Mirage(6)

I step out of his circle of power. “Another way to say you don’t believe I can.”

His tone flips like a switch. “Don’t come in here and try to browbeat me, kiddo. It ain’t gonna happen.”

I fix him with what I think is a disarming smile but I’m sure comes off more like I’m constipated. “I wasn’t raised to back down,” I answer with a lift of my chin. I know I sound like a tired war movie, but it’s his language, so I speak it. Dad dismisses me by pointing at the door.

Dom’s kneeling by my chute, straightening the parachute lines, when I stomp over.

“Whoa!” he says, grabbing my hand. “Spill.”

“Commander Crotchety in there”?—?I thumb toward the office?—?“refuses to let me be part of the big-way we’re doing to lure the X Games here.” Dom’s eyes go wide. I’ve lit up his entire brain with visions of glory. “He says I need to be perfect, precise. I can land my pinky toe on a penny in the middle of the DZ. I’ve done tons of formation jumps with you guys. What else do I have to do to show him?”

He holds my jumpsuit out for me to step into. “You know that famous thing where Babe Ruth points to the outfield and calls it?”

“Not really, but what’s your point?” I ask, punching my arms into the suit.

“Call it.” When I show no sign of understanding, he zips me up and adds, “Call your opening altitude and call where you’ll touch down. Be precise about it. Hotdog your descent and stick the landing. Make it pretty. I’ll film it so you can show him how good you are. He’s too busy to watch you, so he doesn’t see that you’re a badass skydiver.”

“He doesn’t see me, period.”

I look away from Dom’s sympathetic eyes. Already a radical plan is formulating. The most radical I’ve ever had. Maybe you don’t have to die to earn Dad’s respect. Maybe you just have to show him you’re not afraid to. “Pack it to open fast,” I tell Dom.

“Boldly go.” He smirks.

“You bet your ass. Where no man has gone before.”

He gets back to folding my chute. Then he looks up at me. “And babe, I’m putting a penny in the dirt.”

I rip a page from the back of someone’s jump log and write on it, then march it into Dad’s office. He doesn’t even look at me or the paper as I toss it on his desk and about-face, slinging my helmet over my shoulder.



The pilot goes full throttle for takeoff, engines thunder, and the plane vibrates with power. Cold air sneaks in under the jump door next to me as I mentally run through what I’m about to do. We rumble down the runway, and I try to ignore the eyes of the other jumpers on me; recalling the eyes in the mirror causes unfamiliar nerves to fire off in my belly. I don’t know if it’s the memory of ghostly eyes in the motor home or what I’m about to do, but I’ve never been this on edge before a jump. My stomach is a taut, jelly-filled drum.

Once every other skydiver has exited the plane, I hold the metal edges of the doorway and lean forward into the wide open. Deep breath in, blow it out, and dive. Cool air hits my skin and presses like a giant hand against my torso. I go immediately into track position, hurtling through the pink-and-blue sky like a dart until I’m directly over the clean circle in the desert where I’m to execute a perfect landing. I ease into my arch.

There’s nothing to do now but fall.

It’s odd being out here alone again for the second time today, not part of a formation, and not goofing off with Dom, kissing in freefall. It’s extremely lonely, like I’m disassociated from what I’m doing. Like maybe I’m not real. Not as if I’m dreaming. More like . . . like I could be someone else’s dream.

What if I was?

If I bounced, would another girl sit up in bed, sweating and panting, grateful it was just a dream?

This thought spooks me, makes me distrust myself for the first time, and this is one jump where I can’t afford doubts. Every fluttering gnat of fear in my belly is squashed by the weight of my stubborn will. I have to do this. The risk I’m taking is worth it. It is. I’ll show my father I’m precise.

The number I wrote on the slip of logbook said simply 1K. I wish I could see his face when he realizes what it means?—?eight hundred feet below oh-shit altitude, where we must make a decision in an emergency. I had to turn off my automatic activation device to do this jump.

I’d laugh if the wind weren’t pulling my cheeks back to my ears.

Dom is filming me, and I’m going to give him something memorable. But I can’t fight the lonely drag as I fall; it’s like no one, not even God, is watching me right now. I think of the specter eyes in the mirror, the spooky sensation of being watched instead of being the watcher. How can my own reflection scare me so much?

For a moment in that motor home, I was my own ghost.

I blow through the altitude where I’d normally pull. But this is no normal jump. I’ve had one jump when my chute failed to open and I had to deploy a reserve. This time, this one time, if there is a problem, I won’t have time to deploy my reserve. My objectives are: Pull as low as I can. Don’t die.

It’s like playing chicken with the earth.

With every five hundred feet I lose, my heart hammers five hundred beats faster. My fingers are twitching to pull. It’s all I can do not to reach for the cord. The ground is rushing at me so fast, and I can see people lined up around the drop zone. I’m certain I’ll hear their gasps on the video later.