My fingers twitch uncontrollably against my chest strap. My hands fling away from my body. The air is trying to pull me apart?—?to prohibit my arms from crossing over my chest?—?to spread me wide like a bird. My body is making spastic movements. My eyes spring open, and I see the one thing I don’t want to see: the multicolored patchwork of earth below growing larger. It won’t be long before impact.
Death already has a hold of me now; I feel her, asserting her power, trying to take my body prematurely, like she can’t wait until I die. She wants to take me alive. I fight to tug my body back into a ball, but I’m like a spring that tries to uncoil to a safe position.
Anger flows through me. My eyes are pinned open. She won’t let me close them and fall oblivious to the exact moment of impact. She wants to torture me, make me watch. Involuntarily, my body tracks back over the drop-zone area. She wants to make them watch too. Cruel.
I force my eyes closed.
I think I have her now. I’m in, partially directing my arms and legs, stretching my body into an arch, tracking away from the enormous, flat desert. It hurts, though. After weeks of expansive floating in spirit form, I feel gravity like an iron anvil strapped to every bone.
She’s fighting my will, trying to curl up like the tandem jumpers who panic in freefall. Dom had to head-butt a guy once, knock him out cold, so that he wouldn’t keep grabbing Dom’s hands and kill them both. God, I’ve missed him so much . . .
I’ve missed everyone. Everything.
Rushing through me are anger and the heat of longing to live. I have to want to live more than she wants to die. But our altitude is so low, and I can’t seem to inhabit my body powerfully enough to pull the chute. Panic sets in, foreign and unwelcome.
The spirit, the fucking thief, thinks she can freaking close her eyes and wait to bounce.
Any second now, it will be over. Any second . . .
I know something she doesn’t know. It’s the only thing keeping me from giving up as I hear screams from the drop zone below.
I’ve been here before.
I know how far I can fall before it’s too late.
Relax, I tell myself. Wait for the release. This will be your freedom. I start to mumble a prayer. I don’t know where this prayer comes from, but it bubbles up like so many other disconnected memories. I try to mumble the prayer and wait to hit the ground, but that damn song is all that comes out.
I’m screaming my song, and it’s my voice, my shaky voice. If I can’t get a firm grip on my body, make my arms and hands work right, if I can’t pull the ripcord in a matter of seconds, I’m going to die. I’m going to walk into that light.
That’s going to piss me off so much.
Oh God.
Now.
Oh God.
Now.
Thirty-Four
PIERCING SCREAMS REVERBERATE, bouncing off the Sierra Nevada, bouncing off the needles of cacti, out into the desert and back?—?a boomerang of shrieks and pain. A final heartbreaking gust of wind, and multicolored strips of nylon flutter ineffectively.
I fly out of my body on impact, sent hurtling through the air and the mirage-like veil that undulates between life and death. I am that one reckless balloon streaming toward the blue skies.
Hovering above, I look across the desert at the gnarled and twisted shapes of the cacti. I look down at my gnarled and twisted body. Suddenly I am on the ground, just feet away from my physical self. I look so small . . .
People are running, scurrying like ants toward my still form. Dad falls to his knees beside me. Love wafts from him in a kaleidoscope of colors as he bends over me. He’s still the first sergeant, shouting orders to people. Call an ambulance. Don’t touch her. My baby. My baby.
I finally see his love. Like Gran, I can see so clearly now that I’m gone. I had to die to see it? This strikes me as incredibly sad.
A timid voice carries across the sand to me. “Are . . . are you the Angel of Death?”
I don’t know this girl, but she floats nearby, concern and confusion evident in her crystalline blue eyes. I’ve seen those eyes before. Her blond hair lifts and falls like she’s in water. She looks so sad, but she scares me too. I don’t want any spirits nearby, coaxing me into the light.
I want to live. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.
“You’re the one who’s been haunting me,” she says, wide-eyed. “You died and?—”
“I’m not dead!”