Free Coast to Coast by Betsy Byars

now?”
    “No. You’re in front of me and Ace is behind. I couldn’t be lonely with good company like that.”
    “You know when I go on trips with my cousins, I have to sit in the backseat with them and they pass the time, Pop, by dividing up the world. Frances goes, ‘This is my street.’ Barb goes, ‘Well, that’s my street over there. I have a mall and all you have is a Pizza Hut.’ Frances goes, ‘I claim that house with a tower.’ Barb goes, ‘Well, I claim that one. It’s got a swimming pool.’”
    “So what do you claim, Birch?”
    “Nothing, but it keeps me from getting lonely. If I were going to claim something,” she went on firmly, “I’d claim an airport so we could land. I know you don’t want me to say anything, but!” She pointed to the gauge.
    “I got eyes.”
    There was a little bend on the end of the gas wire, and it turned, periscopelike, from side to side with the engine vibration. It seemed to be looking for a landing spot too.
    Pop asked, “Can you see the airport yet?”
    She pulled herself erect by the support bars and peered through the windshield. “I think so.” She checked the magenta circle on her map. There was a white line in the circle that showed which way the runway lay. The runway ahead lay the same way.
    “That’s it.” Birch took off her earphones and shook out her hair. Without earphones, the noise was terrible.
    “My neck’s hot. My feet are hot. I’m ready to stop. I just figured out why my feet are so hot. They’re on the engine!”
    Pop began his descent. He flew over the airport, circled it and then kept heading west.
    Birch swirled around. “Aren’t we stopping?”
    “See those yellow X’s on the runway?”
    Birch leaned against the window.
    “Those X’s mean the airport’s closed. We’ll go on to Big Spring.”
    “Pop, when we landed at Cisco, you said we had a head wind.”
    “We’ve still got it.” Pop checked his computer. “We’ve been flying two hours. We’ve gone—let’s see, one hundred twelve miles. We’ve got another half hour of flying time. You watch for the airport.”
    “You always tell me to watch for things to make me shut up.”
    Birch bent over her map. Her grandfather had marked off the route and put a slash every ten miles. She counted the slashes, “It’s thirty miles … let’s see. If we have a half hour of gas left and we’re only making fifty-six miles an hour—Pop, we’ll miss it by two miles!”
    “You could be right.”
    “Pop!”
    “There’s another airport northeast of town. Howard County airport. It’s marked closed, but it won’t hurt to take a look.”
    Birch checked her map. The closed airport was big with multiple runways. She sat forward tensely. The gas wire was all the way down and had not bobbed for what seemed like hours.
    “This is the third airport in a row that’s been closed. Now, where is it? We ought to be able to see it by now. There! There it is!” She pointed. “It’s …”
    She trailed off. Then she said, “Pop, it’s got stuff on the runway.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “Tires and bales of hay. They’ve made it into a drag strip or a racetrack or something.”
    “I don’t want to try to cross town with no more gas than we’ve got. Let me take a look.”
    Pop circled the airport while Birch clasped her hands beneath her chin. “Please don’t let us give out of gas. Please don’t let us give out of gas. At least when you’re praying in an airplane you’re bound to be noticed, don’t you think so, Pop? Please don’t let us give out of gas.”
    “We’re not going to give out of gas. Now find me some smoke or dust so I know where the wind’s coming from.”
    Birch pointed to a yarnlike wisp of smoke on the horizon.
    “Straight out of the west. I’ll land on that taxiway”
    “Where the tires are?”
    “I’ll go over the tires and stop before the bales of hay. Don’t talk to me for a minute.”
    He pushed the nose of the plane down and began his