The Sky Above Us

by Natalie Lund

“Hey, are you having dreams?” I ask, ignoring the watchers. “About the crash?” Just the thought of the empty blue sky makes me shiver.

  She plays with the stylus on the credit card machine, twirling the cord. “I wake up a lot,” she finally says. “I don’t remember having a dream, but it feels like I’ve just been with him. Like he’s in the room. It makes me so—” She interrupts herself with a headshake.

  I’m always impatient when Janie doesn’t finish thoughts, but I try to be patient this time.

  “Lonely, I guess,” she finishes.

  An older man with wire-framed grandpa glasses appears behind Janie and frowns at me. “Janie, you have a line.”

  “Neil, this is Cass,” she says. “She’s looking for a job.”

  “All full.”

  “Got it. Thanks.” I turn to leave and then stop myself. “Hey, Janie.”

  She looks at me, face so open that it breaks my heart. I’ve been such an asshole to her. “Me too,” I say.

  She looks puzzled for a moment and then nods, understanding—I hope—that we share the aching loneliness of being left behind.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  IZZY

  Eight days after

  I TRY ALL night to break into the encrypted app that OtherPlanes directed Israel to without any luck. I fall asleep around dawn, waking up several hours later to Luna at my door and a text from my dad: Police said we can get Israel’s car. Will you come pick it up with me this afternoon?

  Israel’s car is a boat-wide sedan from the early 2000s that our dad bought to reward him for good grades. When I asked our dad why I didn’t get a car, he said I needed to learn to be more responsible and that Israel would be giving me rides, which was bullshit. Israel had early-bird classes and practice after school, so I always had to walk or take the bus. But now he wants me to drive it?

  Try mami, I text back.

  I log in to Remembered Souls and open Israel’s inbox. My last option is to direct-message OtherPlanes from Israel’s account. If he doesn’t answer, I’m no worse off.

  Hey, so you think souls can move into animals, right? I type.

  “Come on. Come on,” I say to the screen.

  I roll onto my back and stretch a hand out lazily to scratch Luna’s head. The iPad makes a whoosh sound when OtherPlanes messages back.

  Who the hell is this?

  I want to understand how this all works, I write.

  OtherPlanes doesn’t respond. Luna grows interested in a fly on the chair in the corner of my room and makes soft snuffling noises as she tries to catch it. The fly takes off, bouncing angrily from window to window. Luna lets out a frustrated woof. I’m frustrated too, and want to shake the iPad like an Etch A Sketch.

  Hello? I type. Hello? The guy must know Israel is gone, so I try the truth. I’m just trying to find my brother, Israel Castillo, I type.

  No answer.

  OtherPlanes—I learn by scrolling through his posts—thinks of himself as some sort of prophet of transmigration. He believes people like he and Israel can badger their way into new lives upon the end of their current life. It all sounds like bullshit to me, but my brother messaged him for help, so he saw something in this charlatan.

  I stop at a post from over a month ago. OtherPlanes talks about being a pilot and passing through a doorway to become a little girl. A pilot? My hands are shaking, like all that crawling energy under my skin has burst outside. My brother talked privately to OtherPlanes and then started flight lessons. He was looking for this doorway. He had to be.

  I pull up a screenshot I took of Israel’s search history. Bradley Simpson, flight instructor. The school is at a small regional airport almost an hour away. I’ll need a car.

  I try Janie first, but she says she’s at work until four.

  Fine, I’ll help, I text my dad.

  * * *

  • • •

  A few hours later he picks me up with a large thermos of coffee in his cup holder. He looks weary, the skin under his eyes creased, his shoulders low. Before he says a word to me, his phone rings.

  “Aló,” he says over his earpiece. He pauses for a moment. “No,” he says. “Diles que no.” Tell them no.

  He hangs up and backs out of the driveway without looking at me.

  “What was that about?”

  “Some güevón trying to give us the wrong tile.”

  I can’t remember the last time I was alone with my dad—if you don’t count him dragging me to the parking lot during the funeral. We drive in silence before he clears his throat.

  “Bela, can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was your brother happy?”

  The truth? I don’t know. There was so much I didn’t know about Israel. “I think so,” I lie, though I’m not sure why I’m protecting his feelings.

  “We—I—put so much pressure on him about his grades.” My dad’s eyes are glittering, and it softens me.

  “I don’t think it’s ever just one thing,” I say. Look at me: I’m sad because my brother is gone, because he chose to leave, because he felt like he had to, because our parents, Cass, and so many others are in pain. They are distinct yet overlapping sadnesses.

  We pull into the police station lot.

  “I’ll go in to get the keys and find out where it’s parked,” he says, swinging open his door. Before climbing out, he looks over his shoulder at me. “Thanks for coming today. Your mom never answered.”

  “She’s having a hard time,” I say.

  “There are still responsibilities.”

  As her daughter, I don’t disagree. And yet, as her daughter, I want to defend her. I think of Cass after Israel’s funeral, implying that my talk of dolphins was getting in the way of her feeling sadness. “I think grief is one of them,” I say.

  He turns away, half on the seat, his feet on the step outside. “You’re on me now too, huh?” he says. “I have to work.”

