Such a Rush

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 ru

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 fuck 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.

I lay there for a while, but that moment in the airplane played over and over in my head. Thinking that the flight seemed normal, despite the fact that Grayson had told me the left wheel was gone. Setting the aircraft down on one wheel, feeling only by degrees that the other wheel was really missing.

Finally I got up, took a shower, and walked back to the airport. As I passed the office, Mr. Simon was coming out the door in his usual baseball cap and overalls, despite the heat. He waved me over. He hadn’t been around that morning for the crash. Now I suspected that’s why Mark had been willing to take me up: he really hadn’t been allowed, but his uncle hadn’t been there to say no.

I didn’t want Mr. Simon to yell at me, but I figured I owed him the opportunity since I had crashed his airplane. I walked into the shade of the porch.

He said, “I want to shake your hand, little lady.”

I didn’t have a lot of experience shaking hands. I probably hadn’t done it since I met Sofie, but I extended my hand to Mr. Simon. His grip was too strong at first, and suddenly so weak that I could hardly feel his hand at all, like he’d remembered he was shaking the hand of a girl. Little lady, he’d called me, so disrespectful even as he showed me respect by shaking my hand. Being a pilot had always been like this for me, and it always would.