Felix glared at her. And this time, Maisie pretended not to see him.
“I’ll take the three big kids up,” the man said finally. “For five dollars.”
“Five dollars!” Meelie’s father said. His hand went instinctively in his pocket, but he didn’t take any money out.
“I want to go, too,” Pidge whined.
“If it hasn’t started to rain,” the man said, “I’ll let you and the little girl go up free of charge.”
Their father looked longingly at the aeroplane, then slowly nodded.
“Don’t tell your mother that I spent part of her grocery money on a few seconds in a flying machine,” he said.
Meelie whooped. “Now this is an adventure!” she shouted.
“Pidge can take my place,” Maisie said, staring at the plane. That wire and wood looked like it could break apart easily.
Felix had the very same thought. But he didn’t want Meelie to think he wasn’t brave, so he kept it to himself.
Meelie spun around to face Maisie, who was lagging behind as they crossed the field to the plane.
“Why are you so afraid of everything?” she said angrily. “If you don’t take chances, nothing wonderful will ever happen to you.”
“I take a lot of chances,” Maisie said, remembering how it felt when she first stood on that stage for the audition. She’d thought she might faint from fright.
“Then stop complaining and let’s fly,” Meelie said.
“Okay,” the pilot explained, “what’s going to happen is you three will climb in, I’ll start up the propeller, and I’ll jump in once it gets going. Boyd’s gone on home. ’Cause of the storm.”
Meelie got in first, followed by a reluctant Felix and an even more reluctant Maisie.
The little seat was so tiny that they had to all scrunch close together.
“My heart is beating like a hummingbird’s,” Meelie said happily.
Felix wanted to say something, but fear had lodged in his throat like a big stone and he couldn’t speak.
The man warned them that it would be too noisy to speak over the wind and the engine.
“So you just need to sit back and enjoy quietly,” he added, giving the propeller a spin.
“Um,” Maisie said, “is that rain I feel?”
“For goodness’ sake,” Meelie said.
“I think I felt it, too,” Felix said.
He was about to point out that raindrops splattered his glasses, but he didn’t get a chance.
A gust of wind sent the propeller spinning like a pinwheel and before the pilot could jump in with them, the plane lifted up, up, up.
Meelie screamed, no longer impressed by flying.
At first, Felix thought the loud rumble he heard was coming from the engine. But then he realized it was thunder.
He clenched the steering wheel.
A bolt of lightning cracked blue across the black sky.
Rain began to fall, softly at first, then harder and harder, soaking them.
More thunder.
Another crack of lightning, closer this time.
All three children gripped the steering wheel now.
But even that couldn’t stop the plane from plummeting downward, spinning toward the ground below, fast.
CHAPTER 9
AMELIA EARHART
“Do something! Now!” Meelie screamed. Felix did do something. He let go of the steering wheel and covered his eyes. And just like he’d heard people say happened right before you died, his life flashed before him.
Almost like a home movie, he saw himself as a very little boy. He remembered the feeling of his father pushing him in a swing, the bucket kind that held you in nice and tight. They were probably at the Bleecker Street Playground, and Felix could practically feel the spring sunshine on his face, and the nudge of his father’s strong hand. Beside him, his mother pushed Maisie in her own little bucket swing, but Maisie wanted out. She wanted to play in the sandbox or slide down the curly slide, and Felix could hear her young voice demanding, Out! Out! Out!
Then there were the four of them at Florent, their favorite neighborhood diner, and the salty taste of the skinny fries that came, improbably, with eggs. His father lifts one French fry and dips it in ketchup and feeds it to Felix’s mother, who looks up at his father like she loves him.
He saw himself learning to ride a bike on bumpy Hudson Street. Running on the beach at Cape May. Petting the classroom guinea pig, Cinnamon. Whispering to Maisie in the dark in their apartment on Bethune Street. He heard the crack of the bat when he hit his first home run, his mother singing as she cooked spaghetti carbonara, the sound of his father’s key in the lock when he came home from his studio.
If someone had told Felix that they’d remembered all of these things, he would have thought it took some time. But in fact, they truly flashed through his mind, like lightning bugs on a summer night.
And they stopped as soon as the plane began to gasp and burp.
Felix opened his eyes. The rain was falling steadily and his hair and face and shirt were already drenched. But, he realized with relief, the plane had leveled off.