Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  “Seven Niner Romeo, turn right heading Three Two Zero, the airport will be at twelve o’clock.”

  They think I’ve lost the airport. They think I’m lost.

  Maybe I am.

  The radio continues to squawk until I turn it off.

  It’s just me and Tweety.

  And I fly.

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I’m not thinking much as I fly south. There’s too much to concentrate on. I’m flying VFR, which means I’m flying by sight, so I have to look out for other planes. I’m supposed to be on the radio, talking to other planes and to airports when I get close to them, but I don’t want to talk to anybody. I know where I am, because of the GPS, but I don’t know where I’m going. Not really.

  Just away.

  I have plenty of gas, so I fly, and I sing at the top of my lungs, and sometimes it seems like Tweety chimes in with a rev of the motor or a whistle of wind. I’m blank. I’m empty. My brain is a mirror of the vacant pure blue of the sky.

  I know this is bad, very bad. I should turn back, get on the radio, tell someone I’m fine. I don’t know what Stew is going to do. I don’t know if they’ve called my mother by now. Thinking of Mom threatens to break me, because I don’t want her to worry about me.

  But she’ll be better off without you … It has been so hard for her to go through all this and worry about me too. And as much as I want to be there for her, somehow I can’t. Not like she needs. I try and try, but I can’t do anything to make her better, to ease her pain. And on top of that, I am adding to it. Because I can’t seem to help myself. Things have slipped out of my control, like I’m on some sort of slide and keep going faster and faster to who-knows-where but I can’t stop.

  I don’t have a plan. Well, yes, I do. I plan to fly as far away as I can. After that there’s nothing. Maybe I will lie down and die. That seems pretty appealing. But short of finding some sleeping pills—

  Why are you thinking about sleeping pills? You’re more than a thousand feet in the air. All you have to do is let go of the controls and see what happens. It really wouldn’t be your fault; it’s not like you would drive yourself into the ground or anything. You could take your hands off the yoke and see what happens. Just like that. It would be so easy …

  I find myself lifting my hands off the yoke, and Tweety is confused. She swerves a little to the right and then drifts slowly downward.

  Yes, like that. Sit back and watch the trees get a little closer and what a way to go, right? Doing what you love? You and Tweety Bird. It’ll be over quick, it’ll be fast, and you won’t have to wait for the next five, ten, twenty years for a lump to show up. Done. Finis. All over. Mom would understand, she knows, she KNOWS, KNOWS, KNOWS what hell is like and didn’t she say maybe it would be easier if she could just die? Easier. This is an easier way. There, the ground’s getting closer and isn’t that river pretty, shining in the sun like a glittering ribbon? Concentrate on that. Tweety will take care of everything. I wish Mom could be here …

  “No!” I scream and snatch the yoke up. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, nonono …” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs now, a wordless howl that goes on and on as I drive Tweety back up, up, up. Tears run down my face as all the bad stuff comes out through my mouth in a long shriek of fury and pain. Tweety begins wailing along beside me as I go up so fast the motor begins to strain and we roar together at the uncaring sky.

  Somewhere in the middle of Florida I begin to run out of gas. I still have some, but if I don’t land soon, then I won’t.

  I’m in the middle of the state, so mostly I see rolling fields and an occasional town below me. I don’t want to land at an airport, even a small one, because I don’t want to talk to anybody. This I know. This is all I know.

  I see a long flat field below me and it reminds me of the field I almost landed in when Stew stole my keys forever ago. That day I was planning on landing on the field with no power. How much easier to do it with the motor running? I circle around and check out the field. It looks like maybe it’s supposed to be growing something, but right now it’s dirt mounded up in long furrows. About a mile away is a house with a big barn, but there’s nothing, nobody around. I circle again and I’m lining up at the end of the field and getting lower and lower.

  Either do it or don’t. What does it matter either way?

