Freefall Summer

by Tracy Barrett

  “What are you doing?” I asked. I swirled my soda.

  “Strip Scrabble,” Maggie said.

  “Want to play?” Brian asked.

  “Quit stalling,” Maggie said to him. “Two items of clothing. And your watch doesn’t count. Or your glasses,” she added as he reached for his face.

  “Since when?”

  “Since forever.” She tapped a tile on the card table.

  “Clancy, you’re an impartial judge,” Brian appealed to me. “What do you say?”

  “Remove thy garments,” I said darkly. So off came his shirt and one shoe.

  “Care to join us?” he asked.

  “I doff my raiment for no one,” I said.

  “Oh, come on,” Maggie said. I had been in junior English with her that year, when I was a sophomore. “You know more words than the rest of us put together.”

  I hesitated another moment, then sat down and reached into the bag and pulled out seven tiles. Theo would have said something about how stupid the game was, but Theo wasn’t there. My dad wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure whether I was playing because I wanted to or because my dad and Theo would hate it. I told myself I didn’t care.

  Anyway, Maggie was right about my vocabulary, and I would probably end up with all my clothes still on.

  The rules of Strip Scrabble, which seemed to change at every round, were pretty complicated, but it turned out to be fun in a nerdy kind of way. Maggie was hilarious and Brian was pretty bad at Scrabble. Pretty soon he was down to his boxers, and a small crowd had gathered. There were hoots of “Take it off!” and someone hummed “The Stripper.”

  “Stop it!” Nicole shout-whispered, glaring at her parents’ closed door. Evidently there were a few things that would alert them.

  It was my turn. I had lost both shoes and a sock but was still decent. I studied my tiles and then added an s to “herd” to spell out “sherd.”

  Silence.

  “There’s no such word,” a girl said.

  “She’s just faking you out, man,” said someone else.

  Brian studied my face. I tried to act like I was faking but hoping he’d believe me.

  “Why wouldn’t she just spell ‘herds,’ then? She must know ‘sherd’ is real or she wouldn’t risk a challenge.”

  I tapped my finger on the letter a, one square past the end of “sherd,” which would have prevented me from putting anything there.

  “Oh.”

  “So challenge her!” Brian said.

  Maggie stretched. “Not me, dude. I don’t care if it’s a real word—I can afford to take something off.” She held up a foot and wiggled her toes in her sandals. “You can’t.”

  He chewed on his lip. Finally, he said, “I challenge you.” He typed a few letters on the iPad on the table. When he said, “Oh crap,” everyone shrieked with laughter.

  “So what does it mean?” somebody asked.

  “ ‘Sherd,’ ” Brian read. “ ‘Variant of shard. A fragment, usually of pottery.’ ”

  “Remove thy garment posthaste,” I said.

  A girl chanted, “Take it off, take it off, take it off,” until Nicole’s mom came out of her room. She acted like she was getting some popcorn, but it was enough to end the game. Brian’s look of relief made everyone crack up again. I laughed so hard I felt like I was going to pass out.

  I went back downstairs as other people sat down at the Scrabble board and Brian pulled his clothes back on. In the den, Amity, a girl who’d been in my Spanish class, waved me over from the couch, where she was sitting with a cup that I knew probably held beer. Amity was stunning—not cute and round and sexy like Julia, but tall and lean, with straight black hair, amazing green eyes, and features that looked like they were carved from marble. “Protect me,” she muttered behind her hand as I sat down.

  “From what?”

  She darted her eyes to the corner, where a bunch of guys stood laughing in the way that means they know you’re looking at them. “Which one?” I asked, and she gave me a look. “Oh, I see. All of them.”

  She groaned and leaned back on the sofa cushions. Her long legs looked even longer in her skintight jeans and high-heeled suede boots. Anyone else would have been uncomfortably hot in the Missouri June, but Amity didn’t have a drop of sweat on her. “My mom almost didn’t let me come,” she confided. “She said all teenage boys are only after one thing, and she didn’t trust them around me.” She laughed, a surprisingly throaty laugh. “She should know!” Everyone knew that her mom was just sixteen years older than she was and looked like she was Amity’s big sister. The boys went glassy-eyed at the sight of her whenever she came to our school.

