“I will look into getting you started in a GED program,” Holt promised as he stood. “Maybe you should write her a letter.”
“Maybe,” Robert said. He thought of all the times he’d started and restarted the apology his lawyer wanted him to write and knew he probably wouldn’t. Instead he asked the sheriff, “Do you think you’ll ever catch that bear?”
“No. I don’t believe I ever will,” Holt answered, and then Robert was alone again.
* * *
For the sentencing, they made him wear a bulletproof vest, heavy over his orange jumpsuit, like the X-ray bib at the dentist. Robert didn’t get it. He hadn’t hurt anybody. Why would anyone want to hurt him?
The cuffs chafed his wrists as they led him into the courthouse. A crowd buzzed behind metal barricades. Someone was playing Gull Trouble’s song, loud enough to be heard over the crowd. TV news vans were parked haphazardly by the courthouse steps, satellite dishes barnacled to their roofs.
It’s Robert Kelley! The kid must be insane!
We represent the Lollipop Kid!
People shouted for his attention like carnival barkers.
“Robert, are you a terrorist?”
“Who taught you to fly?”
“Give us a smile, Lollipop Kid!”
Robert scanned the crowd: the guys who should have been at work but had been laid off, the guys who usually haunted the tavern but had ventured into the sunlight for a peek at the local celebrity; the kids on summer vacation, their eyes red from hours of TV and video games. A teenage girl held a sign, white cut-out letters on red posterboard. Robert Kelley stole my heart and my plane! Were those actual lip prints, kissed onto the poster by an actual girl’s lips? He tried to twist backward to see, hoping maybe he’d catch a glimpse of Mira Wohl, but the officer nudged him forward.
A white paper plane sliced through the air and bounced off the back of his neck. The crowd laughed.
Where was Holt? Why wouldn’t Holt show for the sentencing? He’d been there when Robert had gotten expelled. He’d come to visit. A bunch of cops were gathered at the courthouse doors, and Robert wrenched and turned, searching. The grip on his elbow tightened. The sheriff wasn’t there.
But his mom was, sobbing right in the front row. Her sniffles and cries were so loud that Robert was embarrassed for her. Just like when he’d gotten expelled. He tried to smile, but she didn’t look up as he passed her and sat down.
“Mom!” He tried to get her attention, craning his head over his shoulder. He still had so much to say, but he couldn’t do it here. Instead he just offered, “Mom, everything’s okay.”
She wouldn’t look at him.
His shaking knees rattled the shackles that bound his feet.
The judge wasted no time in announcing his sentence.
Ten years. Maximum security.
“We’ve heard some arguments for allowing you to serve your sentence in a less restrictive setting. But you have proven that you are a master of escape and evasion,” the judge said. “So the maximum security setting is more than appropriate. Also, a message needs to be sent to the young people of this community and beyond that what you’ve done isn’t funny or cool. Your actions were dangerous and criminal, and you must pay for them.”
Cameras flashed. Robert kept smiling. He definitely wasn’t crying, even though his throat tightened and his eyes stung. He’d have waved if he hadn’t been cuffed. He remembered that mug shot, his wide smile on a T-shirt, and tried to be that kid. The public defender leaned in, gesturing, whispering in his ear, but the words bounced off him.
Holt never showed.
Interview with Mira Wohl, Willamette University cafeteria, October 2, 2010
From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story
“I was outside the courthouse. I told my dad I was at Justine’s house. Missed play practice and I found out they were workin’ with only three angry men that day. Half the school skipped and went out there. They told us we’d all get a summons for truancy court, but of course that never happened.
“It was too weird. Like we were at some Hollywood premiere, with all those people and cameras. I started tweeting and then people were taking pictures of me, like I was someone important. I was half expecting someone to yell out, ‘Mira, who are you wearing?’
“And then after, someone started this rumor that Robert had broken out of jail and was gonna fly again, over the beach. So we set a bunch of bonfires and got drunk on peppermint Schnapps while we waited. Somebody brought a metal detector and started looking for pieces of the planes, but we just found beer can after beer can. Kept looking up at the sky like a bunch of idiots. At first it was all funny. Then after a while, the whole thing started to feel like we’d been in on the joke, but the whole time the joke had been on us.”
JUNE 2010
Robert had heard a story once. Something for school. A myth or a legend, the teacher had said. He couldn’t remember which. About a guy locked in a tower or a castle or something, and to escape he makes these wings. Only they’re made of wax. So he jumps out of the tower and he’s flapping his wings and he’s flying and everything’s going great. But he gets too close to the sun, and the wings melt, and he falls into the sea. The end.
