Mirage(35)

“Okay.”

I don’t know what else to say, because there is too much to say. He was my other best friend. More than that . . . my first love. I don’t know what we are now. I don’t want to carelessly hurt him the way I’ve hurt Joe and my mother.

“We can talk later,” I promise, and watch his brown eyes light up with hope. He sweeps in and kisses my cheek, then darts out toward an airplane waiting on the tarmac with its engine droning like a million bees.

My father clears his throat. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says, pulling me outside through the wide-open hangar doors. He leads me onto the tarmac, where rows of parked planes wait to fly. People are gathered around one old plane in particular. It’s enormous?—?gleaming polished metal with four engines and bubbles of glass on the nose and underbelly. A painted pinup girl smiles over her shoulder at us from the nose. “It’s a B-17,” he says through a wide grin.

He looks like a little boy on Christmas. I feel the most genuine smile erupt on my face. It pulls tight at my wound.

“How many girls do you know who get to ride in a real-live World War Two bomber?”

My smile fades. “Ride?” I ask, trying not to sound apprehensive. “We get to go up in it?”

“You’ve been doing better, right? Besides, I’ll be going up too. It’ll be the ride of your life, kiddo. I’ve booked you a special seat.” My dad leads me to the side of the plane, where stairs are propped against it, and gives me a leg up. He climbs in behind me. I feel like we’ve crawled into the belly of a metal whale. Exposed bulkheads dotted with rivets wrap around us as we scuttle through the plane on a wooden platform.

I look out the waist gunner’s window and try to imagine what it must’ve been like for the crew during the war. My father introduces me to the two pilots and directs me toward the nose of the plane. “It’s the nose turret,” he explains. “This is where the gunner would sit and shoot at planes approaching from the front or crossing the path of the bomber. Sit down.”

I saddle myself in the metal seat, and he buckles me in. “I think it’d be scary being so exposed,” I say.

“Well,” he says, climbing out of the turret, “you’re gonna find out.”

I grab his leg. “Wait! I’m going to sit here while we fly? While we take off and land?”

His glorious smile returns. “Fantastic, right?”

“Right.”

One engine starts, then two, three, and four. The plane vibrates with the collective power of them. It’s like a racehorse at the gate, bursting with the desire to run. The plane moves forward, taxiing toward the run-up area. I can’t believe they’re letting me sit here as we move to takeoff position and the runway begins to roll faster and faster right underneath my feet.

A “whoop!” flies out of me as we leave earth. I can’t help it. This exhilaration tastes way sweeter than the acid of pain. My heart is pounding, and I feel so alive. We pull higher into the sky, and I try to disregard the reality that I’m essentially hanging from the bottom of the plane in a glass bubble.

I’d feel better with a chute on.

Progress.

The bomber banks to the right, and we climb higher. Mountains sweep past the left side of my glass bubble. If I lean forward enough, I can see in every direction. I’m sitting in the middle of a clear ball at fourteen thousand feet. The immense desert stretches from here to forever.

I stare in awe at its vastness. There is nothing in the world so rigidly true to itself as the desert. If the brown canvas of the Mojave had a dominant characteristic, it would be strength. The landscape is strong, stubborn: beauty that insists on its right to life on its own terms. I can appreciate that.

The steep turn of the plane makes my stomach lurch. My reflection materializes on the glass, stares out the window. We are watching the desert roll beneath our feet. Hands pressed against the glass like we could touch the sky. Strange, though, that I’m seeing the back of my head. I struggle with the laws of reflections for a moment. Shouldn’t I see my face looking back at me in the glass?

It’s not until my reflection turns slowly, looks sadly over her shoulder, that my heart stutters, and I realize who it is.





Nineteen


I DON’T KNOW WHY this time is different, but it’s like I can feel her ferocious sorrow and desperation with me in this dome of glass. It magnifies her, as if she’s standing, three-dimensional, right in front of me. She moves toward me, menacing. Her mouth is set in a grim line. Her eyes intent as she draws closer. She reaches for me.

My trembling fingers fight to unlock my harness, but the clip won’t budge. Panicked, I kick at the apparition of myself, but my feet flail uselessly in air.

This other me, Death disguised as me, advances like prowling smoke.

“What do you want?” I yell, but not as loud as I intend. Fear has choked off my voice.

I want?—?

“Hey, kiddo. Some view you’ve got up here.”

Our heads both pivot to see my father leaning into the bubble. I look back to the spirit, whose eyes now see only him. Her mouth moves. She’s trying to speak to him, but he can’t hear, and when her attention is not on me, neither can I. She lunges for my dad, and I want to fling myself in front of him but am still strapped in the damn chair.