by Tracy Clark
But there is one scream that’s louder than my body.
No! You can’t have him!
A sharp pain strikes my head, and Dom pulls away from me at the same time, startled. His face is flushed, but a stricken look pinches his brows together, leaves his beautiful mouth open in astonishment.
“You hit me?”
“What? No . . .” I swallow but can’t push the truth under the current. It bobs to the surface. “She did.”
You will not win! she cries. You don’t deserve this. You cannot love him. You cannot love him.
I cover my ears. “I can’t love you. I can’t love you.”
Dom shoves off me and stands. Black clouds halo his head as he looks down on me, lying on a blanket of nylon with soft rain dropping on my exposed skin. He holds his hands up in supplication. “Who’s the chickenshit now, Ryan?”
No response comes from me, because if I open my mouth, her words will pour out again.
“You always said your dad was afraid to love, but it’s you! You’re afraid!” He’s crying openly as he gazes at the desert, then back down at me. The agony in his eyes stabs at the ice inside me. How can I comfort him when I’m the reason he’s in such pain? I’m the reason for Joe’s pain, for my parents’ pain and fear, and I’m the reason this poet and artist, this angel of a guy with his heart in his eyes, is ripping that heart out as he tears his gaze from me and turns away.
“I’m worth loving, you know,” he tells me over his shoulder as I watch him leave me.
I sit there in stunned silence, the ice taking over. Everyone’s worth loving, I think. Everyone except me.
Twenty-Three
THE DZ BUS rumbles down the mud-pocked road. We are all sticky with muggy dampness and humiliation. My father stands in the aisle at the front of the bus, steadying himself by holding on to the metal racks above our heads where our rigs are stored. Large circles of sweat dampen his pits. I can smell him. Fermented.
“What the hell happened out there?”
No one answers. Apparently, mine wasn’t the only failed jump of the day. The team couldn’t hook up in formation. The wind completely screwed with the spotting to the target landing zone at the golf course. Not that many spectators were there, anyway, with the weather. And half our people landed, like me, in the mud and sagebrush and had to trek around to find the golf course. It was a failure in every sense. Well, no one bounced.
“Thank your stars that wasn’t the big-way. They’d laugh us out of the X Games!” Dad steps up to me, sitting alone on a bench near the front. Dom hasn’t looked at me since I followed silently behind him to the golf course. Everyone else is strangely quiet, avoiding me. “And you!” he says, pointing his finger in my face. “What in the holy hell were you doing up there? Did you screw up my demo? Huh?”
It takes monumental effort to hold my chin up, but I do. “I thought I was ready—”
“Did you, now?” he sneers. “Last time I checked, I owned this drop zone, and I didn’t clear your crazy ass to jump!”
His words are a slap that knocks my proud chin to the side. He called me out in front of everyone. He confirmed my insanity to the whole group. I’m trying to look out the window, but I can’t, because instead of sagebrush rolling by, I’m haunted by the reflection in the glass. I curl forward on myself, resting my head on my knees.
“Sir!” It’s Dom’s voice. “It wasn’t Ryan. It was—”
“Drunk.” Someone coughs the word into their hand and a few snickers erupt. They’re not blaming me. They’re calling my dad out for the decision to jump in the storm.
I know why he did it. We need the money. Badly.
“Stop the bus!” my dad yells. Paco looks in the rearview mirror, shakes his head, and pulls the bus to a halt in the middle of the two-lane highway. “Two things are going to happen,” Nolan says to the crowd. “The person who questions my decision is going to get their ass off this bus right now. This isn’t the Army. I never had a choice when I was ordered to jump. I never got to squawk off about where we were jumping or what we had to do when we touched down. I never had a choice about who we attacked, or . . . who I killed! You think it was a choice to watch women die? Or children? My best friend?”
I’m so shocked, I can’t breathe. I think the whole bus is holding its breath.
My dad draws a ragged inhale, trying to collect himself. He sways a bit on his feet. “You have a choice whether or not to get on that plane! Everyone has a choice! And the next person who wants to pipe off can meet me outside.”
