them I could hear the rope clanging against the flagpole.
The paramedics kept me in the back of the ambulance for a long time, like they couldn’t believe there was nothing wrong with me. When the police wanted to question me, the paramedics left to help with Mark. The police left and the paramedics came back. Finally they helped me down from the ambulance, into the arms of Grayson, who had stood at the bumper the entire time, watching me.
When Alec saw I’d been set free, he walked over and hugged me under the trees. “Remember how my dad said ‘You have to be better than me’? You are.” He let me go.
Then Molly hugged me for a long time, squeezed me, and kissed me on the cheek. Below the lenses of her blinged-out sunglasses, her face was streaked with mascara and tears. “You scared the f**k out of me.”
Her hand stayed on my back until Grayson led me away, through the grass to the tarmac. Behind us, a tractor was already towing the wreckage of the beautiful Stearman out of the trees. The runway needed to be cleared quickly so the rest of the businesses at the airport could fly.
Grayson didn’t say a word until we reached my trailer. Neither did I. For some reason my mind was stuck on that last moment before the left wheel should have touched the runway, when I realized I’d been in denial. He held out his hand for my key, unlocked the door, and led me through the trailer, back to my bedroom. He sat me down on the edge of the bed and settled close to me, leaning over me, knee to knee with me.
He kissed my lips. “Are you really okay?”
“I will be.”
He kissed my cheek, moving along my cheekbone until he was whispering in my ear. “We forgot that whatever kind of drama we’ve got going on when we’re on the ground, we can’t let it affect what happens in the sky.” He kissed my earlobe, then backed away to look me in the eye. “I love you.”
I took a long breath, meeting his intense gaze. “I love you too.”
“I wanted to tell you on the radio,” he said. “But we don’t do that.”
“Your dad would kick your ass.”
Laughing, he pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m leaving this here for you. Call Molly if you need anything.”
“O… kay,” I said. Crashing an airplane didn’t fix the fact that Molly had called me a liar. Or that I was one.
“She’s expecting you to call,” Grayson said. “You rest. I’ll be back to check on you.” Watching my eyes, he kissed my hands, and then he was gone. I could trace his path through the trees by the pitch of the pit bull’s bark.