  “So what changed her mind?” I asked Amity. “Your mom, I mean, about you coming to the party?”

  “You did.”

  “Me?”

  “I told her you’d be here and she said, ‘That’s okay, then.’ ”

  “So I’m like a chaperone?”

  I tried not to sound pissy, but Amity said, “Oh no, it’s not like that at all. Just that you’re, you know, you don’t…” She trailed off.

  Then something changed. I couldn’t quite define it; it was like when you stare at one of those drawings that look like a candlestick, and all of a sudden you see that it’s also two profiles facing each other. What changed was how I saw myself, my life, Theo, my dad, and it was so obvious that I didn’t think I could ever see it the other way again, like when the image flips back and forth between the candlestick and the profiles. Something wasn’t the way it appeared.

  I was still thinking of myself the way my dad saw me—unable to make quick decisions, fragile—but my friends thought of me as solid, sensible, kind of prudish. Which one was I? The two faces or the candlestick? Or neither one?

  I was tired of the way people made up their minds about me. And I was also tired of being too scared of making my dad go through another loss to even take a little risk. It was getting ridiculous. I couldn’t play it safe my whole life, or even just until I went off to college.

  Only, I didn’t know how to take risks. I wasn’t stupid—I wasn’t about to play Russian roulette or shoot up drugs or steal a car. Still, I felt like I was going to suffocate if I didn’t do something, anything, that nobody expected of me. But what?

  Amity looked uncomfortable, and I realized that I was staring at her. The party feeling had fled, and I stood up. “I’ve got to go. Have to get up early in the morning.” I couldn’t stay at the party if I was there as some kind of chaperone. Plus, I wanted to get back to the quiet of my room so I could think.

  “But you just got here,” Amity said, and I told her I had only wanted to stop by and say hi to some people, and I’d already been there longer than I’d planned.

  I called my dad and said I didn’t feel well, and then went outside. He pulled up a few minutes later. He frowned at the lights and the noise and the number of people spilling out onto the sidewalk. “You okay?” he asked as I climbed in.

  “Bellyache.” If he assumed I was talking about cramps, he’d never ask a follow-up question, and sure enough, he didn’t say anything. Or maybe he thought I had left because the party was too wild, and he didn’t want to spook me out of this proper behavior by praising me for it.

  As we got out of the car at home, I said, “Let’s spend tomorrow night at the DZ, okay? There’s nothing going on here and Theo’s gone, and I can get more studying done where there aren’t distractions.”

  “You sure?” He sounded tentative but pleased.

  I nodded.

  “You don’t want to go out with Julia tomorrow night?”

  I shook my head. “She’ll be doing something with Justin. It’s their first-date anniversary.”

  “Those two are too serious,” he said, as I knew he would.

  “So you want to spend tomorrow night at the DZ?” I repeated.

  “Sure. I’ll call Cynthia and ask her to air out the trailer.”

  When we got home, I closed my bedroom door beh
ind me and exhaled a long breath. As I got ready for bed, I tried to put into words the feeling of recognition I’d had when Amity had said that about me being…what? She hadn’t finished her sentence, but my mind supplied all sorts of adjectives. Just that you’re reliable. Just that you’re trustworthy. You’re sensible, mature, responsible, levelheaded. “Why didn’t my parents name me Prudence and get it over with?” I asked out loud.

  Only, how could I know if I really was all those things, or if the only reason I behaved reliably, sensibly, maturely, responsibly, prudently was because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t? Which was the real picture—the candlestick or the profiles? And who was I protecting—my dad or myself?

  On Saturday we got to the DZ at dawn, long before there was any work for me to do. I stumbled into the lounge and fell asleep on the brown couch that had replaced the gold-and-green one I had been napping on that day ten years ago.

