Higher, Further, Faster

by Liza Palmer

  “Change their minds,” I say, trying to sound as sure as possible. Maria nods in agreement.

  “We both got the Warhawk, and we’re both Honor Graduates. We were on the Honor Squadron. And by the time Recognition comes around at the end of the year, we want to add the Flying Falcons to that list,” Maria says.

  “So these are tryouts for next year’s team?” Jack asks. Maria and I nod.

  “You know you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get half as much,” Bonnie says, making particularly pointed eye contact with Maria.

  “I’ve been doing that my whole life,” Maria says resolutely.

  “I know you have,” Bonnie says. Jack puts his arm around Bonnie’s waist.

  There’s a lull, and I know it’s because Jack and Bonnie are deciding whether or not to try and talk us out of our plan. They’ll say that getting into the Flying Falcons won’t change anyone’s minds. That female pilots have been wanting to fly combat since Bonnie’s generation begged for the opportunity decades ago. That this quest of ours has to be worthy and valuable even if we don’t get what we want in the end.

  I know they’d be right. But I also know that everyone in this hangar is all too familiar with what it’s like to be denied something they’ve earned.

  Jack’s and Bonnie’s eyes meet, and they share a grin.

  “Then let’s get started,” Jack says, clapping his hands together.

  “All right!” I cheer. Maria and I high-five and turn to walk back out to the Stearman.

  “Where are you two going?” Jack’s voice comes from behind us.

  We slowly turn back. “To the plane?” Maria says, as if she’s stating the obvious. Bonnie allows a winsome smile and makes her way back to the coffeemaker.

  “We’re not going to be getting you up in the air quite yet,” Jack says.

  “But—”

  “You’ll get your forty hours before the tryouts, but first we need to build some of that character and integrity,” Jack says.

  “And how are, um, we going to do that?” Maria asks. I can hear the trepidation in her voice.

  “Just under that poster of Cap?” Jack says, pointing over his shoulder. Maria and I both nod. “There’s a bucket full of cleaning supplies and some old rags. Take those, fill the bucket with water, and give Mr. Goodnight a nice once-over, if you don’t mind.” Bonnie walks back over and hands Jack a mug of coffee. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “I thought we were going to fly?” I ask.

  “Character and integrity first.” Jack takes a sip of his coffee. “Then you fly.”

  “WE REEK,” I COMPLAIN HOURS LATER, AS WE drive back to campus that evening under the dusk of a setting sun. “Who knew getting something clean could get you so dirty?”

  Maria hums with agreement, but as I navigate us home it’s clear we’re both happy with how the day turned out, unexpected as it was. With every centimeter of Mr. Goodnight that we cleaned, Jack and Bonnie were right there to tell us what that part did and how it worked. This dial is connected to this in the engine that does this, and if that doesn’t work, well, you can pull this or do that, and see how it all works together just like that?

  I couldn’t quite see it yet, but after just a few hours under their careful tutelage it became clear that I’d learn to.

  I’d always pictured myself in a cockpit, soaring through the clouds. I could see that with perfect clarity. But when I actually tried to imagine how all those baby steps would feel, I could never do it. In the end, the best I could muster up was some feel-good dreams where I doled out endless hang-loose signs after I’d done something awe-inspiring with seemingly zero effort and the gracefulness of a swan.

  But today, as I was bending over Mr. Goodnight’s engine, sleeves rolled up and covered in grease and oil, taking the tiniest of baby steps toward my ultimate goal, I felt wonderment. And a hunger for more. And pride. I felt happy. I felt like I belonged. When I looked over at Jack as he took apart a piece of Mr. Goodnight’s engine and started explaining what each and every part of it did, it felt like I had stepped into the other half of my puzzle piece. Which is probably why I couldn’t imagine it before today. I had no idea this sort of self-completion was even possible, let alone how it would feel. It was just easier to imagine soaring through the skies and letting others be amazed by me, rather than imagine what it would feel like to be amazed by myself.

  Once we make our way back, shower, and settle into our room for the night, though, my brain lifts from the glorious fog of Stearman engine parts and crashes back down to preparing for our first day of school tomorrow.

