Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  I do them again and again, and everything else seems to disappear until it’s only me and Tweety Bird. I don’t think about Mom, or school, or genes that won’t behave the way they are supposed to. It’s like I am not even aware of myself. The rest of the world has faded into a blurry sepia of not-important. This is why I have grown to love flying. This is why I have gotten up every morning this week and gone to the airport, because when I’m in the air, nothing else matters. I execute a perfect power-off stall and think about my father and how he used to do this, and much more, when he was flying professionally. I wonder what it felt like to him when he was just learning to fly, and what he would say to me. Up here, I feel closer to him than I have since he died.

  “I saw your dad fly at the National Championships in ’94,” Stew says into the headphones.

  I’m brought back to myself abruptly and turn to look at him in surprise. It’s like he read my thoughts.

  “You did?” I say cautiously.

  “It was really something, watching him fly,” he says, and turns away.

  I want to ask him more questions, but we’re nearing the airport, and I need to get on the radio and tell the ATC, the air traffic controller, that I’m landing. Talking on the radio still stresses me out, despite all the scripts I’ve studied, so I don’t get a chance to say anything else to Stew about my dad.

  I find the airport, which is a lot harder than you would think, and then I’m back in the zone as I concentrate on repeating the ATC’s instructions and locating which runway I’m supposed to use. I feel a surge of adrenaline as I do all of this without looking to Stew for confirmation that I have it right. I’m in control, this is my flight.

  Landing is still the tricky part. I line up with the runway and correct for the crosswind. I cut back the speed as we near the end of the tarmac, halfway expecting the stall alarm to go off, rahrrr, rahrrr, rahrrr, to let me know that my speed has dropped too much. But it doesn’t, and I breathe a sigh of relief as the main wheels touch down. Up in the air is one thing, but finding that particular point where wheels touch ground still feels like a miracle. I concentrate on easing the front wheel down, and it hits, a little hard but not too bad, and we taxi to a stop beside the hangar.

  I look at Stew. He looks out the window, as if the side of the hangar is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.

  I sigh.

  “I go back to school tomorrow. Do I have enough money left to keep taking lessons in the afternoons?” I say it calmly, as if the thought of going back to school doesn’t make me want to gag.

  “Yeah,” he says, still not looking at me.

  I go to get out and he says, “Kid.”

  I turn back to find him staring at me.

  “You did … okay,” he says.

  And that makes me feel like I just won a gold medal.

  My first day back at school, I’m sitting outside at a picnic table. I have no one to sit with at lunch anymore. Even the girls I hung out with when Trina wasn’t around haven’t been welcoming. They’ve heard about what I did to Trina.

  I check my e-mail. It will be at least another week before I get the results of the genetic test, but I’m already checking my e-mail obsessively. I want to know … but I don’t. I guess while I want to know if I’m negative, I don’t want to know if I’m positive.

  Michael comes out and leans against the edge of the table. He’s wearing a dark hoodie pulled up over his head, even though we’re not supposed to wear them up in school.

  “Chaz is pretty messed up,” he says. “Trina isn’t sure she wants to date him anymore.”

  “I know.” I stare at the ground. “It’s all so … terrible.”

  “I didn’t think you were like that,” he says.

  This sears. “I’m not,” I say. “I’m really not. I … I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” There is no excuse, and I know it.

  He looks back at the school. “I guess I thought—” He stops and shrugs. “I guess I was hoping you weren’t like everyone else I know.”

  I nod miserably as he walks away.

  Chaz is petrified to be seen near me. Whenever he sees me coming down the hall, he twitches like a rabbit caught in a trap. I think he’s afraid if Trina sees him anywhere near me she’ll break up with him for good. I’m happy they are still together, but neither of them wants to hear that from me.

