Linden is watching my struggle to stay awake. I’ve disembarked from an airplane, discovered Gabriel in the place of nightmares, lied to my brother, and traveled from Florida to South Carolina. My mind is furious and awake, but my muscles will no longer oblige. The world is going in slow motion. Voices are muffled and far away. I hear Linden saying what sounds like “Come here,” and I feel my cheek settling against his knee, and then everything in the world is gone.
A bump in the road startles me awake. The limo is taking us down all the back roads I’ve come to recognize. When we stop in front of Reed’s house, the driver’s voice comes through an overhead speaker to tell us that Housemaster Vaughn has requested that we wait for him here. He’s tied up with an important project and cannot be disturbed until evening.
I wonder if the project is Rowan or Gabriel.
Cecily opens her door the moment it comes unlocked, and she’s running for the front door calling out for Elle and Reed.
My muscles are stiff, and Linden patiently waits for me to stumble outside before following suit. He closes the car door behind us and waits for the limo to drive away, before turning to me. “Feeling all right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re lying.” He pushes the hair back behind my shoulder, his knuckles brush against my neck, and I don’t know how I’m still standing. I want to fall into his arms. I want to tell him everything. My body aches and my heart is sick, and yet I’m excited about what I’ve seen. I’m excited to think that there could be a world better than what has been promised to us, and at the same time I’m frightened.
I want to take him with me. I want him to see that there’s more to our lives than dying and being saved.
“Linden?”
“What is it?” he asks.
“There is something I’d like to show you, when I’m able. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you about it now.” I look down at the grass drifting against our ankles, full of colorful weeds. “Until then you might think I’m crazy to say this, but I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. I really am glad we were born. I can’t imagine anything more important than being alive.”
I venture to look at him, and he’s not quite smiling. “You need sleep,” he says.
He doesn’t believe me, but that’s okay.
You’ll see, Linden. You’ll see cities breathing and changing color at all the different times of day. You’ll see what the world used to be and what it will be. You’ll believe me then.
There’s a loud crack like a gunshot. We turn in the direction of the sound. Another crack, and another. “Come on,” Linden says, and we run after the sounds that lead us behind the house, where Reed is taking an axe to his giant shed.
“Uncle Reed?” Linden says.
Reed stops when he sees us, and waves. “Hey!” he says. “You’re back! Come over and help me with this.”
“What is this?” Linden asks.
“The plane is ready to fly,” I say, daring to feel excitement.
“Damn straight, doll. There are axes in the other shed.”
Cecily comes out of the house, Bowen straddled to her hip. “What’s all the noise? What’s going on?” she says, handing the baby to Elle.
“We’re going to fly, kid,” Reed says, and hammers the axe into the shed again, causing it to shudder.
I can’t tell if Linden disapproves of what we’re doing, but he joins in anyway. It goes on for what feels like an hour, until we’re sweating and gasping, and it’s a wonder that it’s taking so long to destroy this thing, when it was hardly stable enough to stand on its own in the first place.
Reed says, “One more push and I think we’ve got it, kids. Make it count.”
With the last of our strength, we push our bodies against the same wall. Cecily’s feet are slipping in the grass, and she kicks to keep herself from falling.
I’ve seen plenty of destroyed buildings in my life, but I’ve never seen them actually coming down in such a way. It’s astounding the way the shed slants in one direction like a page that’s closing. Linden pulls Cecily and me away, and we watch as the walls crack and splinter around the shape of the plane. Pieces fall amid clouds of dirt and dust.
Reed busies himself clearing all of the debris from the plane. Cecily is bursting with giggles because it’s the greatest thing she’s ever seen; she didn’t quite believe Reed when he told her that he was hiding a plane in the shed.
By the time we’ve cleared away all of the shed debris from the plane’s wings and body, the sun is starting to set. “There’s still enough light to fly it,” Reed says. He’s climbing into the open door that leads to the cockpit.
“Are you sure it will start?” Cecily asks.
“We’re about to find out,” Reed says. “Climb in.”
Cecily moves forward, but Linden grabs her arm and says, “No, love. It isn’t safe.”
She wrests away from him. “Stay down here if you want to,” she says. “But I’m tired of you always holding me back.”
“Love . . . ”
She sees that she’s hurt him, and she softens. “It’ll be fun,” she says. “A little adventure.”
He pulls her toward him and he stoops down, and she rises on tiptoes so their foreheads can touch. “I almost lost you once,” he says.