There is total silence. I’m not sure if anyone’s ever seen him this enraged. Though, if I reach back in memory, I have. It’s terrifying. Nolan holds up his hands in a cocky gesture that makes me wonder if he’s drunk right now. Does he really want to fight? “No one?” he challenges. “That’s what I thought.”
But then the doors to the bus swing open. Everyone’s eyes widen in wary surprise as Paco climbs out of the driver’s seat, salutes my dad with his middle finger, and hobbles in his ankle brace out the open doors and down the highway in the pouring rain. We’ve lost one of our best jumpmasters, our best cameraman, and our driver.
Worse, seeing my dad’s right-hand man abandon him has made everyone on this bus lose their confidence in Nolan Sharpe.
I stand, and my father pushes me back into my seat.
“Hey!” Dom yells. “Unacceptable, man.”
I stand again, and my father glares with an unmasked warning. I brush past him and climb into the driver’s seat of the bus, close the door, and pull away. Incredibly, no one stops me. They may doubt my sanity, but they don’t doubt that I’m probably the only person who’s driven this bus more than anyone else besides Paco, my father, and maybe Dom. I need to get the wheels rolling to a familiar place before we veer off into somewhere that’s so far gone that we can’t recover from it.
I may not be clear about a lot of things, but I’m clear that my father is teetering on his own edge and my family is on the verge of losing everything.
No one speaks for the rest of the drive. I think the worst of it is over, but when we arrive back at the skydive center, Yvon gravely informs my dad that there is major damage to the plane. It will take thousands of dollars and time that we don’t have. The big-way is in one week.
Defeat is written all over my father’s face as he shuts himself in his office with a bottle of Jack.
Twenty-Four
“TAKE ME FOR A DRIVE,” Gran demands.
She’s leaning a bit too heavily on the back of a kitchen chair, and I’m edgy that it’s going to tip over and spill her on the floor with it. I’m slanting off my seat, ready to jump for her. My mother rolls her eyes and swipes her brow with a flour-covered hand. She’s baking: a sure sign of discord.
Despite the clear skies outside, the house has a gloomy, stormy feel. My father hasn’t emerged from the bedroom since a group of jumpers deposited him here last night, reeking of whiskey and piss and cursing about how screwed up everything is: his life, his business, his rotten friend Paco, and me.
I made the list.
My stomach has been in knots since I heard him. I know that’s the moment I couldn’t fall back asleep. I had to lie there with a tangled stomach and listen to them fight.
“She jumped today, Ayida. Did you know that? Snuck her stupid, crazy ass on the plane and jumped! I can command an entire unit of troops but not my own daughter.”
“Commanding never worked for her. You know that. She needs you. You can’t hide behind the DZ. We are losing our daughter. She’s been trying to get your approval her whole life. Does she have to die to do it? And if that happens, do you think that business is going to be enough to keep you from going over the edge?”
“I haven’t been to the edge in years.”
“You’re drinking again. Every drink you have is another step closer. Why don’t you get in command of yourself before you think you can command Ryan or anybody else for that matter?”
“Out, bitch!”
“Now, Mama,” Ayida says, mixing mashed bananas into a bowl, “you haven’t been feeling well at all and—”
“Did you not just call me Mama?” Gran’s voice rattles in her island accent. “Don’t talk to me like I’m the child here. I want to go to the mountains, to that lake we used to visit, and I’m going to go if I have to find a way to get there myself.”
“This is sounding a lot like hitchhiking for pancakes,” I mutter.
“Snitch!” Gran hollers at me.
“There is so much going on.” My mom sighs, but Gran interrupts again.
“Life is going on, child. And for some of you, it’s going to keep on going on, God willing. This world don’t give a hot hoot how you spend your day. I don’t think the Maker cares either, as long as you spend it with gratitude. Every problem you’re baking bad bread about will still be here when we get back.”
