Positively Beautiful (35 page)

I still haven't decided if I'm going to go to the FAA hearing tomorrow. It was one thing to write a letter telling the FAA I wanted to appeal their decision, but when I got the letter
back setting my hearing date … it all got real, then. If I don't go, I'm guaranteed to never fly again. If I do … I don't know. I don't know if I can do it.

“Why not?” Stew asks, his words muffled because his head is in the engine compartment.

“I've got a seriously important hair appointment. Highlights, bob, the whole works,” I say.

Stew pulls his head out and glares at me.

I shrug. “I'm scared,” I say simply.

“Yeah? So?”

“I wish I were braver. I wish I could go out and do all these things and not be scared of it all. But I can't. I'm not like my dad. He wasn't scared of anything.”

Stew doesn't say anything for a while, and then he stands up and wipes his hands. He should look ridiculous with his big belly and tufts of scattered hair, but somehow he doesn't. He points a thick, oil-stained finger at me. “Justin Bailey not scared? Girl, you don't know what you're talking about. He was a great aviator, one of the best I've ever seen. And before every mission, he would throw up. Puke his guts out. He was that scared. But you know what? Afterward, he got up there and did what needed to be done. I think you're confusing bravery with stupidity. Stupidity is not knowing enough to be scared. Bravery is being scared but doing it anyway.”

I stare at Stew openmouthed. I don't know what to say.

“If your dad was here right now he would tell you to get your butt to that hearing tomorrow because you need to fly. Just like him. You both need to be
going
somewhere to feel truly alive. I knew him well, and you're just like him, even if you
don't realize it. I flew in the ‘missing man' flyover at his funeral, you know. Three planes in formation where there should be four. We do it when a good pilot, a good man, dies. That was your dad. A good man and a good pilot, and I have a feeling he was a good dad as well. He would want you to do this.”

I stay up most of the night writing. As soon as I get one draft done, I delete it and start over. Around four in the morning, I sigh, and close my laptop. I'm too tired to even brush my teeth, and without thinking I shut off the light. As the room goes pitch-dark, I feel the familiar panic start. My mouth goes dry and my heart starts thumping.

Really? This is the girl who flew three hundred miles on her first solo, caught and cooked her own fish, and stayed in a tent in the middle of nowhere all by herself? This is the girl who has held her mom's hand through countless chemo treatments, and her head as she's puked afterward? And you're still afraid of the DARK?

I take a deep breath and make my way to my bed, guided only by the orange glow of my clock.

And then, for the first time since I was six, I go to sleep with the lights out.

The next morning when I go down for breakfast, Mom is lying on the couch with a glass of water and a thermometer. The new pain medicine they have her on is good stuff. The sight of her without eyelashes and eyebrows is still surprising, even
though it's been months. She looks so frail and small and
old
I want to take her in my arms and never let go.

“Are you going to do it?” she asks, dabbing at her nose, which is always running. No nose hairs equals drippy nose.

“I think so.”

“Erin … I know I've not been all that supportive of your flying. I wasn't on board with your dad's flying either. This one thing that meant so much to him, and I never really shared it with him. I want you to know that if flying makes you happy, then it makes me happy too.”

“Okay, Mom,” I say, leaning forward and kissing the top of her head.

“It's important to me for … for you to know you are capable of touching the world. Don't live your life stingily. I did it for far too long. I can't do anything about that now, but you can live better. Will you do that for me? Will you live your life to the best of your ability?” She is floaty with the medicine, but her eyes are blazing with determination.

“I just don't know … I don't know if I'm brave enough to say the words I need to say. That's what I need to do, but I'm still not sure I can do it.”

“You can,” she says simply as I grab my bag and head for the door. “I know you can.”

“At least that's one of us,” I say.

It's as bad as I thought. A courtroom like in the movies, a judge sitting behind a big bench, me at one table by myself, and the FAA guy and a lawyer at another. Several other people
are there, but the only one I care about is Stew. He nods at me as I go up the aisle, and I force a sickly smile. The judge begins the proceedings with a lot of mumbo jumbo, and says that he plans to give me some leeway due to my young age and lack of counsel.

It goes downhill from there. People get up to talk about me, and they are condescending and brutal in their condemnation. I am
unstable
, they say, a threat to myself and others in the air. They drone on and on, listing my crimes, and then there's a surprise. Mr. Jarad, dressed in a suit, comes to take the stand. I hadn't even seen him come in. I close my eyes, because it's one thing to hear strangers talk about me, but Mr. Jarad
knows
me and it will be almost unbearable to hear him say the same ugly things as these other people.