In the story, the guy’s dad warns him, but he doesn’t listen.
EPILOGUE
From The Beginning Pilot’s Flight Guide (p. 78):
Learning to fly is learning to land.
Mira Wohl’s performance as Juror #8 was recognized by the Yannatok Tide: “Mira Wohl gave a convincing performance as Juror #8, the play’s pivotal character. Ms. Wohl’s powerful voice and commanding stage presence have this reviewer convinced she’s got a future on the stage.” She was awarded a theater scholarship to Willamette University in Oregon. Her father still calls her Meryl Streep, and she has kept her hair cropped. She is reconsidering a career in broadcast journalism.
Joey Kovach was arrested for petty theft after being caught on camera stealing a pair of boxing gloves from a Seattle Gold’s Gym. After serving a sixty-day prison sentence, Joey relocated to Tacoma, Washington, where he is employed at a local gas station.
Dalton White was interviewed by the Seattle Times, Outside and Rolling Stone magazines, Nancy Grace, and Geraldo Rivera, and finally appeared on an episode of 20/20 dedicated to the Lollipop Kid. He wouldn’t admit it, but being interviewed made him nervous. He told nothing but the truth and still he sounded like a bad liar. He started carrying one of those tokens he’d jacked from Robert back when they were roommates, one with a wing on it, in his pocket. Steal a little bit of Kelley’s nerve.
Each time Dalton appeared on television he wore one of his T-shirts, and each time sales spiked. He made enough money to buy a car and created his own Facebook page swarming with friends he’d never met. He loves the car so much he sometimes spends the whole afternoon just driving circles around the island, but sometimes he thinks longingly back to the one he stole, which, though it was duller and dented, for some reason seemed faster.
Sheriff James Holt resigned from his post on September 11, 2011. He moved with Bandit to San Diego, where he found work training police dogs. On the weekends, he boats.
Debra MacPherson passed her real estate license test on June 7, the same week as Robert’s first court appearance, but the only thing she ever sold was her own trailer, before she left for Portland and her new apartment. She took Hulk with her.
Within a week of moving in, the trailer’s new owners called the sheriff’s office to report a bear sniffing around the place.
And Robert Jackson Kelley is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison. He has reread Hatchet and was shocked to learn Brian is rescued and reunited with his father and doesn’t spend the winter surviving in the woods on his own. Robert was denied access to a flight manual, despite his claim that he only wanted to figure out where he’d gone wrong in his crash landings.
Robert still dreams about Kumaritashvili, airborne in his sled. Sometimes Rober
t is in the stands cheering, sometimes Robert is on the sled himself, and always, always, even after a month, three months, six months, Robert wakes up before the sled crashes and has three or four innocent seconds before he realizes he is in prison.
But then he sees the bars. Six march across his only window. Twelve make up the fourth wall of his cell.
Some guys read. Some guys do push-ups. Some guys write the parole board. Most of the guys pad around their cells in prison-issued flip-flops, looking out. Caught animals.
Robert looks up, squinting, straining to glimpse blue sky on gray wall. Shadows play on the ceiling, and Robert watches them like a movie.
Because how could it have gone down like this?
How could Robert Jackson Kelley, the Lollipop Kid, be stuck in this prison cell?
Robert spends days rewriting his ending, imagining another scene before the credits roll. Funny how now, without anything else to do, Robert can concentrate just fine, picturing every detail.
He careens down the runway, bullets flying, whizzing, missing him, of course. The engine roars, the cops dive out of his way. He pulls the throttle up, up, up. The plane’s nose rises and he takes off, clearing the spruces and the Douglas firs, snapping off the tops neatly. The island shrinks, the vacation houses, the school, the tavern, the stables withering, dwindling into nothing.
There goes the trailer, a smudge out the window. Mr. Drew pauses with a ready arrow, a bow drawn tight, to stare skyward. “My best student!” Dalton White in a parking lot, hawking those T-shirts, thumbs dollar bills, and looks up. Mira Wohl pumps her BMW’s brakes, gazes up at the sky, and blows the plane a kiss. Sheriff Holt steps out of his cruiser, his dog sniffing the air, and both squint into the sun, the sheriff offering a sharp salute. In the prison yard, his father points at the plane, a speck beyond the barbed wire. “There’s my boy. They’ll never catch him!” And his mom, riding on horseback, the horse her own finally, tugs on the reins to stop and smile at the sky.
