Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “We were always so close,” she says. “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

  “I’m sorry.” I’m marinating in it.

  “I know you didn’t want to take the pills, but they brought your father back to me. If they bring you back, then it seems worth it.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. The daughter she knew is gone. Visions of the girl they miss scroll through my head like a movie montage. Everyone’s fighting to save the girl they love.

  We’re all losing the fight.

  Suddenly I feel sick. There are kids whose parents don’t fight to save them. The strange, potent thought comes from last night’s dream, but with such emotional force, I’m pierced as if it’s my own story. It’s one of those visions, populated by people with dour, pale faces who are crowding in on me, laying hands on me, that I had to scribble about in my journal. The visions are increasing and uncontrollable. They’re like nightmares while awake. Daymares.

  “Have you ever dreamed people you don’t know?” I ask, wanting to know if this is a normal thing. I dream the same cast of strangers so frequently, I feel like I’m starting to know them. And deeply hate them. Powerful emotions​—​hate, anger, despair​—​skip like stones on the lake of my dreams and visions, but otherwise, in day-to-day life, they sink to the bottom.

  My mom gives me one of her assessing glances, full of concern. “I think we are all of the characters we dream. Different parts of our psyche playing various roles.”

  So does that mean I hate myself?

  My dad phones and asks if my mom can come handle some paperwork for the exhibition jump for the facility visit of the organizers of the X Games. He’s called in some favors and has arranged for more jump planes to be onsite when they come. The hangar is getting the top-to-bottom white-glove treatment. With each day, his anticipation ramps up. It has the faint trace of desperation.

  My body hums with jittery excitement at going to the airport, and it’s a welcome sensation, something new. Maybe if I skydive, I’ll feel like myself again. The thought of jumping makes me queasy all of a sudden, but to be all the way alive, to experience something more than guilt and confusion, I have to do everything I can to be that girl​—​and that girl eats and breathes the drop zone.

  The desert is particularly gorgeous today. The sky is so blue that the mountains look like they’ve been painted against it. I’m glad for the open space of the Mojave. I think I’d be overwhelmed in the bustling city with its colors and crowds and . . . glass.

  My dad is in a good mood, or at least he looks like he is. When we walk in, he’s prepping two full loads of jumpers​—​a good sign for business, but my parents exchange a glance that is a question about me and my follow-up visit with Dr. Collier. Even though I haven’t wigged out in front of them in almost a week, he probably wants confirmation that the meds are permanently dousing the crazy in me.

  Whether Dr. Collier realizes it or not, the way he speaks of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder has burdened me with a sense of hopelessness. The statistics don’t support my notion of “getting over this someday.” According to him, most people with schizophrenia never recover or live normally. I wondered why I even needed the medication when he said it often doesn’t help with problems like craving isolation, feeling numb, or having no interest in life in general. What’s the point, then?

  My mom is talking to my dad about how we’re busier because word has gotten out that we’re being considered for the X Games. People want in on that action. The energy of the drop zone is a living thing, eddying around the bodies of the jumpers, infusing the air with an electric charge. I feel more alive. My blood pumps faster. This could be my medication.

  Someone taps my shoulder. I startle.

  Dom breaks into a chuckle. “I’m sorry, Ry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He’s wearing his jumpsuit and has a camera affixed to the top of his helmet. His dimples flash as he grins. He has a full-wattage smile.

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry I’ve been cold to you.” My admission also startles me. Seeing him standing here, with cute dimples and sweet eyes, makes me feel warmth, and that’s another novel sensation after days of feeling numb and disoriented. Scared.

  Dom looks into me so deeply, I swear he can see every secret under my skin. I don’t know if anyone has ever looked at me so penetratingly. But then I realize: He has. He’s also trying not to say anything about my shaved hair, but his eyes can’t help but flick to the top of my head. “I want to talk more with you, but I have to go up and film a jump,” he says, regret in his rich voice. “Paco broke his ankle on a jump, and Kelsey’s sick, so we’re way short on camera crew. We need to get you back in the air. I’m worried we won’t have someone to film the big-way. So can I talk to you when I land?”

  “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. Mountai
ns 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.

  His eyes narrow at my reaching arms. “You okay? Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea . . .”

  “I, uh, I just wanted a hug.” It’s the first thing that came to mind, but I realize it’s true. But asking Nolan for a hug is like asking him to give me the Medal of Honor. He might wish he could, but he doesn’t have it to give.

  He gives my shoulder a squeeze instead. “We’ll be landing soon.”

  “Will you stay with me?” My eyes dart to where she was. Her sudden absence is as much of a shock as her appearance.

  He squats down on the floor next to me. “You bet.”

  “No, wait. Don’t. There’s no seat belt.”

  He shrugs. “I’ll be fine.” His eyes squint with his reassuring grin. “We’ll be fine.” I feel better with him here. He seems to sense the electric charge in the air and keeps talking, to reassure one of us. “When you’ve spent half your life jumping out of the confines of an airplane, you tend not to be so concerned with whether you’re strapped in at all times.”

  I slowly unclench my hands when I realize my nails are digging into my palms. “Why do you love it so much? This place? Skydiving? You’re happier here than anywhere else.”

