When She Flew (8 page)

8

A
fter I ran back into the camp, Pater had a look on his face like he wanted to be sick, like the feeling I had after the vanilla milk shake. He wasn’t mad at me. He should have been, but he wasn’t. He said, Well, then, I guess it’s time to see if the Emergency Plan works.

This is our Emergency Plan:

Our Emergency Plan is a secret. We’ve added to it since but we started it a long time ago, back when we didn’t have our tree house yet, or candles, or lanterns, or anything to do once it got dark at night but sit in our tent, or if it wasn’t raining, out by the fire—always a small enough fire to put out quickly.

Pater would tell me stories about all kinds of things, like how he used to go camping with his dad and brother, Robert, in Colorado when he was a boy, and fish for trout in the Platte River, how the fish would spew their eggs all over the place when he and Robert were trying to take them off the hook. His dad would fry them with their heads on with some potatoes and onions, and Pater said that was some of the best food he’d ever eaten. Once he even told me about when his father left to go live with another woman in Nebraska, how his mother had run after his Ford Bronco for half a mile. Pater laughed like that was funny, but his eyes didn’t look happy. His dad came back to live with them after a few months, and they were all supposed to act like it had never happened. I was surprised that these were the same people I knew as Grandma and Grandpa Wiggs, who I’d always thought were the most upstanding people in the world, but I also felt special, being told this story. It meant I was growing up, even though it made me realize that there weren’t perfect people in the world, the way I had always thought.

I told Pater things, too. I told him what I’d learned in school while he was away at the war, showing off my times tables and tongue twisters. I’d also tell him stories I made up on the spot: silly ones about enchanted animals and princesses, or scary stories about monsters and dark caves. I never told him everything about while he was gone, though. Even when I was young, I knew better than to get him all riled up. Now that it was just the two of us, it was peaceful, and I wanted more than anything to keep it that way.

Memorizing the Emergency Plan was a game we played, like “identify the birdcalls” or “how many words can you think of that start with the letter R?” When I messed up, Pater never got angry. He’d just remind me how the next part started, and then I could remember the rest. I never thought of it as something real, something we may have to do someday. We heard campers and hikers every once in a while, but only because they’re noisy. They were never very near and we were always quiet, so they’d never have found us.

But now, here we were, packing our emergency backpacks and making sure we had everything that might identify us. Pater reached down and pulled all of my writings from the book crate by my mattress. We can’t leave these here, he said. You can take as much as you’re willing to carry, but you know what we have to do with the rest.

Tears prickled my eyes and the heaviness of what I’d done sank harder into my chest. I took the pile of papers from his hands, all mismatched and different colors, my pencil markings smudged on the backs of “Work from Home” and “Lose Weight Now—Ask Me How!” flyers and used envelopes. His voice softened. Why don’t you pick a couple of favorites? he said. Then we’ll hide the rest. Maybe they’ll still be okay when we come back for them. But you have to hurry, Lindy.

I picked a report I’d done on the Swainson’s thrush because Pater marked it with an A+, and a poem I wrote about Crystal a long time ago when I still missed her. I folded them neatly and slid them into my backpack next to my books and school papers. Pater took the rest and put them in a paper bag, then stuffed it into his pack. Any other day and I would have kept the story about the princess and the great blue heron who turns into a boy, but I most especially wanted to get rid of that story.

Pater pulled up the rope ladder and threw our backpacks to the ground. He looked at me and said, No matter what happens, stick to the plan, okay, Lindy? Everything will turn out all right if we stick to the plan.

My heart was pounding, but I nodded and then he turned and jumped down like a flying squirrel with his arms wide, his camouflage jacket stretched between them like forest skin. He landed with a hard thud and a gasp. His back. That was how he hurt it in the first place in the war, by jumping from a building that was exploding. At least he was luckier than his brother. Robert died before he had the chance to jump, and that hurts Pater even more than his back, I know, because he only went to Iraq to take care of his brother. I think that’s why he tries extra-hard to take good care of me.

“Are you all right?” I cried.

He waved his hand, like, Don’t worry, though he stayed hunched over too long before straightening up. Come on then, he said. His face was expressionless, but an odd color, like the inside of a green grape when you peel it.

I’ve never liked jumping from high places, even though Pater taught me how to land on my feet, then tuck and roll. I’m always afraid I will spin out of control as I’m falling, that I won’t land the right way and I’ll break something, and then we’ll really be in trouble because we have no money for doctors. I sat on the edge of the platform, trying to make myself push off the way Pater had. I began to shake and I wanted to be sick, and I thought Pater would hate me for being so afraid, but he kept looking up at me, talking smooth and low, saying, It’s okay Lindy. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.

Even after I’d ruined everything.

I turned to give Sweetie-pie one last look. She was watching me, and blinked twice before closing her eyes and swiveling her head away from me. Everything about a bird is made for flight: the way they breathe, the shape and design of their bodies, their weight. I wished I could fly, but even if I were covered with feathers, I would not be able to avoid gravity.

