Chapter 6

Mark and Jackie went to church perhaps once every third or fourth Sunday. In the past they’d been rather more active church-goers, but things had happened and church was no longer as big a presence in their lives as it once had been.

Rebecca and Brianna, to give their correct names, hadn’t been raised as church-going kids. Early on Mark and Jackie agreed they weren’t going to force church down their throats, but instead give them the opportunity to make up their own minds. Both Becca and Bree occasionally went with Mark and Jackie as a show of good faith, but as kids they still considered Sunday mornings to be a great time for sleeping.

Well, one of them did. Becca was legendary for her resistance to getting up much before noon unless there was school, athletic practice, or a game involved. Bree, typically, went the other way. When Mark and Jackie got up on the weekends, they were often greeted by Bree, who was usually curled up in a living room chair with a book and Perky, the largest and laziest cat, and she had almost always been there for some time.

Thus it was that when Becca came stumbling down the stairs yawning and scratching herself along about ten o’clock the next morning – a very early time for her, under the circumstances – she found Bree curled up in her favorite chair, book in hand, with Perky in her lap. “No flying today?” Becca asked.

“Haven’t you looked out the window?” Bree snorted. “It’s overcast and dead. If I went up, I’d be right back down before you could straighten out the towline.”

Becca just rolled her eyes as she headed toward the refrigerator; as athletic as she was, she needed to keep up her strength. A minute or two later she came wandering back into the room, carrying a bottle of soda, a sandwich, and a bowl of chips – perhaps not the healthiest of food for an athlete, but it served her needs: something quick. She glanced at the book and said, “That’s not Spirit of St. Louis,” she commented.

“No, I finished that,” Bree replied. “This is Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. It’s one of the real classics. I learn something new every time I read it.”

“You spend too much time reading,” Becca charged. She may have loved her little sister, but was sure she was pretty weird, too. “You need to get out and have some fun.”

It wasn’t the first time Bree had heard Becca say that. Not even the thousand first. Maybe ten thousand and first. Usually Bree ignored it; she’d learned to do it long before. This time she decided to answer. “I consider this fun,” she said, casually scratching Perky’s ear.

“You would,” Becca said. “You’re such a wallflower you don’t know what fun is. When is the last time you hung out with friends?”

“I had lunch with Autumn Trevetheck a couple times last week,” Bree replied. “We had fun talking about Game of Thrones.”

“Yeah, like the two of you talking about books is fun,” Becca sneered, half in jest.

“It is for me.”

Becca sat down on the arm of the chair. “That’s not what I mean and you know it,” she said. “You need to make some friends and have a good time, at least once in a while. You sit around here reading all the time, and I suppose that’s all right, but it just seems sort of dull to me.”

Bree snagged a chip out of Becca’s bowl. “I’m perfectly happy the way things are,” she said, even though she didn’t really mean it. It would be nice to have friends the way Becca did, but she just wasn’t good at socializing with people, and she didn’t have the sports that Becca played as a way to get to know others. There just wasn’t much other way in Spearfish Lake for a kid who liked to read and study to get to know people.

“Bullshit,” Becca replied. “And you know it as much as I do. You really ought to go out for sports or something, just so you can meet more kids.”

“It’s getting a little late for that,” Bree protested. “And besides, I’m no good at it. Not like you are, anyway, and I really don’t care for sports.”

“You could try,” Becca told her. “Look, Myleen and I are going to get together for a little sand court two-on-two. You could come along and we can rotate a little.”

“Doesn’t interest me, and for a couple of reasons. First, your friends are probably all going to be seniors, and like you, they’ll be gone next spring. Second, I’ll look like a clumsy idiot. I don’t need a third reason.”

“Suit yourself,” Becca replied, giving up on what she realized was a weak and poor attempt to get her little sister out of that chair for something besides flying. “But you need to do something.”

“Why?”

“Get real,” Becca snorted, and plopped down in a nearby chair. “The odds are that this time next year you won’t even have me to hang around with, not that we seem to do it much anymore.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Bree replied gloomily, “but I don’t need you rubbing it in. It would have been nice if I was an athlete, if I was popular. But I’m not like you. Ever since we came up here you seem to have been good friends with everyone, and on a lot of teams. All I’ve ever gotten is splinters in my butt from sitting on bleachers. That hasn’t gotten me very many friends.”