  I do it. I drop down onto the dirt and we bounce some and one big bounce slams my head into the ceiling. Something cracks and Tweety dips to the side and we crash to a halt in a cloud of dust. I rub at my head as I look out of the window. Somehow the ground seemed a lot smoother from the air.

  I unbuckle and get out and immediately see I’ve damaged Tweety’s landing-gear strut, the piece of metal that holds the wheels. It’s bent and Tweety is drooping to one side. For some reason this makes me cry and I kneel beside Tweety and put my arms around her legs, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  After a while, I stand up. I grab my purse out of Tweety and kiss her nose.

  “I’m sorry to leave you like this,” I say. “Someone will find you and take care of you, I promise.”

  And then I walk away.

  I find a dirt road and follow it. I don’t know where it goes and it doesn’t matter.

  As I walk, I pull out my phone and look at the dark screen. I turned it off before I ever got in the plane. I don’t want to turn it back on but I do.

  I have twenty-one messages: ten from my mom, eleven from Trina.

  I think for a minute and then send Mom a quick text: im all right pls dont worry. love u

  I shut off the phone and keep walking.

  Every once in a while a car goes by and I duck into the bushes. But that’s only once in a while, so mostly I walk down the middle of the road, swinging my arms and singing. It’s only when I see the drops falling darkly onto the white dust that I realize I’m crying.

  I’m getting tired when I see a gas station ahead. I don’t want to see anybody, but I’m hungry so I go in. A skinny woman with skin browned and furrowed by the sun sits behind the counter, her eyes glued to a small TV. She barely looks up as I put a Diet Coke, a bag of chips, and a sandwich on the counter. I hesitate over Mom’s emergency credit card and use cash instead. They can trace credit cards. But that leaves me six dollars and twenty-six cents, so I’m going to be in trouble soon.

  I use the bathroom, and as I’m leaving I hear my name on the TV. I stop, using one hand to keep the glass door from swinging shut.

  “… authorities are saying that it appears the student pilot flew off course deliberately and are working to find …”

  I let go of the door and it shuts with a clang of cowbells. I walk quickly away, and I’m not sure whether the crawling sensation on my back is my imagination or the clerk watching me.

  I eat my sandwich and walk. It’s hot, it’s May in Florida, and before long I’m sunburned and extremely thirsty. My Diet Coke is long gone. I suck on a mint, but as soon as it’s finished my mouth is dry again. It occurs to me I could die of sunstroke. I don’t care much.

  A car comes along and I’m too tired to get out of the road.

  It’s an old farm truck and the man inside is equally decrepit. He stops and stares at me.

  “Where you going, girl?” he asks.

  I nod the way I’ve been walking.

  “There’s nothing much for miles ahead. Did you run out of gas?”

  I shrug.

  “Get in, and I’ll take you up to Alachua. There’s a gas station.”

  I think about it, “stranger danger” and all that, but in the end I just don’t care. I get in and he offers me a drink from a soda bottle that’s filled with clear liquid. I’m so thirsty I gulp it down. Thankfully, it’s water.

  He doesn’t seem inclined to talk much, and neither am I. We roll along with the hot wind whipping through the truck and I tap my fingers on the windowsill to the songs still playing in my head.

  After a while, he tu
rns onto a two-lane paved road. We begin to see houses and a business or two, and then the gas station.

  “You want me to take you back, or you got someone to call?” he asks as I get out.

  “I’ve got someone to call.”

  I watch as he drives off and I pull out my phone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I’ve never called Ashley and it feels odd. Our relationship was in the Webosphere, and somehow it seemed meant to stay that way.

  I listen to it ring and ring and a guy picks up.

  “Hello?” he says.

  I’m confused and almost hang up.

  “I’m looking for Ashley,” I say after a moment.

  A muffled silence, like he covered the phone with his palm, and then he says, “This is Ashley’s brother, Jason. Is this Erin?”

  I should wonder how he knows who I am, but I don’t. “Yes. Can I talk to Ashley?”

  “She’s not here. She went fishing.”

  “Oh,” I say and begin to cry.