Mr. Jarad states his name and profession, and it turns out he's really “Dr. Jarad,” with a bunch of very respectable-sounding credentials. He talks about me, saying that he's been seeing me professionally for a year and then he starts using big medical words that seem to boil down to me being a normal teenager who had been going through an incredible amount of stress in the days leading up to my flying away. The judge looks thoughtful after Mr. Jarad says in his medical opinion I am not a risk to myself or others, and that no, he does not think I would act in the same reckless manner again. As Mr. Jarad walks back to his seat, he winks at me, and I see that he's wearing sneakers with his high-dollar suit.

Then Stew gets up.

“I knew her dad,” he says. “He flew in Desert Storm. She's just like him, they're aviators. It's in their blood. She's a
numbskull for doing what she did, but, Jesus, who among us weren't numbskulls at seventeen? When she's in the air she's more focused on flying than the majority of adults I take up. Grounding her, it's like cutting the wings off a bird. See what I'm saying?”

Then it's my turn.

“If you don't mind,” I say, standing, my hands shaking so hard I have trouble fishing my notes out of my bag, “I have something I'd like to read.”

The judge shrugs. “Go ahead.”

I take a deep breath and look down at my paper.

And then I speak:

Flying solo was one of the scariest things I've ever done. I practiced and practiced, but I wasn't sure I could do it on my own. As long as I had my instructor in the seat beside me, I knew he would save me if I messed up. Maybe I wouldn't solo at all. It would be easier not to, it would be easier just to fly along for the rest of my life as a perpetual passenger.

But in the end, I did it. I soloed. I can honestly say it was a disaster. You know that. That's why I'm here.

I think you want to know why I did it. I wish I could give you a good explanation, but I can't. My mom was getting ready to start chemo again, I lost my best friend, I failed physics, and the guy I thought liked me chose another girl. It felt like life piled up on me all at once. You're not interested in all of that. I get that. And I suppose, that's kind of the point. Because when
it came to flying, none of that mattered. When you're in a plane, and a thunderstorm comes up and your instruments fail, and your motor stops, you can't just go someplace else. You can't give up. You have to keep flying.

No matter what.

Learning to fly, to live, is
hard
. You make mistakes, and you have to live with them, to forgive yourself. Someone once told me that to live, you have to be willing to make mistakes. Well, I made a big one. I know that. All I can tell you is that I learned from it. I know I can't just check out when things get bad. I have to keep on going, for myself, and for the people I love.

Hopefully that will make me a better pilot if you give me the chance. I'm not there yet. I still have a lot left to learn and I'm beginning to think that I'll be making mistakes and learning from them the rest of my life. I want to keep flying. Things may go wrong, things may seem overwhelming, but I know now I can't give up.

I look up. The room is silent.

“Please,” I say. “Don't ground me. Let me keep flying.”

The day after the judge decides to let me fly again, Mom decides she has to have Dino's pizza to celebrate, and that I need to go get it immediately. I agree, say, “That sounds
stellar
!”

We both know she doesn't want pizza. We both know anything other than water, and a lot of times that too, comes back up immediately. She is trying for some sense of normalcy for me, and I play along because it makes her feel as if she is in control of
something
. She keeps talking about planning a big party for my eighteenth birthday next week, and I know it frustrates her that she just
can't
. It's too much right now.

I swerve the car back and forth in the lane, pretending it's Tweety Bird, thinking about how it will feel to fly again. I still have a long way to go before I get my pilot's license, but
at least I won the privilege to keep taking lessons. I want to fly so badly, so why do I feel guilty about it too?

When I go in to get the pizza, I see Chaz and Trina sitting in a booth.

I slide in across from them.

“How is she?” Trina asks immediately, seeing my face.

People ask me all the time. It's got to where I don't know what to say because it's almost a rhetorical question. I mean they want to know—some of them, like Trina, genuinely care—but they want to hear things like
She's hanging in there
or
You know that mom of mine, she keeps a smile on her face no matter what!
What they don't want to hear is
That mom of mine, she pooped the bed again!
or
You should see Mom's belly, it's swollen up like she's nine months pregnant and she's all yellow, even the whites of her eyes!
Or, even,
The doctor yesterday said we needed to be preparing for the end.

“She's hanging in there,” I say.

“Sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Trina squeezes my leg and I smile at her before giving a let's-move-on wave of my hand.

“Yeah, so,” Trina says. “We were talking about Michael. You heard he dropped out of school?”

I nod. A month before graduation and Michael stopped coming to school.

“Faith is trying to talk him into going to California with her when she goes to Stanford in the fall. She wants to get him away from here. He can get his GED there and maybe go to a community college.”