“Nothing will happen.” She kisses him. “When are we ever going to have another chance to do something like this?”
Reed is annoyed by their display. He starts the engine, and the little propeller at the nose of the plane starts to spin; the ground is vibrating, sending waves through my body. We’re all choking on the dirt plumes. “Cowards!” he says. Just as he’s closing the door by the pilot’s seat, I hoist myself through it.
“I’ll go,” I say. Boarding this dilapidated plane without a tarmac and being flown by Reed won’t be the craziest thing I’ve experienced this week.
“There isn’t a runway,” Linden protests, trying to appeal to my better senses. “And my uncle has never flown—”
Reed slams the door shut and pats the empty seat beside him. The cockpit is so cramped that I can’t stand at full height. There are more gauges than I can count, levers pointing in different directions, but the pedals look at least vaguely similar to the ones in cars.
“You can be my copilot,” he says, gesturing again to the seat beside him.
The engine is shaking the entire plane. My heart is pounding, but in the best way. I want to fly for that horizon like I want my next breath. I’ve spent my whole life on the ground looking up. I’ve spent so many afternoons on Jenna’s trampoline reaching the greatest heights that I can. And now that I’ve had a taste of greater height, I don’t think I’ll ever have my fill.
Still, Linden does have a point. “Have you ever flown?” I ask.
Reed looks offended. “I’ve read,” he says. “I know what all of these gauges and switches mean. And I’ve been on a plane before; they were still popular when I was a boy, you know. Don’t look at me like that.”
Cecily is pounding on the door, and when Reed opens it, she pushes her way inside, Linden on her heels. “I talked him into it,” she says.
Linden looks less than enthusiastic.
“That’s the spirit!” Reed says, and he pats the copilot’s seat that was promised to me. “Best way to face your fears is to look straight at them with the best view in the house.”
After Linden sits down in the copilot’s seat, Cecily rakes both of her hands through his hair, and she kisses the top of his head and says something in a low voice. I see a nervous smile in his reflection in the glass.
There’s hardly room for Cecily and me to be standing here, and Reed says, “You girls are going to have to sit in back, at least while we take off.”
Cecily and I move through the curtain that takes us into the cramped passenger cabin, and we sit across from each other, knees touching. Cecily is gripping the edge of her seat. “I’m terrified,” she says, like it’s the greatest feeling to have.
The plane jerks and splutters, but then we’re moving, and with a squeal Cecily grabs my skirt like it’s a horse’s reins. Through the oval windows on each wall, we watch the grass begin speeding past us; the house is getting farther away; Elle, standing in the grass, cradles Bowen’s head in the curve of her neck to protect him from the wind we’re causing as we go forward and then up.
We don’t go nearly as high as Vaughn’s private jet took me, but we can see the top of Reed’s house, and then we’re high enough that we can’t see the cracks in the road or the weeds in the grass and we can’t tell which trees are dying. Everything looks tidy and healthy.
When Cecily and I peek through the curtain into the cockpit, Reed is laughing and Linden is pale.
“See?” Cecily says. “It’s not so bad.”
Linden looks like he wants to throw up. He’s focusing on his shoes. I wedge myself between the two pilot seats. “Pretend we aren’t going to land down there,” I tell him. “Pretend that we’re going to fly straight across the ocean to a place where everyone lives to be a hundred.”
In answer he raises his eyes to the windshield for the first time.
We fly over empty fields and little gray lakes and sparsely scattered houses. We go in a long loop that eventually leads us back to Reed’s.
Linden is still too anxious to speak, but it’s starting to register that he’s flying, that there’s more to the world than what we can see from standing in one place.
I lean over Linden, cup my hand around his ear, and say, “There’s a whole world of this.”
He turns his head to face me, and our noses almost touch. He sees my smile, sees that I’m hiding something, and I think he understands. “Really?” he says.
Cecily and Reed are talking to each other, excitedly pointing out the scenery, and they aren’t paying attention to us.
“I’ve seen more than this,” I tell him. “I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t either.”
The skepticism in his eyes is intermingled with hope. A year ago he wouldn’t have dared hope for anything beyond the mansion walls. I like to think I’ve had something to do with that.
“From the start I’ve never known what surprises you’d bring,” he says.
“Not all of them are bad, are they?” I say.
“Mostly good,” he says. “But I’ve developed a habit of believing you when I shouldn’t.”