The plane is his now. He yanks on the throttle, the flight deck needles leap, break through their glass, can’t be held down. The windshield shatters, rains down on the beach. The glass flies past his popping ears, disintegrating.
He laughs and swallows the stars like round blue pills, the globe of the moon a lollipop.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Colton Harris-Moore, also known as the “Barefoot Bandit,” eluded the authorities for two years after a series of crimes, including the thefts of several small planes, two cars, and a boat, as well as over a hundred burglaries. A native of Camano Island, Washington, Harris-Moore was seventeen years old at the height of his notoriety and known for leaving barefoot prints at the scenes of some of his crimes, which stretched from Washington state to as far away as Illinois. In 2010, Harris-Moore was captured in a stolen speedboat off the coast of the Bahamas, and served six and a half years in prison. I became aware of Colton Harris-Moore’s story while he was still on the run, and remember how even I, a middle school teacher and generally law-abiding citizen, hoped he would not be caught. And I wasn’t alone. A Facebook fan club drew sixty thousand members; T-shirts with Harris-Moore’s face printed on them sold online. What was it about Harris-Moore’s story that made so many people root for him, despite the dangerous nature of his crimes? This question initially inspired Robert Jackson Kelley’s story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are not enough thank-yous in the world for my mother and father, Linda Zebley-Stump and Joseph McDaniel, who taught me to value education, try new things, and do my best. Thank you for reading to me and always believing in me.
Siblings don’t come cooler than my brother, Mike McDaniel. Thanks for your early feedback, sense of humor, friendship, and excellent tunes.
Utmost gratitude to my grandparents, Josephine and Thomas McDaniel, Thomas Zebley, and Sally and John Sitek, who have always cheered me on, broadened my horizons, and loved me no matter what.
Everyone should be so lucky as to have a best friend like Lauren-Alice Lamanna, my first and favorite co-author. Thank you for swapping notebooks and CDs, plotting bands and book series, and twenty-five years of friendship.
Much love to my favorite pen pal, Nathan Tatro, for over a decade of support and friendship.
I should have played the lottery the day Amy Tipton entered my life. Thank you for your positivity, feedback, and work on behalf of me and this manuscript, and for believing in this book.
The entire Roaring Brook team deserves a standing ovation, including Maya Packard, Nancy Elgin, Andrew Arnold, and especially Katherine Jacobs for her excellent editorial insight.
Thanks to all those who read and provided feedback on early versions of this book, particularly Abby Reed and Charles Holdefer.
Special thanks to the many supportive teachers I’ve been lucky enough to learn from, including Lycoming College’s G.W. Hawkes and Rosemont College’s Cyndi Reeves, whose input on this project was invaluable.
And last but most certainly not least, words fail to express all the love and gratitude I have for Brian and Zadie Fenn, who inspire me to be better every day. I wrote parts of this book while an infant slept on me, and now that baby is a funny, smart, curious, wonderful little girl. And everyone needs a co-pilot, a partner in adventuring and raising baby sea otters. I’m lucky beyond measure to have found that and more in my husband. Our story is my favorite.
Transcribed from the Steve and Mac in the Morning Show, KRAW, July 2, 2010
Steve:
You’re listening to Steve and Mac on KRAW 91.3, and it’s 6:45 in the a.m., bright and early here on beautiful Yannatok Island. It’s a rainy one out there, gonna stay cloudy and get up to about 63. How’s the traffic out there, Mac?
Mac:
Backed up on the Yannatok Bridge toward Seattle, free and clear everywhere else.
Steve:
Thanks, Mac. These next guys have the number-nine most-downloaded song this week on iTunes and we’ll be seeing them next at none other than the Tacoma Dome, opening up at Monday’s Dave Mathews Band show. Long way from the Pine Tavern. Wonder if they ever kick any money back to old Robert Jackson Kelley? Here’s Yannatok’s own Gull Trouble with “Ballad of the Lollipop Kid.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Fenn has worked as a middle school language arts teacher and has had short fiction and essays published in numerous publications. She lives with her husband, daughter, and Scottish terrier in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Flight Risk is her debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Roaring Brook Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Act I: Prepare for Departure
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Act II: A Zone of Turbulence
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Act III: Brace for a Crash Landing
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Act IV: Flight Risk
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Epilogue
Chapter 89
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Afterword
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Fenn
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
fiercereads.com
Flight Risk Page 21