  In physics, Ms. Allison tells me I’ve fallen so far behind it’s going to take an A on my final to even get a C in the class. In English, Ms. Garrison pats me on the shoulder as she passes out graded essays. She’s given me a B, with a little frowny face and a “You can do better!” In gym, Molly Jenkins puts up with me talking to her, though she keeps looking back and forth between me and Trina.

  “You really kissed Chaz?” Molly asks as we’re walking out of the locker room.

  “I really did,” I say.

  She frowns, not getting it.

  That’s okay, because I don’t get it either.

  When I get home, Mom is lying on the couch. She still has her lab coat on. Nine days after her second chemo treatment and hospital stay, she’s able to go to work, which makes her happy. She’s worried about chemo brain, which can make her fuzzy and forgetful, but so far she’s been okay. Just tired. Very, very tired. We’ve spent a lot of time watching movies and most of the time she is asleep by seven o’clock. I’ve taken over cooking, but I’m not very good at it. Everything tastes weird to her anyway. She can’t even bear the taste of metal silverware, so we use plastic.

  Four more rounds of chemo.

  I’m beginning to wonder if she can stand it. If I can stand it. What happens if Mom ends up in the hospital again? We heard a woman talking in the chemo room and she’d spent almost the entire month in the hospital, from one complication or another. What if that happens to Mom?

  The next chemo treatment starts in less than two weeks. My breath catches funny in my chest. This time we’ll be alone. This time Jill isn’t coming.

  I check e-mail on my phone again as we sit and watch The Breakfast Club, but there’s still no message about my genetic report. I sigh, and Mom hears me.

  “How are you doing, Erin?” She’s got her reindeer socks on, her feet propped up on the arm of the couch. She drips some eyedrops in her eyes. No matter how much she drinks water, my mother is a desert of dry skin, dry eyes, and dry mouth. She’s been losing her hair, strand by strand, but so far it’s not all gone.

  “Fine,” I say, bright and cheery. Just hunky-dory! Twelve more days until your next treatment, my best friend won’t talk to me, the guy I like thinks I’m a tool, and the flying … the flying is going great, but I can’t talk to you about that.

  “How … how did Dad get into flying?” The words come before I have a chance to think.

  She rolls over on the couch and looks at me. Then she picks up the remote and mutes the TV.

  “Your dad? He always knew he wanted to fly. He grew up near an airport, and I guess he spent a lot of time there when he was a kid. He didn’t get along with his parents so he spent all his free time watching the planes. When I met him, he’d already flown in the first Gulf War and was running private charters. He was also getting ready to compete in the US National Aerobatic Championship.”

  “But … you never watched him fly?”

  “What? Oh, no. At first, I loved watching him fly. I was there when he won the National Championship.”

  “But you never went flying with him?”

  “He wanted me to. He always said he wanted to show me a glory, which is some kind of circular rainbow you can only see from high up in the air. He said not only were they rare and beautiful, but that if two people looked at the same glory, it would look different to each of them. He liked that. ‘Your own personal glory,’ he used to say. I never could fly with him, though. In the end, I couldn’t even watch him fly.”

  “So … what changed?”

  She lays her head back on the pillows and looks at the ceil
ing. “I thought I would change. I thought being near him would change me. I thought if I was with him, I would want to do things, go places, be braver. But it didn’t work. It’s hard to change yourself, and you can’t rely on other people to do it for you.”

  “I wish he hadn’t died … ,” I say in a soft voice, looking at his picture on the mantel. “Do you think … do you think he would have liked me?”

  She sits up and looks at me seriously. “Honey, you are the daughter he always wanted. Sometimes … it scares me. I don’t want you to be hurt. The world can be a scary, dangerous place.”

  Mom falls asleep on the couch and I cover her up. I check my e-mail again and I see I have a message from Ashley asking if I’d heard anything yet.

  I go out to the garage and sit in the Mustang and e-mail her back.