  “You don’t, though.”

  He slams the door and heads into the station without another word. When he returns, he drops the keys into my palm and points to the lot behind the station. “It’s back there. Drive it straight home,” he says warningly. “I’ve got to check on the Cooper house.”

  “Sure,” I say. But who would I be if I listened?

  * * *

  • • •

  I’m almost excited to drive Israel’s car until I open the door and am hit with the grassy clean scent of him. Tears spring to my eyes. The driver’s seat is tilted back, almost reclining. It certainly wasn’t my straitlaced brother who did that. I’d blame it on the cops, but it was probably Shane’s doing. He was tall enough to pull that off and had a free pass to drive Israel’s car. I owe him, Israel would say when I pointed this out. He’s been a good friend. It was never clear to me why Israel owed Shane for friendship more than he owed me for sisterhood.

  I adjust the seat and climb in, at first trying to hold my breath and then gulping in the scent of him. That’s the thing I’ve learned about grief—you both want to escape and to remember everything.

  I drive, feeling like my eyelids are windshield wipers in a rainstorm: as soon as I blink tears away, new ones are there, blurring my vision. It takes almost an hour to reach the airfield on the mainland, a field with a long dirt road.

  A red hatchback—Janie’s car?—is parked between two pickups. What the hell?

  I march into the open hangar, but the sight of two white planes—similar to my brother’s that plunged into the ocean—socks me in the stomach. I want to lie beneath one and imagine that it’s the morning on the beach, except the plane will climb high and make a wide arc, returning right to this spot.

  I almost forget why I’m here, but I spot Janie, still in her work uniform and seated on a folding chair near the back of the hangar, playing with the tail of
her braid. Cass, with her glorious hair tied back, is next to her. The instructor I found online is in front of a whiteboard on wheels.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I ask.

  The three turn, and the man flinches like he recognizes me. Cass looks guilty. Only Janie seems glad to see me.

  “We’re learning to fly,” she says.

  “Oh good,” I say. “There are some things I need to learn too.”

  SECURE MESSAGE THREAD

  IsC: What happened to the existing soul? The one that was inside Millicent’s body before you went through the doorway and took over?

  OtherPlanes: I don’t know. I think it transmigrated the traditional way, waiting in the liminal space before awakening at another’s birth.

  IsC: So did it hurt?

  OtherPlanes: I don’t think so. But like I said before, it wasn’t easy to jump into someone fully formed. It might be easier to jump into an animal because their brains are wired more simply. I think, as long as the soul listens to the animal’s instinct, the body will live on normally.

  IsC: What happens with your last body? The one you leave at the doorway? Does another soul take over?

  OtherPlanes: No. Of course not.

  IsC: So what happens then?

  OtherPlanes: It dies.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  SHANE

  Eight days before

  THEY RAN THROUGH the checklist for Shane’s first takeoff. Brad beside Shane, his hat off to accommodate the large headset. Shane wished he’d put the hat back on, so he didn’t have to see those flat blue eyes. Shane’s stomach felt queasy, but he’d run through simulation after simulation until it was easy to keep a fake plane in the air. Brad would be able to take over the controls if anything went wrong.

  At Brad’s instruction, Shane took a deep breath and pushed the throttle all the way in. They accelerated down the runway, and it felt like driving a car fast down country roads. Shane checked the RPMs, watching the needle on the airspeed indicator climb. He began to lift the nose until the wheels were just barely skimming the ground. Then, he felt it: the takeoff, as much inside of him as beneath. They were in the air and there was nothing but open sky above them. The simulation couldn’t give you this feeling. It was the lightest he’d been since Cass.

  “Smooth takeoff.” Brad’s voice was calm in his ear. Israel and Nate—who they’d had to lift into the plane—were on the headset too, but with the strict instructions to remain silent until they were done with the ascent.

  Shane continued to climb until Brad told him to level off. He realized he was white-knuckling the yoke, but he relaxed his fingers and allowed himself to look around.

  While he’d been focused on the takeoff, the world had spilled out beneath them: a mottled red-gold-green blanket dotted with longhorns and scrub trees. The Gulf glittered in front of him, their island a thin curve off the coast like a fingernail clipping.

  The plane seemed to gobble up distance, and the next thing Shane knew, they were over the line of cars waiting for the ferry to another island. Then the green dome of the botanical gardens on the bay side of their island, the neatly parked boats at the marina, and the downtown, crawling with ant-sized people.

  “That’s my house!” Nate called over the mic. Shane craned his neck and saw Nate’s yellow cube in a line of colorful chiclets.

  “There’s mine,” said Israel. His was a crown on the top of a cul-de-sac.

  Shane found his own by the shape of the pool, which he and Meg jokingly called “the amoeba.” He tried to find Cass’s, too, but all the roofs in her condo complex looked the same. It was easier to spot the houses at Seabreeze Cove that he and Cass had christened their own. He could confront them more easily from above—imagine them as toys that he could flick into the ocean if he wanted.

  Adventure Pier’s Ferris wheel spun lazily beneath them. Shane remembered how many times the height of the ride had thrilled him, but now that feeling shrank in comparison.