Gran inhales a long, careful breath like she’s trying to net a butterfly and hold it to her chest. “Make an old lady happy,” she entreats. “I want to go for a drive in the sunshine. I want to roll the windows down and let my gray hair fly in the breeze and listen to the music of the world humming by.”
My mother and I look at each other in defeat. I mean, how do you say no to that?
Within the hour we are packed into the sedan with a cooler of drinks and foul-tasting baked goods. My father is noticeably absent, apparently feeling too much like he’s on a winding road just lying in his bed. I don’t want him here anyway.
Another hefty sigh escapes my mom, but from the back seat Gran smiles with satisfaction as we head off. As promised, she made me pull the silver pins from her hair so she could wear it loose around her shoulders. The result gives her a strangely girlish look, but that could also be from the unabashed glee of getting her way.
The arid desert yields to the mountain pass that rises steeply from the dry desert floor. A green vitality from yesterday’s rain wafts in through the open windows. Soon we’re rocking in that gravity-versus-weightless way you do when going around deep curves and switchbacks on a mountain road.
My brow creases with worry when I look at Gran. Her skin used to resemble a gleaming, oiled river rock. Now it’s the flat color of a river rock left in the sun to dry. I instantly understand why she wanted to come up here when she’s not feeling well. The mountains are alive, teeming with rich, dank life all around us. She wants to absorb it.
“I want to be there already and stick my fat black toes in the mud,” Gran says.
“If we could go as the crow flies, we’d be there already,” my mother answers, curving around another hairpin turn.
“I think it’s funny how many animal sayings we have like that: as the crow flies . . .”
My mother tosses me an approving smile. She looks happy to finally have a light conversation. The meds must be kicking in: I feel blithe, carefree. “To have a bee in your bonnet.”
“Bull in a china shop,” I blurt.
“Monkey’s uncle!” shouts Gran.
“It’s raining cats and dogs!”
“It’s raining men!” We all laugh together.
“Oooh, oooh, I’ve got one . . . I don’t give a rat’s ass,” I add, earning a sideways look from my mother, but her smile is still bright, especially as she hears Gran give a mandatory disapproving cluck while stifling a giggle. “Remember that mangy cat, Sir Charles, that used to come around and leave gross presents at the door like he was bestowing us the greatest of offerings?” I’m laughing with the memory of stepping out too many times in bare feet onto something repulsive, like the tail of a mouse.
No one laughs with me, and even though Gran is blind, they exchange a look.
The skin over my mother’s knuckles stretches a hair thinner as she clutches the wheel. “I . . . I don’t remember that, honey.”
Well, she has to be mistaken, because the memory surfaced clear and vivid, making my toes curl in reflexive disgust. I’m flung out of the joviality of the moment and into the black void of being the girl with the crazy thoughts. I don’t understand. I remember the cat. I remember.
“Baby”—my mom pats my leg—“we’re gonna come up on the lake after this turn. Describe it to your grandmother. You know she loves that.”
The car swooshes around another bend and the mountain opens up, revealing a shimmering blue jewel in the valley of its hands. “The lake is below us, Gran, at the base of the cliffs we’re driving on. With all the trees it’s”—I search for the right description, wanting to paint it in her mind as beautifully as I’m seeing it—“it’s like a sapphire hidden in grass.”
Gran sighs and nods contentedly. She sees it now.
“Families are on the shore. Someone’s throwing a stick in the water for a dog to fetch. People are diving off bubbles of gray rocks. Clouds are lazing about, and you can see them reflected in the lake.” The truth is, it reminds me of her cloudy blind eyes, but I’m not sure if I should say that.
The moment I have that thought, the entire lake transforms below us, morphing and darkening into an enormous watchful eye in the mountain, with a deep black hole of a pupil in its center. Shivers prick my neck.
Echoing in my head are these words, a repetitive incantation, louder and louder . . .
This is the hole she crawls out of. This is the hole she crawls out of.
I scream, reach over, and jerk the steering wheel away from the enormous eye.