  “Erin. Hey, Erin! Quit it. Stop. Please, stop crying. Ashley told me all about you. You sound like you’re in trouble. Can I help?”

  “Not unless you want to drive to Alachua and pick me up,” I say because I don’t know what else to do.

  Silence. I’m about to hang up when he comes back. “Okay, I Google Mapped it and it should take me four hours and eighteen minutes to get there. Can you hang on that long?”

  I laugh, but it’s almost a sob. “That’s all I do,” I say. “I hang on.”

  I tell him what gas station I’m at and go and sit under a tree. I’m out of sight of the station but I can still see the parking lot. I drink from a supersize bottle of water and munch on a sandwich I bought with my six dollars and twenty-six cents. Now I have seventy-eight cents rattling in my pocket.

  I must have fallen asleep because when I wake, a police car is in the parking lot. I remember then you can track your phone if you lose it, and are they tracking me? I turn off my phone even though I told Jason I would keep it on in case he can’t find the gas station. I edge further behind the tree. Darned if the clerk doesn’t come out with the cop, and they are standing outside the store looking up and down the road. The clerk is talking fast and then she does something that makes my skin crawl. She hands the cop my wallet. I hadn’t even noticed I’d lost it.

  The cop looks through my wallet thoughtfully and then talks into his shoulder mic. Before long two more cops show up and yes, they are looking for me. This is insane and I don’t know what to do. I need to get away but Jason is my best bet. I’d glanced at the time right before I turned off my phone, and I know he should be here any minute. I see it already in my imagination. He gets here. Doesn’t see me. Goes in and talks to the clerk and she promptly directs him to the police. And there goes my only ride out of town.

  I know I need to do something, but I’m paralyzed.

  A ragged blue Jeep turns into the station. It pulls up to the gas pump and a guy gets out. He looks eighteen, nineteen, a little older than me, and he’s tall with curly blondish hair pulled back into a ponytail. He’s tanned and sloppy-looking, like he’s just come off the water, and I know exactly who he is.

  I wonder if I can signal him somehow. He doesn’t seem to be sweating my absence. He’s not looking around or anything. In fact, he looks bored. One of the cops comes over and talks to him and he shrugs and shakes his head. No, he hasn’t seen a girl, curly black hair, glasses.

  When he goes to get back in the Jeep, I see he’s got his hand down low at his side where the police officers can’t see him. He’s pointing down the road. He gets in without looking back and drives off in the opposite direction.

  Great. Now what do I do?

  What choice do I have?

  I look at my phone and put it on the ground and smash it with my heel. I start worming my way through the bushes in the direction he pointed. After a while, I get far enough away from the gas station and I get up and run. I keep the road in sight but I go for five minutes and don’t see him. Did I misunderstand? Was it even him?

  But I know it was and somehow I’m not concerned. I keep walking, closer to the road now, and few minutes later the Jeep roars up and swerves to a stop.

  “Get in!” the guy yells.

  I hesitate because I don’t know whether they can still see us from the gas station and then I take a leap of faith and run. I fall into the seat and he is accelerating before I even have the door shut.

  “I called in a fire down the road, but I don’t think it’ll keep them occupied for long.” He glances in the rearview mirror. He is big and male and it’s hard not to notice that.

  “What fire?” I fumble for my seat belt because he’s accelerating like Mario Andretti. But he gets to fifty-five and stays there.

  “I called 911 and said there was a small brush fire just north of the gas station, figuring those cops would respond,” he says. “Hopefully it gave us enough time. Are you okay?” He glances at me.

  “How did you know? How did you know those cops were looking for me?”

  He hesitates. “Your mom called my house this morning. Looking for Ashley. She looked at your cell phone records so they know you’ve been texting … her.”

  Something about the way he says this makes me look at him sharply.

  “And what did Ashley say?” I ask.

  “She said she hadn’t heard from you since early this morning before you soloed and she didn’t know where you were. They found the plane a couple hours ago, so now they know you’re around here somewhere. They’re calling you a ‘troubled teen.’ ”

  I keep looking at him, not even caring right then about the whole “troubled teen” thing.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  He hesitates. “Eighteen.”