Finally, I shoved the heels of my hands as hard as I could against the wood and then I was as close to flying as I could be, greens and browns whirling around me before the rush of air blew the silver dress up over my head so that all I could see were sparkles, and morels falling from the pocket, landing with soft pocks all around me as I hit the ground feetfirst and tucked and rolled.

I sat up and pulled the dress off over my head. I looked up at Pater and he was laughing, shaking his head. His face was the right color again. That dress has got to go, he said. It’s just going to trip you up if we have to move quickly. I nodded and stuffed it deep inside my pack. Maybe I would throw it away next time we passed a Dumpster. It wasn’t beautiful anymore, not with all the wear and tear it got, and maybe it never was. Maybe it was just my wanting it to be that had made it so.

It was Wednesday, our day to go to the library, but Pater said we should go to our hiding place instead, up over the ridge from our camp, behind the huge fallen cedar. Pater says the cedar is probably one of the most ancient trees in the forest, it’s so big around, and must have fallen right before we got here five years ago, because back then it still looked like a normal tree. Now the bark falls away in strips, and the pileated wood-peckers have gotten to it, carving out rectangular holes with their pecking, trying to get at insects, leaving places for other, smaller birds to roost. Red sawdust carpets the ground around it, scenting the air with cedar perfume.

Our forest has very few areas of old-growth trees left. I studied this in Miss Frischmann’s book; I even taught something to Pater, because he did not know this before. We live in the next highest stage to old growth, where the trees are eighty to two hundred fifty years old. That makes them very tall, and when you look up, you see long, naked trees reaching to the sky, and only then are there leaves or boughs of needles. It’s like the green stuff needs to be on top, where there is brighter light. Down where we are the light is always silvery gray and the air moist and cool. It’s like being inside the biggest, most beautiful church in the world, especially on a sunny day when the sun is shining way up high through the top branches, making green and blue windows of light.

We sat in our cleared-out space behind the big cedar on a blanket, eating dried apples and peanut butter sandwiches. It was like being on a picnic until we heard the chopper coming.

Pater looked up. We stayed very quiet. It moved slowly overhead, so slowly that I thought it had stopped. All they can see is canopy, Pater said, but he was saying it to himself, like he sometimes does when he’s nervous about us getting caught. His forehead was shiny with sweat. Finally, the chopper moved away, and it was quiet again.

I couldn’t believe that anyone would go to such lengths to look for me. Why would they? I wasn’t lost. I wasn’t in trouble. Everything was fine. But somehow I knew it was looking for me. I finished my sandwich and lay on the blanket, tucking myself tight up against the length of the tree, inhaling its scent. I would have fallen asleep if it hadn’t been for the chopper coming back, then going away, back and forth, back and forth.

Pater sat with his back to the tree, pretending to whittle something with his penknife, staring up at the sky, sometimes saying how there was no way they could see us. At first I thought we’d have to wait there for a while until they gave up, until we were sure no one was coming, and then we could go back to our tree house, and Pater would climb up and throw down the rope ladder, and then we would go to bed, and in the morning everything would be the way it had always been. That’s what waiting a long time does to you, makes you start to invent stories to make yourself feel better. I’d been making up stories my whole life, but I started to realize this one wasn’t going to come true. The chopper kept coming back, and Pater shook his head, said they probably wouldn’t stop until they found us.

The last thing I heard him say before I fell asleep was, “Get some rest. We’ll walk out after dark.”

9

A
t nearly 20:00 hours, the light turned a duller shade of green; the air cooled to lukewarm. Jess, Jenkins, and Takei walked along the creek now, shoes muddy and pants soaked from the knees down, while the others climbed the ridge above them.

“We’ve only got an hour of light left,” Jenkins said, stopping and removing his cap. His short, wiry hair glistened with sweat against his scalp. “We still have to find our way out of here. Looks like we’ll be doing that in the dark.” He ran his hand over his head, wiped his face with his forearm and pulled his cap back on.

It didn’t matter to Jess; they weren’t going to stop. How could you ever stop, knowing a kid might be in trouble?

They came upon a swampy spot that looked like it might connect to another stream. “Let’s try this way,” Jess said, and the two men followed her, even though it led them farther away from the others. They followed the soupy depression until it became an actual creek, though a tiny one, only three to four inches at its widest spots. Jess knew her choice was popular, though, as the stream was surrounded by good flat earth to walk along, with foliage so beautiful she wanted to tiptoe through the ferns and leafy plants that nature tended so meticulously. Was it bad karma to step on them? Would she come back as a plant in her next life and be trodden upon by some boot-clomping hiker? Jess shook her head. She was getting punchy. The sense she’d had earlier, that they were traveling through some other world, some other time and place, shimmered in the periphery.