Free Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols Page B

door from the outside, I couldn’t help one more glance at the Hall Aviation hangar. Grayson’s truck and Alec’s car were still parked outside, and they’d opened the wide door facing the runway as if they actually planned to bring an airplane out and power it up. I didn’t care. I would fly for Grayson Hall over my dead body.

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    I turned my back on Mr. Hall’s hangar, water bottle in my hand, newspaper under my arm. Carrying my treasure, I walked most of the length of the airport, into the grass at the end of the strip. Where the chain-link fence turned a corner, I lifted the loose end of the wall of links and ducked underneath, onto the trail through the trees.
    Most neighborhoods would be busy this time of day with the bustle of parents pulling in from work and greeting their kids. The trailer park would be busy later, at a partying hour. Right now it was quiet. Not a lot of people here had a regular job. A few of them were still sleeping off last night’s binge. For once, drinking the world away didn’t sound like a bad idea.
    I walked just out of reach of the lunging pit bull. At my own trailer, I balanced on the cement blocks while I unlocked the aluminum door that had been kicked in four times since we’d lived here, three times by burglars, once by my mom’s ex-boyfriend Billy. After locking the door behind me, I walkedthrough the creaking hall, slumping lower and lower like I was coming in for a landing, and crashed into my bed.
    One of Mr. Hall’s Pipers roared overhead. Over the years I’d grown to love the sound of planes approaching the runway and just clearing the treetops above our trailer. I prided myself on listening closely enough that I could identify the type of plane without looking. Today I felt like my mom, cringing and cursing at the racket and burying my head underneath the pillows.
    The newspaper crackled underneath me as I curled into a ball and hugged my knees. Maybe Grayson was right and I really didn’t have a job with Mr. Simon. When Mark had told me I could fly for his uncle, I’d felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest. Mr. Simon could train me on the specifics of crop dusting. I didn’t want to fly a crop duster my whole life, but I could work my way through college by taking courses during the off-season and flying during the growing season—and I would rack up a huge portion of the flight hours I needed for my next certification. It had never occurred to me until Grayson brought it up that Mark was lying.
    But of course he was lying. I heaved myself up from the bed and trudged back into the combination kitchen and den. A blanket lay rumpled anyhow on the sofa where Mark had slept last night. All his worldly possessions were piled in the corner where he’d dumped them when my mom first said he could stay: garbage bags full of clothes, several rifles, and a plant light for growing marijuana indoors. He had not told me he grew marijuana, but boys his age did not grow tomatoes. Mark had told me what I wanted to hear in exchange for the prospect of sex and a free place to stay. He hadn’t forked over any cash to help with the rent, and now I doubted this had ever been his plan.
    Both hands pressed to my mouth, I tried very hard not to panic. I knew the airport up, down, and sideways, and there were no other jobs.
    On the bright side, I was all set to graduate from high school in a month and a half. I was one step ahead of my mom. And I hadn’t gotten pregnant. Two steps ahead of my mom. And I had a commercial pilot’s license.
    With no paid experience as a commercial pilot. And my only solid reference was dead.
    I longed for Molly. Even if I’d had a phone, I wouldn’t have called her. I refused to be that needy friend. I mean, I was that needy friend, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to whine on the phone to her and make it worse. Sometimes she dropped by, though, and took me for a drive. I listened to her talk about her problems, and maybe after a