I opened the other window. Along with warm air, the heavy scent of honeysuckle rushed in, and the growl of Alec’s plane. He dropped out of the sky and dipped low over the grass, headed for the banner pickup between the poles. The sight was frightening. He looked like he was going too slow to remain airborne. But I knew from experience that this was what a banner pickup looked like, and there was no getting the human eye used to it. The nose pitched up sharply. The engine groaned. The plane slowed even more, perilously close to losing lift and dropping like a stone. The banner, which had been all but invisible sleeping in the grass, protested being roused. It wiggled and thrashed and finally, when it couldn’t resist any longer, unfurled to its full length and height in a diagonal line behind Alec’s still-climbing plane: 4$ COCKTALLS LIV BAND CAPTAN FRANKS LOUNG.

Wow, Zeke couldn’t spell. If that episode back in the hangar was a sample of how Grayson would act for the rest of the week—an awful lot like his father—he was going to blow a gasket.

I turned back to Mark, who was knocking his head repeatedly against the gas pump. Something wasn’t right—something other than Mark. I had pumped enough gas into airplanes that I could tell. Then I realized what it was. I jumped out of the cockpit. “Mark, whoa, whoa, whoa!”

He kept his forehead on the gas pump but turned to look at me. “Back so soon? I knew you’d change your mind.”

I stopped the gas pump, carefully took the heavy nozzle out of Mark’s gas tank, and hit the button for the electric motor to coil the hose back up. Quickly I checked the area for sparks, small fires, anything else unusual. While Mark watched, I uncoiled the grounding clip, pulled it across the asphalt, and attached it to the tailpipe of the crop duster. “Didn’t your uncle teach you never to pump gas without grounding your airplane first? You could cause a spark and blow the whole place up.”

“That never happens,” he said.

Which was true. But only because everybody was grounding their airplanes before they pumped gas, except him.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” I insisted. “A spark that ignited the underground gas tank would take half the airport with it.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Some way to go. Boom! At least it wouldn’t hurt.” He cocked his head to one side, then closed his eye like moving his head had hurt. He eased his head back to its normal position. “What are you doing in that dead guy’s plane?”

The confrontation was inevitable now. Better to have it while nobody was watching. “I’m flying for Hall Aviation.”

“No!” he shouted.

I shrank back at the violence of his reaction.

The next second, the violence was gone, and he gave me a charming smile. “Come fly for my uncle! I’ll take you up…”

“When?” I prompted him.

“Soon. Patrick’s having a party tonight. Come with me and we’ll talk about it.”

“Take that ‘blond’ friend of yours.” I made finger quotes around her bleach-blond hair with black roots. “I have to get to work.”

He must have been in a lot of trouble with his uncle and very late, because with only a few more pointed looks up and down my body, he taxied back to Mr. Simon’s hangar.

Standing in the cockpit doorway and hauling the heavy hose on top of the wing, I gassed up my own plane on the Hall Aviation account, then carefully retracted the hose and the grounding wire. My heart sped faster and faster as I cranked the engine again, slipped on the headphones, and taxied to the end of the runway.

Here I paused, going through Mr. Hall’s checklist in my mind. The hand controls and foot pedals moved the flaps and the rudder the way they were supposed to. I put my finger on every dial in the instrument panel in turn, making sure each was working. The meter confirmed I had a full tank of gas. The altimeter worked. Finally I ran up the engines and checked the magnetos. The plane vibrated like it would shake to pieces, but all three Pipers were like that. There wasn’t much else I could do to find out whether the plane was working properly short of flying and crashing.

Pressing the button to broadcast over the radio, I announced my departure into the mike at my lips. My childish voice in my own headphones surprised me every time. I sounded nothing like a pilot.

Remembering what Grayson had told me about Mark’s vindictive landing after a basketball game, I looked around for Mark. He’d parked the crop duster in front of Mr. Simon’s hangar. The rest of the airport was clear. The skies were clear. I looked a second time, because the only people saving me from crashing into another plane were the other pilot and me.

I turned from the taxiway onto the runway for the first time since the day Mr. Hall died. The wind was calm. Taking off wouldn’t be hard. I had done it a thousand times. The butterflies in my stomach weren’t from fear. They were from anticipation.

The hair on my arms stood up. I squeezed the controls to brace myself so I wouldn’t shiver with the chill of wanting. Normal people got that feeling when they quit smoking cigarettes. I had gotten it then too.

Normal people did not get that feeling when faced with danger.

Here it came. I sped the plane down the runway. All I had to do was keep it fast and straight. The shape of the wings and airspeed and physics did the rest. The plane wanted to fly.

Suddenly it soared. The view out the front of the windshield changed gradually, so it was hard to tell how high I was. But out the side window, the plane separated from its shadow on the asphalt like Siamese twins cut loose from each other. The ground rushed away. The trees, so towering and textured before, flattened into uniform treetops like a field of grass. As I turned the plane, the ocean two miles away glinted into view. This time I couldn’t suppress the shiver of pleasure.

I announced my banner pickup into the mike, cringing at the sound of my baby voice. No wonder the boys had made fun of me and Mark hadn’t taken me seriously. I wouldn’t hire a pilot who sounded like me, either. My anger drove me to throttle the plane higher than I needed to as I dove for the grassy strip beside the runway. Lining up with the posts where my banner waited, I raced along the ground, the plane almost meeting its twin shadow again.

At the Hall Aviation hangar, Grayson stood with his arms crossed, watching me.

At the Simon Air Agriculture hangar, Mark stood next to his plane with his hands on his hips, expecting me to fail.

I threw my first hook out the window.

Held the altitude steady.

Trusted my own instincts and the feel of the airplane, like Mr. Hall had taught me, trying not to overthink. Just feel.

The poles passed under me. I had no way of knowing whether the hook hanging from my plane had snagged the bar on the end of the banner. Not yet. I waited for the feel of it, refusing to lose my cool just because two boys who had never believed in me were staring me down.

When the plane had traveled a long way from the poles—too long, it seemed—I felt it. The engine whined higher and the entire plane resisted forward motion, as if it were a paddleball stretched to the end of its rubber band and bouncing backward. I throttled down to give the plane more power to tow the banner. I pulled the controls to point the nose up into heaven, a climb almost steep enough to stall. The banner anchored me to the ground with its weight. The plane shuddered like it would tear apart.

seven

The engine groaned. But I kept going up. The shadow of the plane fell away in the grass. An invisible hand gave me a boost when the end of the banner left the ground, as if severing that last tie to the Earth was all we needed to propel us forward and up. I glanced down at Grayson, tiny on the ground now.