  “This is going to be killer,” Maria mutters as we examine our printed schedules before turning out the lights. We’re expected to take four classes in the morning and three in the afternoon, play on an intramural team, and take Introduction to Soaring, the first class in the airmanship program. We’ve already checked in with Bianchi, Del Orbe, and Pierre about setting up nightly study groups in McDermott Library so we can all keep each other from getting too overwhelmed, but the workload seems insanely intense.

  I toss and turn all night, building elaborate houses of cards from what-ifs or possible scenarios for the next day. When Maria and I start lacing up our sneakers for our morning run at our usual early hour, I’m already operating on pure adrenaline and actively avoiding any more emotional trapdoors.

  We walk onto the track to find Bianchi, Del Orbe, and Pierre already stretching. I can hear Del Orbe’s laugh from the other side of the field.

  “Do y’all know what Flickerball is?” Pierre asks as soon as we’re within earshot.

  “It’s pretty much just half football and half dodgeball,” Maria says, bending over and touching her toes with a sleepy groan.

  “In my brain right now is a slideshow of people getting hit in the face with a ball and then someone standing over them yelling that’s Flickerball!” Pierre says. He sounds slightly hysterical, his voice rising at an uneven pitch.

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” Bianchi says with a laugh.

  “You guys got Flickerball?” I ask Bianchi as Del Orbe reenacts Pierre’s grisly version of the game.

  “We all did. You?” He asks.

  “Us too,” I say, answering for Maria. Bianchi nods.

  “So, our intramural sport for the entire year is just basically my junior high school nightmare,” Pierre says. “That’s great. Just great. Fantastic, really!”

  “Pierre, relax,” Maria says, ever the voice of calm and reason. “You guys ready?” she asks, hopping high into the air over and over. Everyone begrudgingly nods, and we set off around the track as a group.

  “Where’d you guys get off to yesterday?” Bianchi asks, keeping pace with me in the front of the pack.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I retort.

  “Yes, that’s customarily why people ask questions. Because they would like to know.”

  I laugh, and his face softens.

  “Would it make it weird if I didn’t tell you just yet?” I ask.

  “Of course not.” But a sidelong glance confirms I’ve confused him. “Sorry if I overstepped, Danvers.”

  “No, it’s okay. I just don’t want to jinx it.”

  “But it’s very cool, and you’re going to be so jealous,” Maria coos as she glides past us.

  Bianchi and I grow quiet as we round the track.

  “You are going to tell me though, right?” he finally asks.

  “Maybe,” I say. He arches an eyebrow. “Yes, okay? I promise.”

  “And not like on my deathbed or something, just in case you’re looking for a loophole,” he says.

  “How dare you, sir,” I call over my shoulder, picking up the pace to catch up with Maria. “I am an honest and stalwart lady.”

  “I know you are,” Bianchi says, his voice momentarily serious. I smile and catch up to Maria, leaving Bianchi behind.

  “You could have told him,” Maria says, her breath puffing in the brisk morning air.

/>   “I just want to keep it ours a bit longer,” I say, not knowing where that decision has come from, but somehow intuiting that it feels right. Maria nods and we fall into a happy, peaceful syncopation around the track.

  In the past, I would have blurted out what we were doing to show off or impress someone…anyone. You may not think much of me, but you must surely be dazzled with this super-fancy thing I’m accomplishing that you aren’t. Ta-daaaaaa!

  But now? There’s something almost sacred about hangar thirty-nine. Something I don’t want to sully with all those past insecurities. I want to tell people about it for the right reasons, not so I can feel remarkable for a few fleeting moments. I’m proud of myself, not just because I have something new and shiny to parade around. I smirk at my thought process—as if cleaning a Stearman to within an inch of itself is something others would even be jealous of.

  By 5:00 a.m., we’re dripping in sweat and heading back to the dorms in search of a much-needed shower. Bianchi, Pierre, and Del Orbe peel off as Maria and I weave our way through the hallways. Then we notice Noble coming back from a run of her own. With no Johnson in sight, I decide to extend a bit of an olive branch as we climb the stairs.

  “I don’t think we’ve officially met, by the way. I’m Carol, and that’s Maria,” I say, inclining my head in Maria’s direction.

