But then my mind snaps back into what I know.
I uncurl my arms and legs and flatten my body, but I’m buffeting and rocking as if I’m on my stomach on a waterbed. Nothing is going as planned. I’m stiff with terror and, more than that, disbelief that I’m not in Death’s hands but in Dom’s.
This is all her doing. She’s after me. Maybe it wasn’t my own mind convincing me to jump but her evil whisperings. I glance at Dom’s intense face. Because of me she could get a two-for-one deal.
I need him to let go of me. I can’t be responsible for his death.
When I attempt to pull my arm free of his grasp, he grits his jaw into a rigid mask and grabs for my upper leg. His helmet crashes into my ribs. The world tilts and rotates violently. I feel like I’m rising up as Dom plummets below me. My upper body jerks upright, pulling my spine straight, knocking a grunt out of me. My legs sweep underneath me, swinging forward past my chest before gravity pulls them toward the ground.
Dom has pulled my chute.
The parachute snaps in the wind over my head. My goggles fog up, blinding me to the wet desert below. I can’t see him. The thought comes to me that I’ve never been so alone. But that’s not true. I’ve been the kind of alone that you think you’ll never come back from.
Yet I came back.
Turbulence throws me into a sudden drop and startles me into action. I have only one job right now, and that’s to land without killing myself. I reach up the risers and clasp the toggles, freeing them, and try to maneuver toward the large patch of green in the desert that must be the golf course the demo team jumped for. Soon I realize there’s no way I’m going to reach it. All I can do is stay stable and calm despite my racing heart, dry throat, and shaking limbs.
Sagebrush and cacti are splashed haphazardly all over the flat canvas of desert. This isn’t like landing at the DZ, where there’s an enormous circle wiped clean. It’s like landing in a minefield. Rain coats my goggles, making it difficult to see, and I’m too scared to let go of the toggles to wipe them. It wouldn’t matter anyway; they’d just be coated with water again within seconds.
The closer I get to the ground, the faster my descent feels, like the earth is pushing up to meet me hard and fast. The wind kicks me around, and I’m too afraid to turn or do anything but keep myself straight as possible as I drop. Brush catches my legs right before impact, and I hit face-down, rolling over and over. It’s like rolling on boulders of cut glass. My legs sting, my cheeks burn, and I’ve got scrapes under my chin.
Mercifully, I roll to a stop. I’m wound like a burrito in my parachute. Rain pelts down on it so that the nylon fabric clings to my face. I will be smothered. Fighting and clawing at the chute, I wiggle one hand free and unclasp the helmet, rip the goggles off my face, and gasp for air against the material. I’m so bound in the chute and lines that I’m hogtied on the desert floor.
There’s laughter in my head. Laughter. I want to cry through her amusement.
Crazy is starting to look more and more plausible.
Burned-red anger spreads like fire from my belly through my body. I don’t want to hear her now. Never again. She has become my tormentor. This moment should have been my victory for booming back into life, my triumph for being bold and fearless, and I’m being laughed at for crash landing. I’m humiliated by a spook.
I flail and struggle to free myself. Will I be stuck here like this? Will someone eventually find me, mummified in my own parachute among the Joshua trees and sagebrush, eyes staring at heaven?
My name. I hear my name. And footsteps in the dirt. Hands touch my cheeks through the fabric. “Are you okay?” Dom’s breathless voice asks. I croak out a yes. “Don’t move,” he says, kneeling over my legs. I hear a metallic click. “Not . . . one . . . move . . .” he warns as he puckers a wad of the chute above my face, creating a tent over my nose, and then the glint of a knife slashes through the fabric from my nose to my navel.
Cool air and rain hit my skin, and Dom pulls me to sitting, shaking me. “What the hell happened?”