  The beach, a narrow white stripe, stretched from tip to tip on the ocean side of their island. It reminded Shane of a layer of skin—so thin and fragile that it doesn’t seem capable of protecting you from much.

  They were over the Gulf in minutes, the waves cresting in white slivers. The water was so much bluer than it appeared from land and Shane wished, suddenly, that Cass could see it like this—blue on blue as far as the eye could see.

  “Dolphins,” Nate said into the headset. Shane looked out the side window. There was a group of nearly twenty small shadows darting beneath the water. They looked like tadpoles.

  “They’re great problem-solvers and incredible hunters,” Brad said. Shane had practically forgotten he was there. “Sometimes I think it would be a better life. Everything would be so immediate: breathing, eating, survival.”

  Shane didn’t disagree. That’s what he liked about flying so far: everything was simplified to a drone, to blue, to a flat map beneath him. He could relax into it, spend his days carting passengers from island to island.

  “All right, pull all the way back,” Brad said.

  “All the way?”

  “Yes.”

  Shane did, until the alarm began to sound—a high whine like a mosquito in his ear. Shane felt them tilt toward the left wing, and the nose of the plane tipped down. The motion made his stomach skip, like they were on a roller coaster. Before him, he saw nothing but blue, reminding him of when, in the simulator, he couldn’t tell what was up or down.

  “Now, it’s counterintuitive, but you can’t pull up to recover from a stall. You have to point the nose down.”

  Shane froze. It felt like they were picking up velocity; the seat belt was cutting into his skin. All Shane could think about was Cass laughing, how she’d tilt her head back, nostrils flaring, eyes downcast so her eyelids almost closed. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

  Shane watched the altitude indicator. Were they leveling out? Brad was doing it, the yoke moving under Shane’s hands.

  “It’s hard to override instinct,” Brad said. “Ready to try again?”

  Shane nodded, even though his hands were shaking. He felt like he was in a tunnel with Brad’s voice, eerily calm, at the other end. He tried to focus on the controls, the instruments, the horizon. This time, when the alarm sounded, he pointed the nose down. The plane leveled just as it had for Brad.

  When it was time to return to the airfield, Shane’s heart had settled and his breathing was nearly even. He began to descend and reduce the power as instructed. They sank lower over the gray strip of the runway.

  “Pull up some,” Brad said when they were close. Shane pushed the throttle in and lifted the aircraft’s nose, maintaining the airspeed. They crossed the threshold of the runway.

  “Now put her down,” Brad said. Shane pulled the throttle all the way out and kept the nose from dropping. “Hold steady.”

  The wheels bounced. Nate’s and Israel’s whoops broke Shane from his tunnel. Shane braked, using the pedals now.

  “Great,” Brad said. When they came to a stop, Shane pulled off the headset and twisted in his seat.

  “I flew,” Shane said to Nate and Israel, and even though he’d panicked mid-stall, now all he could do was laugh.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  NATE

  Six days before

  “WHY DON’T YOU turn toward the coast and head back to the airfield?” Brad said.

  Nate relaxed his grip on the yoke and made the turn. It was almost over. Finally. He’d been trying to listen to Brad the whole lesson, but it had been hard to concentrate. His thoughts kept flapping like wings inside his head, each beat cutting him.

  I’m worthless.

  I deserve pain.

  He dug his nails into his palm to feel their bite, but it wasn’t enough to quiet his mind. He was worthless—as small as the surfers that carved across
the waves beneath them.

  He hadn’t wanted to learn to fly—not like Israel and Shane—but they’d convinced him to try.

  “You might like it,” Shane had said.

  “You might see the doorway,” Israel had added.

  He wouldn’t make this mistake again. The sooner Nate was on the ground, the sooner he could go home and make slow painful laps around his living room until his brain shut up or he collapsed, whichever came first.

  Nate listened to the engine, trying to block out his inner voice with its drone. He’d made it up here somehow. He could get back down.

  He focused on the palm trees that looked like green starfish from above, the long roofs of rental party houses, the boats bobbing like ducks in the marina. There were smokestacks in the distance, beside a field of white circular structures used for storing chemicals. One of the smokestacks had a flame at the top like a lit candle.

  They flew over neat suburban grids and the brown sweep of ranchland. Finally Nate spotted the runway and lined up their approach as instructed. They began to descend.

  “Coming in a bit hot,” Brad said. “Pull up.”

  Pull up—that meant pull back on the yoke, right? Nate knew the answer, but he felt like he couldn’t retrieve the information through the steady wingbeat of his thoughts.

  I’m worthless.

  I deserve pain.

  I’m worthless.

  I deserve pain.

  The runway seemed endless, a gray stripe stretching into some infinity. All around it were empty, flat fields. Nothing, really, for miles. They might as well be landing on the moon.

  Except there was something in front of Nate—an opening just above the runway. It looked like someone had drawn back a curtain of sky. The darkness beyond it was as flat as the landscape—the most nothing of things Nate had ever seen.

  The wings in his head went still, the inner voice silent. This was the kind of place where peace would be entire, where quiet would feel like velvet.