My dad leaned down and asked quietly, “Want me to get rid of them?” I nodded, and he said, “Sorry, kids, she has to lie down. Julia, take that cake, and all of you have a celebration someplace else. She’ll let you know when she’s ready for company.”
“Thanks for coming,” I called to them, waving apologetically as my dad wheeled me through the den. He helped me into the big hospital bed that nearly filled my bedroom and put the side up. “I’m not going to fall out,” I told him.
“Doctor’s orders.” He kissed my forehead and smoothed the hair off my face. “Get some rest. You let me know when you need me.”
“ ’Kay,” I said. I closed my eyes and heard him leave. I was exhausted, but I wasn’t sleepy. I felt like I’d slept enough in the hospital to last me the rest of my life.
Voices were murmuring somewhere not far off. I called, “Dad?”
He came in. “Did we wake you?”
I shook my head. “Who are you talking to? One of the doctors?”
He glanced out the door. “Denny. He drove in from Denver last night to pack up his apartment, and he wants to see you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying not to show that my heart was racing. “He can come in.”
My dad went out again and then Denny was there. He couldn’t hide his shock at my beat-up appearance any better than the others could.
I found the bed controls—I’d become an expert—and pushed the button that made me sit up. Denny picked up my good hand and sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“I won’t break,” I assured him.
“Promise?” His voice was husky.
“Denny, I—” I began, but he stopped me.
“It’s okay. I know you’re sorry, and I know you’ll be okay. I can’t stay long—I shouldn’t have come at all, but I just had to see you to make sure you were really in one piece.”
“Are you moving to a different apartment? My dad said you were packing up your—”
“I’m going back to Denver.”
“You’re what?” I sat up straighter and then collapsed back on the pillow. I took a breath and tried to sound calm as I asked, “Why? It’s not because of me, is it?”
He shook his head. “I’ve decided to stay home for a while. Frederick’s brother is having a really hard time and his mom thinks I can help. Even if I can’t, I’m not really in the right frame of mind to start college yet. I’ve deferred Clemens until January.”
Outside the door my dad cleared his throat. Denny stood. “Okay if I call once in a while?” He gestured at my right arm, still immobilized in its cast. “Doesn’t look like you can text too well.”
I reached up my good hand and touched his cheek. His golden eyes suddenly had tears in them. “Call whenever you like,” I whispered just before he pressed a soft kiss on my lips. And then he was gone.
* * *
A month later, Julia and I stared up at the steps leading to the front door of the high school. I swear I could feel my dad watching us, just out of sight.
“Wow,” Julia said finally. “I never realized how many stairs there were.”
“Me neither.” It wasn’t that long a staircase, really, just three sets of four steps each, with a handicapped ramp off to the right. But I refused to start junior year in a wheelchair—or worse, using one of those old-lady walkers with tennis balls on the ends of its legs. Or even with my dad helping me. I’d thought I’d be out of the cast by the first day of school, but they’d had to rebreak my leg and set it again, and I was still getting used to crutches.
I handed one of them to Julia and took hold of the banister with my left hand. I swung the crutch around and hoisted myself up. The first-day crowd had thinned, since final bell was about to ring. Both Julia and I had permission to arrive late today as I figured out how to do this. My dad had told the principal that it would be easier for me to navigate the stairs without the usual throng, and that was true, but I also wanted to be late enough to make sure that I wouldn’t run into Mr.-Perfect-Attendance-Never-Even-Had-A-Tardy Theo.
First set of steps done.
I swung the crutch again. I got tired easily after spending the second half of the summer propped up on the couch with a book when I wasn’t at physical therapy, so I went more slowly up the second bunch of steps. I was glad when my phone chirped and gave me an excuse to stop.
“Better turn that off before you get inside,” Julia reminded me.
I couldn’t help smiling as I read the text. Julia asked me a question with her eyes.
“Denny,” I said.
“Ah.”
She was obviously about to burst with curiosity, so I took pity on her. “He got a job at the Denver Zoo.”
“Doing what?”
“Doesn’t know yet. He hopes it’s not in the monkey house.”
I was about to tackle the second set of steps when Julia said under her breath, “Scumbag alert.”
I looked up and saw Theo standing at the top of the stairs. Julia moved aside and pretended to be interested in something on her phone as he came down to me. I would be friendly, I had resolved earlier—friendly but impersonal.
“Hey.” He sounded shy.
“Hey.” I wasn’t about to help him out.
