It’s not a good sign when Death holds her breath.
“I’m glad you found me. Can we go now?” I say with a quaking voice. I want to be very far from this house, but Joe hasn’t moved the car. He’s busy punching a text into his phone. “What are you doing?”
“Letting your parents know I’ve got you.”
I shake my head. “You’re not going to hand me over. I need a break from them right now, Joe. That’s why I called you.” I curl my fingers over his hand on the gear. “I need you to distract me, take me somewhere where I won’t think so much.”
“I’m letting them know you’re okay, which is what you should have done if you were thinking straight.” He sighs, regret on his face. “Sorry. But everyone is worried about you, sister love.”
“Don’t take me back yet.” I fix him with a hard stare. “I’m not asking.”
He blinks his agreement, and we drive aimlessly for a while with the radio blasting, top down, and warm air filling the space around us. The desert smells like sage leaves brushed with rain, then baked. I’ve held my eyes closed since we left the abandoned house. My fingers catch the wind outside, first cupping and holding it, then flexing against it. The resistance hits my flat palms and I smile?—?muscle memory of dancing in air.
“Been to the drop zone much?” Joe asks, as if he can read my mind.
“Not at all, actually.”
“Might be good for you.” The car comes to a slow stop, and I open my eyes to see he’s pulled up at the airport. We bump down the dirt road adjacent to the landing circle. Out of habit I gauge the windsock, and a memory blows by. “Dom and I wanted to make a skydiving calendar of jumpers wearing only the windsock and maybe some jump gear.”
“I know,” Joe says. “You let him take sexpot pictures of you as a test run.”
“Oh . . . that’s right.” He hands over a bag of pistachios, and we recline our seats to watch for the jumpers. “Why don’t you like him?”
“Why haven’t you asked before? I’ve been wondering why my opinion didn’t matter to you.”
“My opinion mattered more, I guess.”
Joe fights with a pistachio shell that doesn’t want to open, gives up, and tosses it in the dirt. We both squint at the jump plane roaring past us down the runway before it leaps into the air. He is thoughtful but finally answers my question.
“A couple of years ago, my dad showed me how to use jumper cables on the car battery. He was adamant that I follow his instructions to the letter so I wouldn’t blow up the car or myself or be burned by acid or something. I was freaking nervous. I’d be heading toward the battery with these cables and clamps like I was walking to the electric chair, imagining it zapping me and frying me crispy.” He tosses more pistachio shells onto the ground. “You know the feeling when you’re playing that game Operation?”
“I love that feeling,” I answer, remembering the exact sensation of combined fear and excitement.
“Right. Well, the thing about you and Dom is, you both like that feeling a little too much. Though”?—?Joe chuckles?—?“you might be even higher on the need-for-adrenaline scale than him. Anyway, your love is a white-hot electric arc. I’m afraid you’ll get burned by it.”
Just as he says this, I see Dom walk out of the hangar. I know what it feels like to walk shoulder to shoulder with him. I remember the taste of his mouth after a long day of jumping, a mixture of sweat and excitement and his spearmint gum. I recall every word he’s ever uttered to me about how remarkable and beautiful he thinks I am. I remember my own words of love and admiration back to him. I remember one night, lying on the grass behind the hangar and staring up into the sea of stars, I told him that I thought we were two halves of the same star. He called me his Lady of Light. Our fire burned the same. Later, he gave me a painting he’d done of a split star, with tendrils of light from the two halves still connected like they were reaching for each other. All of these are beautiful memories but not sensations. I should feel, but I don’t.
I feel dead.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Avery jogs after Dom and follows, puppylike, at his heel. Her hands move excitedly as she talks. While his head is craned toward the sky and the airplane, hers is craned toward him.
“I think I have to let him go,” I say, watching Joe’s face for a reaction. I can’t tell if this pleases him or not. For the first time in hours, though, the spirit reacts. I quaver like someone is grabbing the cage of my ribs and shaking them. My hands dig into the leather seat.
Joe suddenly points skyward. “There they go!”
The plane slows over the drop zone. Little by little, I’m able to make out the forms of bodies dropping. They’re specks, dust motes in the shafts of light between clouds. One by one, parachutes open like falling blossoms against the blue sky. It’s unbearably beautiful.