  “And you and Ashley are what? Twins? She never mentioned a twin brother. Or a brother at all for that matter.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  It all makes a horrible kind of sense. The fact he has Ashley’s phone, the strange hesitations, the feeling of familiarity …

  “You’re her, aren’t you?” I whisper. “You’re Ashley!”

  He won’t look at me. Then, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would go this far. I wanted to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time.”

  “What, are you some sort of online predator or something? Why were you pretending to be a girl?” I don’t know whether to be scared or angry. I put my hand on the door handle, but we’re going too fast for me to jump out.

  “It wasn’t like that!” He looks at me, his eyes earnest. “I didn’t mean to do it. When I joined that BRCA forum, I was thinking of my little sister, Ashley. I knew Mom was going to tell her about the gene when she turned eighteen next year, and I was wondering what it was like to be a girl and know you might have the bad gene and have to make all those decisions about what to do. So when I signed up, I used the screen name Ashley, because her name was the first thing that came to mind.”

  I remembered my own screen name: Thissucks.

  “When you posted, it was the first time I’d seen anything from someone our age. When I e-mailed you, it didn’t occur to me that you would think I was a girl. Not until too late. And then you were telling me … stuff …”

  “Oh my God!” I shriek, remembering some of the things I told Ashley. I talked about Michael, about kissing Chaz, my new fun nickname Va-jay-jay Girl, my period, for flip’s sake. Oh my God, ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

  I cover my face with my hands.

  “You must have thought it was real funny, messing with me like that,” I say through my hands. “Ha-ha. Hilarious.”

  “No!” He reaches over and grabs my leg. Even through my jeans his touch burns. “It wasn’t like that. I told you. I hadn’t met anyone else my age with the gene, and it felt … good to talk about it. I thought if you knew I was a guy you’d … I don’t know. Stop talking.”

  “Wait, wait. You have the BRCA mutation?” I stare at him incredulou
sly.

  He looks at me quickly. “Yeah, I have it.”

  I guess I knew guys could have the BRCA mutation, I just never thought about it much.

  “Things kind of snowballed. I didn’t mean to lie to you, but I couldn’t find the right way to tell you who I really was. It was stupid, I know, and I’ve felt bad about it. So many times I wanted to tell you.”

  I am trying not to mentally go through every e-mail and text I ever sent him. Every time I do I think of something else embarrassing. I thought I was talking to a girl, a girl I was beginning to think of as a good friend.

  “It’s still me, okay?” he says softly. “My name’s not Ashley, it’s Jason, but that’s the only thing I lied to you about. The rest of it’s true. It’s me.”

  I sit and stare out the window at the trees and bushes rushing past my window. I know I should be mad, and probably worried. You hear stories about this all the time, a guy pretending to be someone else and luring a young girl to her doom. But the difference is that Jason didn’t ask me to come; in fact he’s risking a lot by helping me. And after all the time we spent talking, I feel like I know him even though we just met.

  Finally, I nod, because I’m too tired to be angry and because I don’t want to lose Ashley, even if she’s a guy.

  “So what did my mom say? Is she okay?” I ask.

  He hesitates. “She’s … very worried. She wanted to know if you had said anything to me about all of this, if you had planned to leave. Apparently the authorities are questioning your instructor as well about letting you fly by yourself so soon after starting lessons, whether you were really ready to solo.”

  “I was ready to solo! Stew didn’t do anything wrong.” My heart sinks as I think about all the trouble I’ve caused.

  “Were you coming to see me?” he asks. “Is that why you flew to Florida?”

  “I don’t know what I was doing,” I say after a moment. “I guess if I was thinking of anything … it was your island. But I was just flying. I wasn’t thinking.” It’s hard to explain that vibrating emptiness in my head, an echo of which is still there. “I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know I can’t go back right now. I can’t.”