He shifted from one foot to the other and squinted into the sun. He’d gotten his hair cut short, and with his dark chin stubble, he looked good. I glanced at the next set of steps, wondering if I’d rested long enough to tackle them, and realized that I didn’t care how good Theo looked. It was like seeing a picture of a guy in a magazine, thinking, “Hot,” and turning the page.
“Need any help?”
“No, thanks. Julia’s got it. And we’re about to be late. Mr. Norris only gave me fifteen extra minutes.” He didn’t move, and I lifted my crutch so I could get to the bottom step of the final set of stairs. “ ’Scuse me,” I said, but he stayed put.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then a bit louder, “I didn’t know what you were planning. I would have stopped you.” I clamped my teeth shut on my retort. “That girl—Ali—she doesn’t mean anything to me. It was just a summer thing. If I’d known it was going to upset you so much that you’d jump out of a plane to get back at me, I’d never—”
“What?” Breaking my resolve to stay cool and distant, I looked up at him. The sight of his puppy-dog eyes suddenly infuriated me. “You think I jumped to get back at you?”
“I know you went out with that guy to make me jealous,” he went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “That’s why you took him to Manuelito’s, so I’d be sure to hear about it. And I didn’t mean for you to see the picture of me and Ali rock climbing. I can’t believe you’d go all the way to making a jump, though.”
“And you thought all of that was because of you?” I burst out. “I took Denny to Manuelito’s to make you jealous, and I jumped out of an airplane to get back at you? Okay, maybe what you told me made me realize some things about myself, about how I’ve been letting you and my dad make decisions for me, but that’s all. None of this has anything to do with you. It has to do with me, just with me! Do you think you’re so—”
Julia moved closer, all pretense of checking her phone forgotten. “Clancy.” She put a hand on my arm.
I shook it off. “When I need someone to help me, I’ll ask for it, like I asked Julia today. But we’re going to be late now, so back off.”
Tears streamed down my face as I swung myself up the steps, fueled by adrenaline. Julia held the door open and together we made our way down the hall to our first-period class. As we slid into our seats—well, she slid, I kind of sideways-hopped—Señora Richardson said, “Bienvenidas, Julia y Clancy,” and we answered, “Buenos días.”
It was like none of it had happened.
Here we were back in Señora Richardson’s classroom, with the map of Latin America on one wall and Spain on another, just like last year. The smell of the whiteboard markers was the same, the sound of Señora Richardson’s voice was the same, we were
even sitting in the same seats we’d had sophomore year. When I didn’t think about my scars and my missing spleen and the big cast on my leg, the summer was already a memory.
But it wasn’t all the same. My dad and I were feeling out our new relationship. Theo and I were history. I had nearly killed myself, and I had met a boy I really liked who didn’t try to protect me from the big, bad world.
I realized that everyone was looking at me. “What?” I hastily corrected it to “¿Qué?”
“Everyone has to say what they did this summer,” Julia stage-whispered.
My heart was still pounding from my encounter with Theo, and the tears must have still been visible on my cheeks, but a giggle rose in my chest at the thought of trying to explain my summer, let alone in Spanish, and then Julia sputtered, and before I knew it we were both laughing like lunatics.
I didn’t know whether I’d see Denny when he came back. I hoped so, but I had some work to do if I wanted him to trust me again. I also didn’t know if my dad would ever learn to let go, really let go, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to see Theo in the school halls without wanting to scream at him.
What I did know was that from now on I’d be in charge of my own life—the good parts and the bad parts—and if things didn’t work out the way I planned, I’d pull my own reserve and land on my own two feet. One foot and one cast, actually. That thought struck me as funny, for some reason, and I snorted a laugh again.
“Clancy?” Señora Richardson sounded worried, and I managed to pull myself together.
“Carys,” I said on impulse. “Me llamo Carys.”
“Carys.” She looked puzzled but nodded, and I tried to put together a few verbs and nouns to say that over the summer I had worked for my dad and had had an accident, but that I was okay. She corrected my mistakes and moved on to the next person, and junior year officially started.
“Almost there!” Norton’s voice was barely audible over the roar of the engine that blasted through the Cessna’s open door. It didn’t matter if I heard him, though; Norton knew that I was aware of our altitude. I think he just wanted to treat me like any other first-jump student.
I had been eighteen for three days and hadn’t made a jump yet. I’d had a history final on my actual birthday, which was a Friday, and then it had poured all day on Saturday. Sunday morning it was still drizzling, but late in the afternoon the clouds had thinned, and my dad said it was okay to go for it. Norton already had the engine revving when I came running out of the hangar, all rigged up, so that we could get to altitude before the sun set, which would force us to land before I could get out.