Boy, is she moody this morning or what? Becca thought. After the day she’d had yesterday, Bree had been in pretty good spirits all evening, but now it looked like a reaction had set in. Well, she couldn’t have a day like that every day, but it seemed like Bree’s down, grumpy moods had become a little more common as time passed. “You know Bree,” she said, holding up her sandwich, “it might help if you were to meet things halfway. You’re a pretty awesome kid, you know that and I know that. But nobody else seems to know it.”

Bree slipped a bookmark into Stick and Rudder and closed it. “Becca, there’s an old Chinese proverb, ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ I know that. Oh, Christ do I know it. I got it drummed into my head my first day in school here, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Is that still bothering you? That was years ago.” Becca knew about the incident, but still didn’t know all the details. Back when Mark and Jackie had first taken the two of them in, there had been three weeks left of the school year. Becca and Bree had been sent to school anyway, in hopes they might start making friends and get used to their new home.

It had worked out well for Becca. From the first day she’d been on the eighth grade girls’ softball team, and had met Myleen and other kids she still was friends with. Bree had headed off to sixth grade dressed reasonably nicely – not go-to-church nicely, either – with the good intent of trying to make a good impression and not be her usual shy self. From what Becca had been able to find out she was teased mercilessly for being stuck up and putting on airs. Becca knew it had hurt her sister at the time, and clearly it was still being felt. A few cruel remarks by some idiot kids . . . what a waste.

“Bree,” Becca said, trying a different tack, “Myleen and I watched you struggle to stay aloft over the club yesterday.”

“You were there?” Bree sighed. “I should have known it.”

“Hey, it’s fun, and Uncle Mark and Aunt Jackie think it’s OK if I don’t have any problem with it, and I don’t. But Myleen was so shocked when I told her it was you flying the 1-26 she almost pissed her panties, that is if she’d had any on at all.”

“So now Myleen knows, too,” Bree shook her head.

“I told her not to tell anyone,” Becca sighed. “She doesn’t want it known around school that her family are all club members, and you can guess why. That nail would really stick up, as you say. She understands, and I don’t think she’ll say anything. But that’s not the point. The point is there aren’t any other kids in the school doing anything that awesome, and it’s really pretty cool. It’s something special.”

“It’s a nail waiting to get hammered down,” Bree replied, her grumpiness showing even more. “And that’s what’s going to happen. When I came back yesterday I had a ton of altitude, so I thought I’d show off a little just to celebrate, especially after all the trouble I had out by Turtle Hill. So I did a competition finish, down low, right at redline, and chandelled up into the pattern.”

“Damn. I’m sorry I missed that. It must have been cool.”

“Well, I thought it was cool,” Bree sighed. “I floated most of the length of the runway before I put it down and rolled right up to the hanger, just about as happy as I could be. And then when I popped the canopy, who should be standing there but two guys from the football team, Jared Wooten and Howie Erikson!”

“Oh, shit,” Becca said, understanding her sister perfectly, and feeling a little sorry for her. Although Becca thought Bree’s flying was pretty awesome, she also understood she didn’t want to blow her own horn about it. “You’re outed now, and you’re going to have to live with it.”

“Yeah,” Bree shook her head. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been such a showoff. They might not have thought as much about it if I’d just come in and landed normally. But now I’m going to be the talk of the school from people thinking I’m trying to show off how much better I am than they are.”

“And you know what?” Becca smiled. “They’re going to be right. Look, Bree, I’m pretty damn good at volleyball. I mean, I’m pretty good at basketball and softball and like that, but I’m damn good at volleyball. That’s why I like to go out to the club, to get some competition that’s a challenge, rather than just beating down kids around the school who already know I’m good. I don’t think being good has hurt my popularity. If anything it’s added to it.”

“That’s different,” Bree pointed out. “At least kids understand volleyball because almost everyone has messed around with it. Nobody there has done anything to measure my flying against. Look, yesterday I did something that very few people have ever done, I mean anywhere. I’d like to be able to show I’m proud of it. I’d like people to be happy for me that I managed to do it. But only you and Uncle Mark and Aunt Jackie and Fred Hammerstrom have any idea what it means at all. I mean, all the kids at school are going to think is, ‘Big deal. If she can do it, it can’t be that hard.’”