  “I’m Noble,” she says, her voice an acerbic drawl. Her fire-red hair is pulled back in a tight bun, and her freckled pale skin is flushed from her morning exercise. Her deep green eyes always seem to be at a too-cool half-mast.

  “I was hoping for a first name,” I say jokingly, but also meaning it at the same time. This has to be a give-and-take, or we’ll be nowhere.

  Noble sighs the longest, weariest sigh in the history of sighs. My curiosity has apparently exhausted her. I plaster a breezy smile on my face through sheer grit. I can hear Maria stifle a giggle just behind me.

  “Zoë,” she says.

  “Hey, Zoë,” Maria says with a flick of her head. Zoë nods toward her in cool reply.

  “So I’ll see you guys when I see you, I guess,” Zoë says, sidling down the hall and disappearing into her dorm room.

  “Great!” I flap my hand enthusiastically after her retreating form, the complete opposite of Maria and Zoë’s effortless, distant cool.

  “Was that a wave, Danvers?” Maria says, barely able to contain herself.

  “She’s too cool for me,” I say, opening up the door to our own room and gathering my stuff for the showers. I hear Maria’s cackle follow me all the way down the hallway.

  But by 7:30 a.m., it doesn’t matter who’s cool and who isn’t, who commands a reaction with a lift of her perfectly arched eyebrow and who exercises all the restraint of a bull in a china shop, because collected and awkward, confident and terrified alike, we’re all sitting in our very first lessons as fourth-class cadets at the United States Air Force Academy.

  “WELCOME TO INTRODUCTION TO SOARING. I’M Captain Jenks.”

  Ugh.

  Captain Jenks paces in front of us as he speaks, his hands clasped behind him. His aviator sunglasses glint and shimmer in the sunlight, obscuring his all-knowing gaze as he waxes rhapsodic about his expectations for us during our time in his class. The cadet instructor pilots stand behind him, steely and unmoving, as planes take off and land on the bustling runways just beyond.

  “Throughout the year you will go on four hops, always accompanied by an instructor. You will not fly solo until you are a third-class cadet.” The loud rumble of a taxiing tow plane drowns out the last of Captain Jenks’s words, but his meaning is clear.

  I turn around and see a tow plane pulling one of the gliders from behind a large hangar. The glider looks more like a motorcycle sidecar, clunky and rounded in the front with red piping that traces its lean fuselage and loops around the words STARK INDUSTRIES, emblazoned on the fin of the plane. The glider is all wing, its design mind-bogglingly—and quite exhilaratingly—simple.

  I can’t wait to fly her.

  Captain Jenks tells us that we’ll each be paired with one of the cadet instructor pilots. I scan the options and immediately rank them from most to least favorite, based mainly on super-scientific methods like how they’re standing and the set of their jaws. I should be more embarrassed that someone who would very much like for people to stop judging her book by its cover has just jumped to wild conclusions about a group of people’s characters and teaching abilities based on nothing but appearances. Yet, here we are.

  “Danvers, you’re with Cadet Instructor Pilot Wolff,” Jenks says as he goes down the list without glancing my way.

  I groan inwardly. For the record, I’d already labeled Cadet Instructor Pilot Wolff as my least favorite. Tall and sturdy, square jawed and arrogant, Wolff looks like he’s hung more than a few kick me signs on people in his day.

  I don’t know any of the airmen in my group under Cadet Instructor Pilot Wolff. I glare over at Maria and Del Orbe. I’m envious that they were grouped together with my first choice, Cadet Instructor Pilot Cabot, he of the mellow face and relaxed posture. They don’t notice my glare, of course, because they’re now blissfully frolicking through the airfield hand in hand with my first choice, while I prepare myself to get the mental wedgie of a lifetime.

  “Let’s get started,” Wolff says. His voice is low and methodical. Our group follows him like little ducklings over to the glider.

  “Hop in,” he says to me.

  “Sir?” I ask, looking at the three other airmen in my group, thinking both that this offer is some kind of trap, and feeling discomfort at having to go first. Wolff says nothing. His light brown hair rustles in the wind, his ruddy skin already looking in need of a shave despite the razor that certainly scraped his face first thing this morning. His coal-black eyes are piercing, and his ability to hold a silence is herculean.