  Ripstop jumped on top of me and curled up on my hip, which was rare—he wasn’t usually a cuddler. I half woke when a group came into the office and filled out their forms and made the usual nervous jokes about life-insurance policies and wills, loud enough that I could hear them through the closed door. When Cynthia called the first student load, I woke up for real and sat up, disturbing Rippy, who jumped down and stood at the door, his tail waving. I let him out and followed him into the office.

  Cynthia looked up. “Ready for another exciting day at the drop zone?”

  I shrugged. Packing rigs got boring, but at least here I wouldn’t be reminded of Theo. He had come out to the DZ only once. Good weather for skydiving is the same as good weather for rock climbing, but one time when he’d hurt his shoulder he came to Knoxton with me. He was bored the whole time. Noel entertained himself by telling Theo one shoulda-died story after another—I suspected that not all of them were true—and then some stories about a DZ in the desert where you could take a crater tour.

  “Why are there craters at a drop zone?” Theo had asked, which was a mistake.

  “Each one was made by a jumper who didn’t pull.” Noel laughed when comprehension dawned on Theo’s face.

  “I don’t think that’s funny,” Theo had said stiffly. “And I don’t think you should tell those stories in front of Clancy.”

  Noel looked at me. “You okay with crater stories, Clancy?”

  He knew I was. Skydivers are fine with reminders of what skydiving’s about. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t last long at the DZ, because one of the ways jumpers get rid of tension is by sometimes joking about death and sometimes acting like the possibility of it doesn’t exist. One of the regular jumpers at Knoxton always used the canopy that his brother had been flying when he went in. Another one had a paper address book so that when someone he knew died, he could stamp over their name with a skull and crossbones. Everyone had different ways to cope.

  I flaked the canopy and smoothed it out. “Doesn’t bother me. If it did, I’d tell you to shut up.” Crater stories and shoulda-died stories were fine with me, as long as nobody talked about my mom’s accident or about main-reserve entanglements. Everyone at our DZ knew better than to do that.

  “Attagirl.” Noel gave me a big smacking kiss on the lips and walked out, laughing again.

  Theo glared after him. “Is that the gay one or the straight one?”

  “The gay one,” I had said, lying to keep the peace. When we got home Theo told me he hated the DZ and that he thought jumpers were buffoons (“Except for your dad, of course, and Cynthia seems nice”) and that he’d never go back. When Theo says “never” he means “never,” and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him at the DZ again. I suspected that there was another reason too—this was a place where nobody except my dad treated me like a fragile little thing, and he would look silly if he tried to be my protector there.

  I cranked up my iPod and was setting up the packing table when the guys who had done the seventieth-birthday jump the week before came in. Two of them wore old-style jumpsuits made of heavy cloth, like canvas, in different eighties colors. One was lime green, I swear, and the other was neon orange and black. The loose legs flapped as the guys walked. The other two looked more normal in their jeans and T-shirts. I must have had a grin on my face because the guy wearing lime green said, “What’s so funny?” but in a joking way, like he knew how ridiculous they looked.

  “Just admiring the ways of the ancestors,” I answered.

  “You would be wise to learn from those who have gone before, Grasshopper,” said a guy with a big gray mustache, also straight out of the eighties. He’d been staring at me earlier, and he smiled now.

  “Does your team have a name?” I asked.

  “We’re not really a team,” said the guy in the green jumpsuit.

  “Why?” asked the one with the mustache. “Have a suggestion?”

  I thought for a moment. I said, “The Geezers?” They laughed, and the first guy said he’d ask his wife to sew a big G on his pack.

  A skinny man from their group had spread out his rig on the floor and was staring at it. “Remember how to do it?” I asked. I stopped myself right before finishing with “Grandpa.” I realized that he might not find that funny.

  He looked up. “You a rigger?”

  So someone else thought I looked eighteen.

  “Packer. But I can get my dad, or see if one of the other riggers is around if you need some help,” I offered.

  “Nope.” He started to squat, evidently thought better of it, and plopped down on the concrete floor with a grunt. “I’ll just…” I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He was sloppy, but his pack job was fine.