Becca shook her head. Bree was really being negative about this, and from her viewpoint she might be right, at least a little bit. She decided to take a different tack.

“I’m sure there are going to be a few idiots who think that. They’re probably the same idiots who gave you a hard time in sixth grade. They’re the ones who have trouble tying their shoelaces, so they want to drag everyone else down to their level. Hey, I get some of that too. About the only thing I can say is the hell with them. If they want to be below average, it doesn’t mean everybody else has to be too.”

“Yeah, but it still hurts to hear all that stuff.”

Becca was getting tired of her sister’s negativity; all she was doing was talking herself into a funk. She needed a swift kick in the behind to bring her back to reality, and Becca knew just what to say. “I hate to say this, Bree,” she said, “but you’re going to have to learn how to stick out a little. I’ve looked at some of those websites too, and it’s going to take more than just good grades, knowing how to fly, and being a wallflower to get into the Air Force Academy.”

Bree’s goals were no secret to anyone in the Gravengood household and hadn’t been for a long time. Becca even remembered when the seed had been planted; she’d been there.

Mark and Jackie’s house was fairly large. Since they’d never had children, they’d never used much of the upstairs, except one room that was kept for the rare guest; the other rooms had gradually filled with stuff – old clothes and whatever. One of the first things that had to be done when Becca and Bree moved in was to clean out one of the rooms to allow the girls to each have their own room, something they’d never had before.

The project had taken a couple days, and had involved a few trips to the dumpster down behind Marlin Computer, and a lot of trips out to the barn to store things until the city-wide garage sale came along later in the summer. In the process of cleaning out a closet, they found a leather military flight jacket with a name tag that read “Gravedigger.” A little curious, Bree had asked what it was.

“Really, it’s nothing more than a left-over Halloween costume from a party we went to long before you were born,” Mark explained.

“Is that what the ‘Gravedigger’ is all about, a Halloween thing?” Bree asked.

“Not really. I went to the party dressed as a fighter pilot. ‘Gravedigger’ is a fighter pilot’s nickname, sort of based on Gravengood,” Mark had sighed. “It’s as close as I ever got to living the dream I had when I was a kid about your age.”

“You wanted to be a fighter pilot?”

“Yeah,” Mark replied sadly. “Bree, I grew up with the idea of flying. When I was your age, when I got out of school I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs so I could learn to be a fighter pilot.”

“Why didn’t you?” Bree asked.

“My damn glasses,” Mark sighed. “You have to have vision much better than mine. The best I ever tested was twenty-eighty, which wasn’t good enough. It took me years to get it through my thick skull that I’d never be able to go to the Air Force Academy, never be an Air Force pilot, never even be an airline pilot or anything close to it. Bree, as old as I am it still hurts that I never even got to try to accomplish my dream. If by some impossible miracle I could be your age again and I had your good vision, it would still be my dream. I suppose I should have thrown that jacket out years ago, but, well, it’s good to have dreams, Bree. It might as well go in the garage sale box.”

Becca could remember that Bree had stood there for a long time, looking at Mark, looking at the jacket, before she asked shyly, “Uncle Mark, do you mind if I keep this?”

“I guess not,” Mark sighed. “It’s going to be way too big for you, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bree said. “I want to keep it.”

Becca couldn’t honestly remember if finding that very real Air Force flight jacket had come before Bree’s first ride in Rocinante or afterwards, but it was obvious that there was something about the two together than had reached Bree in a place where she’d never been reached before. Becca knew the jacket still hung in Bree’s closet, and not in a back corner, either. Mark had been right – it was too big for her then, and still was. That didn’t mean Becca hadn’t caught her sister wearing it from time to time, looking at herself in the mirror.

Somewhere along the way – maybe not then, but probably not long afterward – Bree had somehow decided to pick up her uncle’s impossible dream, polish it up, and make it her own. It had come as little surprise that Bree announced sometime afterward that she wanted to go to the Air Force Academy and be a fighter pilot. No one took her seriously; she was just a kid – not even in high school yet – but the goal never died, and now it was accepted in the family that it really was what she intended to do.