  I nod and climb into the cockpit of a plane for the very first time.

  And inside my body I feel a click as all the pieces of my life resolutely, assuredly fall into place.

  I take a deep breath and securely strap in, trying to swallow my erupting emotions. I curl my fingers around the glider’s stick, and scan the plane’s instruments. Instruments that are right here in front of me and not pictured in some dog-eared, worn-out airplane magazine I found in the waiting room of the garage where I used to get my car fixed.

  If cleaning the Stearman felt like a gift, sitting in this cockpit is nothing short of an answered prayer.

  I did it. This is real. I’m here.

  I fight the urge to give Wolff a thumbs-up, and instead brush my fingers over the compass, looping over the altimeter. I tap on the airspeed indicator and then crane my head back to catch a glimpse of the tiny yaw string attached to the canopy. A humble piece of yarn, also used by the Wright Brothers, that’s stood the test of time as the best method to make sure an aircraft is flying as efficiently as possible and not listing sideways. I smile wide as I find it, marveling at the timelessness of a simple good idea.

  “Tell us what you see,” Wolff commands. I fight every urge to blurt, My dreams coming true!

  “Power,” I say instead.

  “That’s good, Danvers.” Wolff turns away from me and faces the three other airmen. He takes a long, thoughtful pause, and we all hang on his every breath, dissecting each time he clenches and unclenches his jaw. Finally, “In this plane, you will feel every capricious whim the sky has in store for you.” Wolff turns back to me. “You must be prepared for every possibility.”

  “Restraint,” Jenks says, coming up behind Wolff.

  “Sir?” Wolff asks.

  “To answer your question, ‘What do you see?’” Jenks circles the glider, his hands clasped behind his back, his thumb twitching with every step.

  “Yes, sir,” Wolff says.

  “It is usually in the cockpit where one first learns one’s limitations.”

  “And one’s liberation,” Wolff adds. The silence expands. Wolff lets it. “Sir.”


  “Soaring is mastered by those who practice control and self-discipline. It is not for the impulsive, the careless, or the emotional,” Jenks says. Each word knocks the wind out of me, feeling like a personal attack.

  “In the impulsive, we find the passionate. In the careless, we find the bold. And in the emotional, we find the human. What’s important, sir, is if they can be taught.” Wolff stands between Jenks and me, and I decide I was wholly mistaken in labeling him my least favorite cadet instructor pilot.

  “Well. I shall be very interested to see how your little experiment”—Jenks trails off, dragging his gaze over me as if I were a musty, wet towel—“ends.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jenks scans the other three airmen, pushes his shoulders back, and wordlessly walks over to another group. Wolff taps the side of the plane, and I take that to mean that I should hop out. None of us speak of what just happened, but as I climb from the glider I am bathing in it. I am also seething. How dare Jenks try to color my first cockpit experience with his unyielding, cold words?

  I tighten my fist and instead try to remember what the glider’s stick felt like in my hand. What it felt like to sit in the cockpit. The click that no one, not even Jenks, can take away from me. I belong here. This is what I was made to do, however impulsive, careless, and emotional I may sometimes be. I finally inhale a deep breath and Jenks’s words begin to evaporate, droplet by droplet.

  I stand aside and watch as the other three airmen sit in the cockpit and get some piece of sage advice from Wolff, whose esteem grows in my eyes every additional moment we spend together. He may look like a high school jock, but underneath all that swagger he’s just another kid who’s always dreamed of flying.

  We spend the rest of our time going over the basics, paying rapt attention to every tidbit Wolff thoughtfully—and ever so slowly—imparts to us. By the end of our time together, I am in awe. How must it feel to be so confident as to take up as much time and space as Wolff? To not allow oneself to be moved.

  I am lost in thought as I glide through the rest of the day, sitting through classes even while my brain lingers resolutely on every curve of that glider, what it felt like to be belted in, and what the world looked like from inside a cockpit. As I file away every sensation to be savored later, there’s one thing I can’t seem to corral into just one image or moment. It’s part of the same lesson that’s been fluttering around me for the past few months.