“Get on that. Christ, it’s like having twenty goddamn kids.” While my father gets to the business of readying for the demo jump, I busy myself with cleanup, tossing cups into a large black trash bag and wiping the checkin counter clean. Yvon, one of our pilots, shows up. She has a slight limp?—?I’ve no idea why she limps, but feel like I should know. She also has pretty caramel hair that sparks with silver threads when the light hits it just right.
As I’m pondering why my memory is like the shallow end of an ocean, she elbows me in the side. “Glad to see you here, little miss.” Yvon has the ready smile of someone who knows that no matter what steaming pile of crap life hands you, you can always mold it into something better than what it was. She doesn’t say these things with words, but I see it in her eyes. She’s been around and back around. “Place isn’t the same without you.”
“I’m not the same without it.”
She nods. “Roger that.” She pulls a hair tie off her wrist and tugs her hair into a ponytail before pulling it through the back of a baseball cap. “When do you suppose you’ll get back up there?”
I like that it’s when and not if. She’s more sure of the idea than I am.
“Soon.” I don’t know why, but I find myself telling her the truth: Yesterday, after talking to my dad in the B-17 and after interpreting the message from Dom’s origami tiger, I had an epiphany. “I need to get back in the air soon. It’s the only way to really live.”
One side of her mouth lifts into a smile, and she limps away to go fuel and preflight the plane for the golf-course demo. Jumpers begin to arrive, disheveled in that roll-out-of-bed-and-roll-out-of-an-airplane, it’s-just-another-Saturday kind of way. But they’re excited. Everyone loves jumping into a new location, and the golf-course grass is a luxurious change from the scrubby desert sand.
Soon my dad is too busy checking people in on the manifest, answering questions, and going over the flight plan with Yvon to notice me sneaking into the restroom with my duffel bag. My heart pounds against my ribs as I slip my legs into the black jumpsuit. I shouldn’t be this nervous, but I am. Doubts settle on me. Maybe I interpreted the tiger’s message wrong. I don’t know if I can do this. Hundreds of jumps mean nothing when they feel like they were performed by someone else.
The jumpsuit is too small for my height, and I curse myself for picking the wrong size off the women’s rental rack. I’m Catwoman with a tiger’s head. Hiding in a toilet stall in the bathroom until right before the hop is the only way I can think of to stay concealed. Goggles and gloves help, but an extra body in the jump plane is going to be hard to hide. For the hundredth time, I remind myself that this is who I am. I need to do this. I cannot go from being fearless to fearful. It’s alienating me, making everyone question the differences between the old me and the new me?—?and my seeing the eyes has made them question my very sanity. Most of all, though, it’s making me feel like I’m less than what I was.
I can’t believe that Avery accused me of faking. She’s full of crap, but she got one thing right: I’m standing out for things opposite from what made me stand out before. I’m standing out because I’m acting like the walking dead.
My hands are shaking when I check the time. The demo jumpers are to board the plane in five minutes. I take deep breaths as I slide my legs through the leg straps, heft the parachute pack onto my back, and slide my arms through the harness before buckling it to my chest.
There is a tiny gold angel pin on the nylon chest strap. I finger it before sliding the helmet over my head. I’ve got nearly three hundred jumps under my belt. I can do this. So why do I feel like I’m about to walk to the electric chair? Trembling, I steel my resolve and force my legs to move.
It’s go time.
Outside, the wind kicks up the smell of wet sagebrush and moist earth. The windsock complains, shaking its fist at the eastern sky. Engines are already humming. Jumpers file out of the hangar in a disorderly procession?—?demo team and solo jumpers mixed together. The lack of organization is good for me. I’m just another bird in the flock.
I slip into the troop without anyone taking much notice except to gawk at my body in the skintight suit. Trying to catch my breath isn’t easy as the engines push wind into our faces. We wait under the wings for our turn to board. When it’s mine, I heft myself up through the jump door. With the thrust of the engines, the metal vibrates under my hands, sweaty in the gloves. A hand reaches out and pulls me up. I suck in my breath when Dom and I lock eyes.
The astonishment on his face quickly fades. His brows crinkle in confusion, and he chews a moment on his lip. That’s the evidence of the war within him: whether to say anything about the fact that I’m suited up and ready for action.
“Nice helmet,” he finally says, and nods me toward the back of the plane.
I make my way to the metal wall behind the pilots and scrunch into a ball. I’m not sure I can go through with this . . . When my father spoke of how alive skydiving makes him feel, when he spoke of how similar we are, I wanted nothing more than to feel both those things in my body instead of the unvarying static of detachment. I wanted to feel the muscle memory of being me, not just see me in the pictures in my head.