  Nolan chews his lip, gives my question serious consideration. “Some people jump because they’re addicted to the adrenaline, to the high. You’re like that.” His eyes scan my face as if he’s suddenly wondering if that’s still true. Neither of us is sure. “But for me, it’s not about the high. I’ve seen so much in the war and”​—​he casts his gaze downward and rubs his hands over his hair with a sigh​—​“done so much, I’m . . . My default is to be numb. Jumping is the only thing that makes me feel truly alive. Even though I’ve been close to death a few times, risking death now, by choice, makes me appreciate life more.”

  “For some people, waking up to another day makes them appreciate life. That’s enough for them.”

  He pats my leg. “But not for people like us.”

  In all the memories I can access, I can’t remember a time when he has said we were alike.

  “I blame myself for the fight we had when you low-pulled. Hell, I blame myself for your stunt. I know my wild child. I denied you a shot to prove yourself, so you set out to do that.” His nostrils flare. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not. I realized something the day you kooked out on acid. I haven’t been very good at, well . . . I think you were looking for my attention. Acting out.”

  I heard what you said! You never wanted a girl. You said you weren’t made to father anything but boys!

  This recollection hits me full force. How did the ghost know before I did that my father didn’t want me? It’s like the dreams that have plagued me, only with different players. The shrill voice in my head rails at him, but I feel nothing but confusion: scattered memories blow in the wind, and I don’t know which are real. There’s no actual emotion behind the specter’s very emotional words ringing in my ears. My father and I are alike in this way. I’m numb too.

  He never wanted me.

  “You never wanted me.”

  His mouth hangs open like he’s wishing an argument would leap from his tongue and refute what I’ve said, but nothing comes out.

  Instead of staring at him, waiting for his reply, I find myself looking out of the glass bubble. It appears as though the earth is reaching up to us, but we’re descending. I close my eyes as we drop, attempting to block out the world and to shut out the girl whose apparition sits in the enclosed space with her head on her knees. She looks so sad. There’s a part of me that wishes he hadn’t shown up right when he did. I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I want her to finish her sentence. I want to know what it is that she wants.

  She haunts me, but I have to know what’s haunting her.

  If I knew that, could I put her to rest?

  Twenty

  THE B-17 ROLLS to a stop. When the engines cut, it’s like I’ve never heard silence this loud before. I have, though. I’ve been to a place where there are no sounds and no pictures but the memories in my head. I clung to them like a life raft. The night of the LSD, I was in a place so silent, it hurt.

  My father helps me unfasten the clip on my belt, and I follow him out to the door. The stairs are propped against the side of the plane. Dom waits for me.

  “We a go?” my dad asks him, to which Dom gives a thumbs-up. Probably another load of jumpers. I can’t decipher this man-speak, but I’m glad to see that my father isn’t blistering mad at Dom anymore. The drop zone is Dom’s life too. He and his brother have practically lived here since their mom died. Their dad, well, he didn’t want his kids either. It’d kill Dom to lose this family.

  For the second time, I get a rush of loss like a hot wind that’s blown through me. This was our life, together. Then the air inside me stills.

  My dad walks away but looks back at us as he does.

  “How’ve you been?” Dom asks.

  I bite my lip, force a smile. “Been better.”

  “That could be interpreted two ways.”

  “Probably should be.”

  Dom reaches up, smooths his hand over my newly cropped hair. Bumps of pleasure flare on my skin. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re even more badass without your hair. Gives you a rougher edge.”

  “I feel softer on the inside. I mean, not because of the hair, but because​—”

  His head cocks to the side. “I knew what you meant, babe.”

  I look down at my feet. He doesn’t let me linger in awkwardness. His finger tilts my chin up. His stare is a cocoon. “You’ve been through a lot. An experience like you had, nearly dying, it can change people, change their whole outlook on life.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone. I am changed. I see life differently now: how fragile and thin this world is. People don’t realize.” I reac
h my hand out to the air and touch nothing but the open doorway between this life and the next. “It’s right there. We can walk right through it. I’m scared to walk through it again, so I’m being extra careful. But it’s like nobody wants me to change. They don’t want this careful Ryan. They want me the way I was. I see how reckless I was before. How careless. I would think everyone would be happy I’ve changed from . . . that. But none of you are.”

  Dom’s hand slides down my arm, and he gives my fingers a squeeze. “I’m not gonna lie and tell you that you made people feel comfortable. You’ve scared everyone you know at least once. Hell, you made my nuts shrivel up in fear with that low-pull jump.” He smiles and kisses my fingers. His voice softens again. “Thing is, you reminded everyone that the walls of safety they put around themselves are complete bullshit. By living out loud and full-on, you’re a reminder that they aren’t fully living, that they are too afraid. Baby, you’re a mirror for their fears.”

  Maybe I’m a mirror for my own fears.

  My breath catches. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe there are things about myself I don’t want to see.

  “Change scares people too,” he says. “You seeming so different scares the stones out of them. But I believe in your fire. It’s still in there, just not raging right now, and that’s okay. Gives people a chance to catch their breath.”

  “Beautiful, the way you see me. The way you talk.” He’s like Gran that way.

  Impossibly, Dom’s smile grows even wider. “It’s like you don’t know me at all. Ah,” he says, dropping my hand and pulling something from his pocket. “Which reminds me. I was going to wait until later, but now seems like the right time. Close your eyes and open your hand.”

  I grin and shut my eyes with my palm upturned, waiting. Whatever he places there is light: a little more weight than the warm air swirling around us. “Okay,” he whispers.

  There’s an intricately folded origami tiger standing in the palm of my hand.

  “I’m holding a tiger,” I say.