My mother startles and yanks the steering wheel back, swerving the car into the oncoming traffic. A horn blares loudly right in front of us as we swerve again, but too far, and we fishtail across the lanes back toward the jagged cliff and the enormous eye below. I scream and turn away from the window, not wanting to fall into that black hole where she waits for me.
Metallic screeches ring out as the side of the car swipes the guardrail. Another jerk to the right and we veer off the road on the opposite side, spinning, falling, and bouncing until we’re stopped with a hard and thunderous bang.
All is silent.
Twenty-Five
THE FIRST SOUND that filters in is the chirping of disturbed birds and a hissing sound that might be the radiator. My eyes blink heavily, but my chin feels connected to my chest, where a singular line of blood snakes its way from somewhere down my neck and onto my shirt. It’s hard to lift my head. All my weight is forward, my body strains against the seat belt, and I realize we’re facing downhill; mercifully, a large tree has stopped us from falling farther down the ravine.
Down to the eye.
Next to me, my mother groans. Her head rests on the steering wheel. Much more blood than I see on myself flows from her head, down her face like tears, and over her full lips. Her right forearm and wrist are bent at an odd angle. “Mom?” I’m afraid to touch her.
“Mom,” she repeats. Thank God, she can hear me.
Then I realize . . . she’s heard my voice, she’s found her own, so she’s naturally reaching up the chain, grasping to know if her own mother is okay. I strain to turn around, pulling myself over the top of the seat back. Gran is folded in half, slumped against the door; the window has a spider’s web of cracks in it. I call her name, struggle to reach and touch her, but she is still.
Calls bounce down to us from somewhere above through the trees. “Hang on! We’re getting help!”
“Hurry!” I croak too quietly and try again. I don’t see blood on my grandmother, but who knows the extent of her injuries.
I have an eternity to think about what happened.
We are the center of the universe, and the sun rotates around us as we wait for help. My mother is in and out of consciousness. I’ve cried out to Gran, tried to reach her, wherever she is, but the longer she’s quiet, the more scared I become. She’s withstood the pains and hardships of life longer than any of us, but her age makes her seem more fragile.
The girl who follows me may or may not be real. I was sure before that she was, but how can she be so big that the entire lake was one
staring eye? That’s not possible. Unless . . . unless I really am schizophrenic, and the drugs haven’t yet stomped down the illusions of my monstrous mind. All I know is that as we hang precariously on this slope, I realize that nearly everyone in my life has been hurt by me, or by her . . .
But it doesn’t matter where I assign the blame. It’s all hurt. And it’s all me.
Is being alive worth it if you’re nothing but a wrecking ball?
The sounds of sirens wind up the mountain, getting louder and louder until they are screeching right above us. A choir of voices discusses the best way to help us. Bless the man who reaches us first, looks in my eyes, and says, “We’ve got you now. It’s gonna be okay.”
I nod and cling to his words.
“They’re here to help us, Ayida.”
“You never used to call me by my name. I don’t like it,” she says—her voice is a crack of dry wood—and blacks out again.
Beginning with Gran, and then my mother, we are eventually all pulled from the mangled car and hauled up to the road, where ambulances whisk us off to the hospital. I have a gash in my neck where the seat belt cut into me, but I can sit up, and so I do, wrapped in a blanket, riding along with Gran. She’s alive, the medic assures me of that, but still unconscious. Halfway down the mountain, my stomach heaves, and I throw up all over the floor.
“Am I dead yet?”
It’s the most beautiful sound, Gran talking to me from her hospital bed. The nurse tells my mother that Gran’s blood pressure is dangerously low.
“No,” I answer, tears rising in my eyes. Guilt squeezes my throat closed. I did this. If I hadn’t freaked out, we’d be winding back down the mountain, pleasantly tired after a day in the sun with the wind blowing in her gray hair. Not sitting in the hospital, where the smell of sickness makes me queasy.
“I never got to stick my toes in the mud.”
I sniff. “I know. There’s still time.”