Such a Rush(73)
Author: Jennifer Echols

The engine vibrated dangerously. The controls were sluggish and the plane was hard to steer. I pointed the nose for the airport and hoped I would make it. All the while I was looking around for places to land—a field until we passed it, a straight stretch of two-lane road until we passed that. Puffy white clouds gathered over the ocean, a stereotypical heaven scene from a movie.

“Leah,” Grayson said over the radio. He recited the number of the channel Hall Aviation used.

I switched to that channel. “I’m here.”

“What are you doing?” We were both using the Chuck Yeager voice like his dad had taught us, but even through the radio, I could hear he was breathless.

“Mark hit a tree. He’s out cold. Controls are mushy. Part of the prop is gone and I’m about to shut the engine down. Call 911.”

The plane dipped suddenly before dashing up again. I fought the controls to steady it. Static sounded in my ears. I realized it was my own gasp, which had triggered the voice-activated radio as if I’d said something.

I turned the engine off so at least the controls would work better and I could fly the plane like a glider. The propeller came to an ominous stop. The silence in my trailer had never been as awful.

“Make a pass and let us see the damage before you try to land,” Grayson said.

“Negative,” I said. “I can’t stay up that long.”

“Then skip the airport and go for the ocean.”

“Negative. Mark will drown before they get to him.” I couldn’t swim, either, but if I survived the crash, I could probably cling to a piece of the airplane until the Coast Guard rescued me. Mark would be lost.

“That f**king—” Grayson’s voice cut off suddenly as he remembered we were on a public frequency.

I knew what he meant. This was Mark’s fault. But it was my responsibility now. I reminded Grayson, “What matters most is other people, then me, then the airplane, then the banner.” I didn’t have a banner this time, but Mr. Hall’s rule still applied. No matter what Mark had done, he now fell in the category of “other people,” and I wasn’t going to lose him if I could help it.

I heard static in my headphones again as I breathed a sigh of relief. The runway had come into view, and the long row of hangars. Flying closer, I could see that people lined the tarmac—not as many as had watched the Chinook, because it was still so early in the morning, but I was the show of the day. In front of the Hall Aviation hangar, Molly folded her arms like she was cold. Alec’s hand was on Grayson’s back. Both Grayson’s hands were on his cowboy hat. I couldn’t see them well at that distance, but I knew them from what they wore and the way they stood.

Grayson put one hand to his mouth and spoke into Mr. Hall’s radio. “Leah, you’re missing your left gear.”

“Roger.” Looking over the side of the cockpit, I saw the left front wheel of the tricycle underneath the plane had been sheared off. That meant when I landed, the left side of the airplane would have nothing to touch down underneath it.

I’d better keep my wing tip up as long as I could, then, until I slowed down.

Static sounded in my ears. Then again. I wanted to move the microphone farther from my mouth so I couldn’t hear my own breathing, but I didn’t dare take my hands off the controls.

Underneath me, dark grass flashed past, then lighter gray pavement. I was over the runway, speeding just above the asphalt. Now that the broken engine and propeller weren’t throwing the plane off balance, I could have been landing an undamaged airplane. I held fast to that denial, because it kept me calm. Too late it occurred to me that I probably should have been praying.

The plane vibrated as the right landing gear touched down.

Way ahead of me in the grassy strip between the tarmac and the runway, Grayson and Alec and Molly were running. Grayson’s cowboy hat flew off. I wished they would stay away, because if the metal ground against the asphalt on landing and kicked up one spark that lit leaking gas, the plane would explode.

I pitched the left wing up a little to keep the plane level until we slowed, but the Stearman was old and heavy and it was no use. The wing kept sinking, astonished that the landing gear wasn’t there to support it, feeling for its place on the ground.

The wing screeched, screamed, skidded across the asphalt. Slammed to the ground and bounced violently upward.

Sparks and pieces of the wing flew over my head.

The plane veered sharply to the left. The trees loomed in front of us.

I gripped the controls. The trees came fast and I was about to slam into them. In my mind I was taking off again, in control of my airplane, sailing over the trees and over the ocean and into the clouds.

I let one sob escape. I heard it in my headphones.

I was close enough to the tree about to kill me that I could tell from the bark it was the same species of palm as the one outside my bedroom.

My stomach left me. Every atom in my body was forced forward and jerked back.

The plane stopped with a noise so loud that it sounded like nothing.

No, the noise was static in my headphones, and now my own screaming. My eardrums would burst. I reached up to push my headphones off.

Warm hands fumbled across my head and in my lap. Arms wrapped around my chest and pulled.

“Leah! Open your eyes.”

I blinked at Grayson. We were standing safe outside the mangled plane, under the trees at the edge of the runway. But I couldn’t catch my breath, gasping from screaming so long.

He tossed my headphones away. He took my goggles off. He put his hands on either side of my face and peered at me. My double reflection in his sunglass lenses was weird and convex, my dark curls wild, my eyes huge.

“Are you hurt?” he asked me.

“Is Mark dead?” I croaked.

“No. The treetop he plowed through got him in the head. His arm doesn’t look right either.” Grayson nodded toward the wreckage. The plane had come to rest against the trees, almost like I’d parked it there on purpose, except that the prop was mangled, the wings were torn, the tail was torn, the left gear was gone, and the whole thing listed to the side. Alec and Molly and the airport mechanic crowded around Mark in the front seat.

Grayson put his hands in my hair. “Your head okay?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Neck okay?” He slid his hands down to my shoulders. “Anything sore?”

“No.”

“Is she okay?” Molly shouted.

“She’s okay,” Grayson shouted back.