  “Hey!” Denny was in the doorway, already rigged up. Even with the sun at his back, his eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “Hey, Denny. Third jump today?”

  He nodded. “Just Louisa is going out with me this time.”

  “Cool.” I nodded at the Geezers, who were talking about the good old days again. “You on their load?”

  “I think so. Cynthia said it wouldn’t be long before she called it. Why don’t you come up with us? Would your dad let you?”

  “Go for an observer ride? Sure.”

  “He doesn’t worry about you when you go along for the ride?”

  I shook my head. “Norton’s been flying me around since I was a baby, and my dad knows I’m safer in an aircraft with him than in a car with most people. Skydivers don’t think of small planes as anything particularly dangerous.”

  Denny looked like he didn’t believe me.

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it. My dad’s all about the odds. Norton flew in combat, so he can obviously handle Missouri.”

  “So how about it? Want to come along?”

  I hadn’t gone up in a long time, and I realized that I had missed looking out the open door at the clouds and the sky. I could use a break anyway, and the Geezers would pack their own rigs, so the only one I’d have to pack when we landed would be Denny’s. And it was such a beautiful day. “Let me ask.”

  Cynthia said the second group of students hadn’t arrived yet, so even with the Geezers and Denny’s videographer, there’d be room for me.

  “Denny’s getting this jump filmed too?” I was surprised; the AFF series already cost more than a thousand dollars and each video would be over a hundred. His parents must really have a lot of money.

  “He wants a videographer on each jump,” she said. Nice work for whoever was filming it. So in the hangar I put on a rig I had packed. I tightened the straps until they were good and secure.

  Denny gave me a quizzical look when I came out. “Why are you wearing a parachute? Are you going to jump?”

  “Anyone riding in a plane with an open door has to wear a rig, even the pilot. I would wear one anyway, even if it wasn’t a rule.”

  “So what would you do if you had to jump? Do you know how to land and everything?”

  “Kind of.” When I was little I’d practiced PLFs by jumping off the packing ta
ble. I’d gotten so bruised that a whuffo almost called Child Protective Services, until he saw me doing it himself. I shrugged the pack into a more comfortable position. “If I freak out and don’t open on my own, there’s an automatic activation device. Plus, the canopy’s a reserve, which opens really fast. I might land wrong and break my ankle or something, but that’s better than going down with the plane if something bad happens, or falling out the door.”

  “Makes sense.” He jiggled up and down on his toes, and I wondered if he was more nervous or excited.

  Since the Geezers were going out first, they were waiting for us to get in the back of the Caravan so they wouldn’t have to climb over us to get out. It was a perfect day, almost dead still and with just a few clouds.

  Even after my haircut, the wind from the turning propeller blew my hair across my face as I followed Denny up the steps into the plane. I pulled my hair back and tucked as much of it into the neck of my shirt as I could after I settled on the bench next to Denny.

  “Oh, don’t do that!” The Geezer with the big gray eighties mustache had climbed in and sat down on my other side. “You look just like Jenna with your hair down.”

  “You knew my mom?” I finally squeaked. So that was why he’d been staring at me earlier.

  “Put her out on her first jump. Static line. That was in California. She wasn’t much older than you, and you look a lot like her. She was shorter, though.”

  I already knew I was taller than my mom; everyone said I got my height from my dad. I wished I could ask the Geezer about her, but it was so noisy with the door open that we had to shout, and it felt weird to ask questions about her at the top of my lungs. So I smiled at him, thinking that would have to be the end of it, at least for now, but he leaned in and looked me in the eyes.

  “She was one in a million, your mother.” He spoke just loud enough for me to hear him. “She looked like a model but could cuss as good as any jumper. She was crazy brave too. Her first jump off static line was out the back of a Skyvan—you know what that is?” I did, but I shook my head so he’d keep talking. “It’s a cargo plane that has a huge open back. When I told her to go, she took off running and hollering, and leaped out like one of those cliff divers. She was only eighteen. Every man on the DZ was in love with her.”