My song! she yells in my head.
Someone opens the jump door. The spotter signals the pilot, and the plane powers down. Everyone stands. I rise to my feet.
Birthday Boy places a gentle hand on my arm. “You’re talking to yourself,” he says, then looks at me closer. “I recognize you. From my first jump. You seem . . . different.”
We stare at each other. This stranger’s concern is a rope. I can’t afford to let him lasso me and reel me back in. “You okay? Maybe sit this one out?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I’m all in.” My heart thuds wildly as I lumber behind the other jumpers toward the open door of the plane. The song pounds so loud in my head, it hurts. I can’t shut it out. Only one way to stop it. I’ll go to the silence again.
Birthday Boy enters the doorway, poised to jump, but stops, holds himself from falling. Both arms are stretched out to each side of the open door. He looks back at me through his goggles with questions swarming his eyes. The wordless moment that passes between us is spoken in one of the most beautiful languages in human history.
I force a smile through trembling lips and blow him a kiss, and he’s gone. Later I will be one of his regrets. He will wonder if he should have done more. That makes me sad.
One by one, jumpers take to the sky like dandelion seeds swept away on their own wishes. I wonder about their wishes.
I have the wish to die.
Thirty-Two
I HEARD MY SONG!
Finally.
Heard the strong, tender melody in the stillness of the void. It kept me anchored to my body. Carried me back to myself whenever I felt the urge to drift into the light. The urge was never stronger than when Gran took my hand in that dark place. I sang to her a lot. With her sad, now-seeing eyes, she beckoned me to come with her. “Walk with me toward the love,” she said.
It was so tempting.
But instead I chose to watch her go to another place so I could stay in the dark and bang on the glass of my own life.
Watch, while someone else lived it.
Now she wants to end it.
I have to stop her.
I have the wish to live.
Thirty-Three
THE BLASTING SOUND of wind and the drone of the engines fade the minute I step into the doorway. All I can hear is my raging heartbeat and the relentless song ringing in my temples. My toes hang off the edge of the opening. My jumpsuit presses to my shins and arms as I lean forward.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
The earth is waiting to fold me back into itself.
I smile as I roll and plummet through the air in a tumbling heap. I’m leaping into her arms. She finally wins.
Hurtling through the air, I’m letting gravity wrap its hand around me and suck me down. Tracking away from the bare circle of the drop zone, I’m cloaked in a fear like I’ve never known. I’m trying to surrender. I’m letting go.
We fought once and I lost. I won’t lose again. It’s on!
Her fear and her surrender are the footholds I need.
She may have my body, but I’ve got something she doesn’t?—?fearlessness.
I am stronger than her fear. She’s willing to die, and she’s freaking terrified. That releases her hold on my body just enough to allow me back in.
Barely.
I’m no longer her specter. I’m her shadow, part of her, part of myself again.
I can feel the warm wind on my lips, and it’s the most delicious taste.
I want more.
I want control of my body. I want to reclaim it. I want to dance on the currents again. I want to taste warm mint on Dom’s tongue, feel raucous laughter shake me as it does when Joe and I joke around, know again the spoonful of spiked sugar that is sex, the sensual chill of skinny-dipping in the reservoir, the sweetness of my mother’s hugs.
I want my life back.
And I’ll be goddamned if this bitch is going to take it forever.
I don’t understand what’s happening. The voice that was singing in my head as I exited the plane is now pushing out of my mouth. I’m falling, and I’m humming a song.
My song. I’ll choke her with it. I’m not just singing the music; I am the music: as physical yet ephemeral as a tune floating on the wind. Real, but existing as a cluster of vibrations, somehow getting stronger and stronger, pulsing with life, until I have the power to break through.
The wind tries to stuff the tune back in my mouth. Ground rushes up to meet me, and I curl in on myself. I can do this. I can die. But I can’t go back in the womb without wrapping around myself, making myself smaller.
She cannot roll into a ball. She’s making my body a dark, round stone. I try to push harder into the shell of me, assert my ownership, take control of my body so I can stabilize the fall, stop her from killing me.
Again.
This time it’ll be permanent.
Please, no. If she takes my body, I’ll have no home to return to.
I concentrate, visualize my spirit as a vapor seeping into every cell, every long strand of marrow, the tiniest corners of nerves. I push harder than I’ve ever pushed for anything.
Let. Me. In!