Mark had explained to her that even with good vision getting into the Air Force Academy wasn’t a sure thing, and that perhaps she ought to have some sort of alternate plan worked out. Working together, they’d come up with several, including attending a college where there was an Air Force ROTC program; it might also provide a route into the seat of a jet fighter. If that failed, there were other alternatives; if all else failed, there were a couple aviation universities that might at least be a route into the front seats of an airliner. That would certainly be a step down from flying a jet fighter, but rewarding in its own way, if the money could be found to send her to one of them. But Bree appeared determined to not settle for less than the best if she could possibly manage it. Bree had a hard head – no doubt about it – and didn’t give up easily on something once she’d set a goal, so there was the possibility it might actually turn real.

Becca wasn’t sure if anyone outside the family knew of Bree’s goal. Maybe the school guidance counselor, but perhaps not, either; she was sure Bree thought people would laugh at her. Becca wasn’t even sure if even her flight instructor Fred Hammerstrom knew what she intended.

“Yeah,” Bree said slowly, reacting to Becca’s statement about the difficulties she’d face in getting an appointment to the Academy in the first place. “You might be right about that.”

“Look,” Becca said, realizing that she’d gotten through to her sister at least a little, even if she’d had to use dirty means to do it. “You’re not going to be able to do it if you just sit back and try to be a bump on a log that no one notices. You may be a nail that sticks up a little, but that means you’re just going to have to attract a few hammers, or you’re not going to stick up enough to get an appointment in the first place.”

Bree didn’t say anything, but Becca could see the gears grinding in her head. Maybe this discussion was going to do some good after all. “Look,” she said after a few moments. “Maybe Jared and Howie seeing you yesterday wasn’t a bad thing.”

“How could it not be?” Bree replied defiantly.

“Because they’re going to be the ones spreading it around the school, not you. You don’t have to deny it, but you don’t have to make a big deal about it, either. Let them do it, and all you have to do if someone asks you is say something like, ‘Oh, yeah, I did it. It was pretty fun.’ Maybe you can add in something like, ‘I can’t whip my sister’s ass at volleyball so I had to find something I’m better at than she is.’”

“Well, yeah, maybe,” Bree replied dubiously, then brightened, “And that’s the truth.”

“You’re so damn much better at it than I’d ever be I ought to get you out on a sand court to get your head out of the clouds,” Becca grinned, reverting to the mutual teasing that often went on by the two of them. “Although I know you’d rather have it there. But seriously, maybe you can use this to develop a friend or two, someone who can celebrate with you the next time you do something awesome like yesterday.”

“I don’t know where I’d start,” Bree sighed.

“Hey, I know you’re friends with Autumn a little, she’s probably as good a person to start with as any. Did Jared and Howie say anything to you yesterday about what you did?”

“They seemed to think it was pretty cool, but I don’t think they really understood much about it. They were standing around along with Jared’s dad when I told Aunt Jackie and Uncle Mark a little about the flight and the trouble I had over by Turtle Hill, but even though they were still like, ‘You can go that far without an engine?’ they didn’t seem to know how hard it really was.”

“Well, that might be a place to start, too.”

“Maybe,” Bree sighed. “I know Howie is all wrapped up with Misty Frankovich. I don’t think Jared is seeing anyone. But I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”

“I’m not looking for one either,” Becca told her. “Oh, there’s guys I hang around with, but we’ll all be gone after next spring, so there’s no point in getting involved in anything serious. But you don’t need a boyfriend, you need a friend-friend. If a friend happens to be a boy, big deal. You can’t take a boyfriend to the Air Force Academy with you anyway, but that shouldn’t keep you from having a friend.”

“Yeah,” Bree replied thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. Thanks, Becca. How soon before you’re going to go play volleyball?”

“No great rush, I don’t think Myleen and I are going to the club today anyway, just screw around on the courts at the city park. You want to come along?”

“Not really,” Bree said. “But maybe I should in case you come up short a player. If that happens, try to not make me look like too much of an uncoordinated idiot.”

“You can’t fly a glider like you do and be that uncoordinated.”

“You want to bet?” Bree snorted as she set Perky off her lap and got up. “Just try me. I better go change clothes a little.”

Becca watched her sister go up the stairs in no little degree of amazement. This was the first time Bree had ever gone along with her to a volleyball game, just screwing around with friends, with the possibility of being a participant. Clearly, dropping the Academy bomb into the conversation had drawn a reaction. Now, if Bree would just follow up on a quarter of what she’d tried to tell her . . .

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