  No report yet. I feel so messy inside, like I’m going to fly apart, like I’m going to fracture into a thousand fragments, and I won’t ever be able to find all the pieces of me. Is it wrong to feel the test is going to tell me something about myself I don’t know? Knowing the blueprint of my genes, will that explain why I’m falling apart? I feel so different from everybody else. I feel so alone. Why can’t I just be normal? Why is this happening?

  I put my head back against the seat. I should be studying for my physics final. Finals and the end of school are less than two weeks away. I can’t though, not right now. An icy tremble starts in the center of me, and then my whole body is vibrating with unspeakable, arctic emotion.

  I don’t know if I can take much more of this. Whenever I think of the future, it’s covered by a bleak, gray fog. I am getting lost in the limbo and I don’t know how to find my way back.

  My e-mail dings and I open Ashley’s message:

  I swam with some dolphins the other day. I was out on the boat and I saw them, so I jumped in. You’re not supposed to, because they’re wild animals and they can ram you with their beaks if they get scared or just pissed off. Heck, they can take out sharks, they do it all the time.

  But these guys were cool. They pretty much ignored me, but every once in a while one would rub up against me, and it was so weird, because I felt part of something so much bigger than me, but so small at the same time. We’re all connected like that, down to the genes inside our bodies. We’re interconnected, but inside our heads we feel all alone.

  I guess I’m trying to say that you’re not alone. You may feel like you are, but none of us are. We’re a part of something so much bigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Five days before my mom starts chemo again, I feel up Faith.

  It goes down like this: I’m late, so I’m hurrying, trying to avoid the dance kids who are doing some sort of routine in the middle of the hall, and as I round the corner by the gym, I see someone there. I put out my hands to keep from running into her and get a handful of boob. This, naturally, is Faith.

  “What are you doing, freak?” she cries. “Get away from me!”

  My momentum sends me into her and I end up knocking her backward. She lands on her butt. This part, at least, is satisfying.

  “Oops,” I say.

  A couple of her friends help her up and glare at me. Other people are stopping to watch and laugh.

  “Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?” Faith asks, brushing off the seat of her immaculately white pants.

  I think about Va-jay-jay Girl and the picture of me kissing Chaz and don’t say anything.

  “You’re such a nothing,” Faith hisses at me.

  “ ‘Having nothing, nothing can he lose,’ ” I say. It’s cheesy but it’s the best I can do. I make my escape.

  “What the eff?” Faith says behind me. “She is so bizarre.”

  “It’s Shakespeare, dummy,” volunteers a passing emo in skinny jeans and a scarf who sits behind me in AP English.

  At my locker, I’m shaking. I don’t know why I care, but I do. Why does she hate me? What is wrong with me?

  I get out my phone and check my e-mail. The report should be here and I’m reduced to checking my phone a thousand times a day.

  Nothing.

  “Hey,” Michael says.

  We haven’t spoken since the day he asked me about what happened with me and Chaz.

  “Hey.” I tilt my head down so my hair sweeps my cheek. It’s automatic, this hiding, and Mom bugs me about it all the time but I can’t seem to help myself.

  “You okay?” He looks at me.

  For a moment I debate telling him about my mom, about the waiting, waiting, waiting on the genetic report, about Faith, and Trina, and my crush. On him. For a minute I want to say everything, and it perches on my tongue like an avalanche just needing a tiny sound to let loose.

  “I don’t think Faith likes me,” I say instead, trying for funny and “Oh well, what do you do?” and ending up with “My life sucks, no one likes me, why don’t people like me?”

  He hesitates. “She’s got a lot going on. When things get bad for her, she goes on the attack. Inside … she’s not that tough. I guess I understand, feeling different inside than people think you are. Once you get to know her, you get used to her.”

  “I can probably get used to hanging if I had to, but I don’t really want to.” Another favorite Memaw-ism.

  His lips quirk. “That’s why I like you. You make me smile.”

  “But you don’t smile. I’ve never seen you smile. Or laugh either, for that matter.”

  He shrugs, all lean and slouchy, with his dark, straight hair and dimple in his chin, which I really think I’d like to kiss.