It was just like an observer ride, except that I was wearing not one but two parachutes—the main and the reserve. I was squashed into the back with Jonathan—aka “the Geezer with the big gray eighties mustache,” the one who had put my mom out on her first jump. Norton had taken us up fast, and now we were turning onto jump run.
The big difference between this and an observer ride was that the next time the engine cut, it would be me who was getting out, not some other jumper. Aside from Norton, no one else was in the plane but Jonathan, and he was going to stay in and observe me from inside. I’d be alone in the sky, with no videographer, no AFF instructor—just me. I couldn’t tell if the massive butterflies pounding my stomach meant I was afraid or excited or what. I just knew that if I didn’t get out soon, I’d fizzle over.
My dad was on the ground, along with most of Skydive Knoxton’s regulars, as well as Julia and Cory. Cory was Julia’s new boyfriend, which was weird for me, but a huge improvement over Justin. Angie had come home from her daughter’s house for good almost a year before and now she was down there with Patsy and the others, all of them in their SkyWitches costumes. Denny was trying to get out of his shift in the lab so he could be there, but since the experiment was about to wrap up, he didn’t know if his professor would let him. One of my new friends from the community college where I was doing the prerequisites for my archaeology major was there too, which was nice.
Jonathan hooked the static line to the ripcord on my back and patted me on the shoulder to tell me to scoot to the door. The engine cut, and before Jonathan had a chance to say, “Climb out,” I was on my feet—I had to crouch, because the roof was so low—and stood, hunched over, in the open door. I pulled the goggles down over my eyes and ran over the procedure in my mind. When there’s a wheel right under the door, you can’t just bomb out or you’ll hit it. You have to remind the pilot to lock the wheel so it won’t spin, climb out onto it, hold on to the wing strut, kick your feet up, and let go.
I leaned in close to Norton and said, “Lock the wheel,” because I had to, not because I thought he’d forget. He gave me a thumbs-up and blew me a kiss.
The cold, damp wind slammed into me as I leaned out the door. A glimpse of a cherry-red car pulling into the lot next to the hangar almost made me smile and calmed the butterflies a bit.
The sleeves of my jumpsuit fluttered madly, as did a strand of hair that had come untucked. It whipped my face and stung, but I didn’t shove it back under my helmet. If I took too long getting out, I’d have to wait in the doorway while we made another circle so that I’d exit at the right spot, and I didn’t know if I could stand another circle. I wanted out now.
I wrapped my hands around the wing strut that ran diagonally upward from the fuselage to the wing and pulled myself out, stepping on the wheel first with my right foot and then with my left. I slid my hands as far up the strut as they would reach and looked back in the door of the plane, fighting the wind that was trying to knock me off, seeing the static line stretch back through the door. Like a giant umbilical cord, I had the time to think before Jonathan hollered, “Go!” The wind whipped most of the word back into the plane, and I kicked up my feet and arched my back and let go.
I flew.
Acknowledgments
I started Freefall Summer during the 2012 National Novel Writing Month (www.NaNoWriMo.org) challenge, at the end of which a messy, bloated version of this story (then called The Icarus Complex) emerged.
Grateful thanks to my editor, Monica Perez, who saw the potential in the story and helped mold it into what it is now. As always, deep thanks to my agent, Lara Perkins, whose advice and support have been invaluable, and who has always been Clancy’s biggest cheerleader.
Much gratitude to the late Mark Curto, who read and commented on the manuscript in an early stage. Many thanks to Jan Works, who offered important suggestions for changes to both the writing and the details of skydiving, and to Pat Works, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the sport was very helpful.
My gratitude to Dr. Sheila McMorrow-Jones (Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for her careful reading of the medical portions of this book. Any errors that slipped in after her reading are, of course, my own responsibility.
Many thanks to Bob Hawkins, who more or less dared me to take a first-jump course (which he taught) and who then put me out on my first jump and many subsequent jumps, including my last freefall, when I landed in the middle of the Cribari vineyard (thanks a lot for that spot, Hawk!). Thanks to Jonathan Manheim, who introduced me to skydiving and who graciously allowed me to use his Para-Commander after I graduated from a round canopy.
One day when I was having trouble packing that Para-Commander (the spring-loaded pilot chute kept popping out and smacking me in the face), a six-foot-seven-inch man with a pronounced southern accent offered to help. I accepted gratefully. Not the usual way to meet the love of your life, but thirty-something years and two children later, I’m happy to claim it. Thank you for helping me save my own life those many years ago, and for every year since then, Greg.
-webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Freefall Summer Page 20