  “Maybe—” he says.

  Maybe? Maybe we can go out sometime? Maybe we can get together over the weekend? Maybe I might be falling for you?

  “Look, I’ve got to get to class,” he says. “Only two more days until summer.”

  And maybe is left hanging.

  The world is far below and it’s just me and Tweety Bird. And Stew. I want it to be just me and Tweety, but what if something happens? Stew hasn’t touched the controls in weeks, allowing me to take off and land and navigate all by myself, but still. Still. He’s there. Just in case.

  Right now he looks like he’s sleeping. I glance over at him, and he’s got his eyes closed. It must be nice to get paid to nap. I want that job when I grow up.

  But I am content. It’s a clear day, the wind mild, but even so I feel like we’re driving down a rutted-up road as we bounce from one air pocket to another. When you’re in a small plane, every bump feels big. I roll Tweety into a big turn, not even flinching as I hang in the harness so I can peer down at my house. Mom’s car is there and my chest feels fluttery when I think about her chemotherapy coming up. Four more days. I hate it. I hate it.

  I know she’s worried about me. And that makes me feel bad. I want to be there for her, and she wants to be there for me, but evidently neither one of us can master this trick of being there right now. And a little part of me is mad, not at her, but fate, or God, or whatever, that this is happening to her. To me. Why us?

  Without warning, the motor dies.

  I look over and see Stew has his eyes open, and he’s watching me. He puts his hand back on top of his stomach mound, but I see he is clutching the keys in his fat little paw.

  “What the—?” I scream. Tweety has already lost speed and begins a steady slide toward the ground. My first instinct is to yank the nose up, but cold concentration centers me. Instead I push the nose down a little to keep up my speed, and pull the throttle to idle. I think about trying to snatch the keys out of Stew’s hand, but I’m afraid to take my attention off flying for even a moment. I’m not sure how far he is planning on taking this, so I look around for a place to land. I see a field nearby, and I turn the plane slowly toward it, trying not to lose too much speed and altitude. I’m totally focused, my hands light on the yoke, making as few corrections as possible, because everything I do makes the plane go down quicker.

  I line up with the field, and check quickly for trees and power
lines. It’s clear, except for a fence at one end and a couple of power lines in the distance. It’s going to be tight, but I think I can do it.

  I wipe my damp hands on my jeans, and get ready to land.

  And Stew puts the key back into the ignition.

  “Are you INSANE?” I say as the motor roars to life and I slowly pull the nose up and circle away from the field. “I can’t believe you’re allowed to do that!”

  He shrugs. Whatever. “You get your medical like I told you?”

  I nod. A few weeks ago I went to an aviation medical examiner for a physical exam, and the guy made a big deal about me signing the student pilot certificate. I am now officially allowed to fly solo, whenever Stew decides I’m ready.

  He looks at me a long moment, chewing ferociously on his gum, as I circle back around toward the airport. Then he sighs. “Study for the pre-solo exam. I’ll give it to you the next time I see you. And then …”

  I’m holding my breath, not sure whether I want to hear him say the words or not.

  “Then I’m going to endorse you to solo. You’re ready, so quit farting around.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The next day, the rumor is I’m a lesbian and that I attacked Faith in the hall. I don’t know why she is bothering. But for some reason Faith is getting a kick out of torturing me.

  And it is torture. I hate people talking about me. I hate the giggles as I walk past, the barely audible comments—“Hey, look it’s Va-jay-jay Girl; you better hide, girls!”—and the answering laughter. When I get to my locker, I see someone has papered it over with fliers from the LGBT club. It’s stupid, it’s juvenile, but it stings.

  Only one more day, one more day, and it’s over. Blessed, people-free summer is almost here, reading to my heart’s content under the old oak in the backyard. Pure bliss until next year. My senior year, which is supposed to be the best year of my life. Somehow, I’m not seeing it.