I swallowed.
“Leah. You look like you’re going to pass out again. I’m not helping.”
“Sure you are,” I said brightly. “You’re a candle in my window.”
I meant for her to laugh at this, but she stared out the windshield, tapping one finger nervously on the steering wheel. “So, about these Hall boys. Are you in love with Alec?”
“What? No.” As I said this, we passed the convenience store. I was always amazed how little time it took to drive here when it took forever to walk here.
“Are you in love with the one who thinks you’re a whore?” she asked.
I snickered at the way she’d put it. Then I realized I shouldn’t be amused, because the way she’d put it was pretty accurate. “Grayson. No.” My skin tingled as I said his name, which was just stupid.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but you’re in love with somebody.”
I fished in her purse at my feet, found a clove cigarette, and lit it. “I’ve been watching them from afar for a while. The twins, and their father who died, and their older brother who died. I guess I’ve fallen a little in love with all of them.” One puff and the cigarette was making me sick. Mr. Hall was looking over my shoulder, telling me to put that garbage out. I stubbed it out carefully in an empty paper cup in her cup holder.
“So you’re nostalgic for their lost family, and you feel sorry for this guy. You’re making excuses to yourself for his poor social skills. But you can’t forget he’s blackmailing you into dating his brother. Worse, he’s blackmailing you into doing this dangerous job flying.”
“Well, I don’t know that it’s a dangerous job. Before Mr. Hall died, I actually wanted that job.”
“When Mr. Hall was running the show, yes. Now he’s not. With this inexperienced eighteen-year-old dude running the place, it’ll be even more like suicide than it was before.”
“I wouldn’t call it suicide.”
“You’ve described it to me, Leah. You’re flying this little tin can of a plane pulling this long, heavy banner it was never made to pull. And you’re fighting with the controls the whole time to keep the plane from stalling and plunging you to your death.”
“Technically, all of that is true, but a pilot wouldn’t phrase it so dramatically. If we did, we wouldn’t be pilots very long. Because that sounds like some crazy shit.”
“Exactly. And you said they’ve stripped all the instruments out of those little planes so they’re light enough to carry the banners. You’re flying without instruments, and that’s not dangerous?”
“They don’t take out all the instruments. The ones they’ve taken out, you don’t really need unless it’s cloudy or dark. I mean, yes, they’d be nice to have, but you don’t need them.”
Molly turned to gape at me.
I realized what I was saying did sound kind of lame. “Yes, I can hear myself,” I said. “Was that your next question? Yes.”
“Well,” she said, “since you love these guys so much, and you swear the job isn’t ‘that’ suicidal”—she took her hands off the steering wheel to make finger quotes—“I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, I understand your concern about the good moral character thing and your mother finding out that you forged her name. You’re just trying to keep your head down and your nose clean until you can get out of Heaven Beach.”
“Right.” We passed the grocery store. The few times I’d walked here to shop, the bags had pulled my arms out of their sockets, just like the heavy chocks on the tarmac, as I hiked back to the trailer. But if I could have driven here, I would have plopped the bags in the trunk and forgotten about them until I reached home. Yes, I was amazed at this miraculous invention called a car. On pretty much every drive Molly took me on, I was tempted to ask her to stop and let me get a few groceries. I never asked, though, and it never occurred to her.
“And maybe you have a little problem with authority—” Molly said.
“Who, me?”
“—so Grayson telling you what to do gets on your last nerve, especially when it involves whoredom.”
“Correct.”
“But if his business is going to be as short-lived as you say, can’t you just ride it out and then go back to your airport job on the ground? I don’t see why you’re so upset at losing the crop-dusting job with that jerk. You’ve flown before but you’ve never had a job flying. Why do you need one now?”
“Because every type of pilot’s license has an age requirement, plus a requirement for the number of hours you’ve flown.”
“And a pesky requirement for good moral character.”
“That’s only for the airline pilot’s license. But yeah, that’s exactly what I’m up for next. For my commercial license I had to turn eighteen years old and log two hundred and fifty hours. At first I had to rent Mr. Hall’s airplane to get those hours. Airplane rental isn’t cheap. If he hadn’t started letting me use it for free, I wouldn’t have that license by now.”
“I see.”
Now we were passing the library. I checked out one or two books per visit so they wouldn’t be too heavy or bulky on the walk home. That way I always had a stack. I’d seen Molly check out a whole stack before. At once. And put them in her car.
“For the airline pilot’s license,” I said, “I have to be twenty-three years old, and I need to log fifteen hundred hours. Now that Mr. Hall is gone, that’s another twelve hundred and fifty hours of renting an airplane. Plus, if any airline is going to hire me, I need a college degree. How am I going to pay for all that in the next five years, Molly?”
“Hell if I know.”
“I’m going to get a job flying. Then I fly for free. I fly a lot and log a lot of hours. And I get paid more than minimum wage.”
“But if you can’t get a job flying,” she said, “maybe you keep your airport office job, work on your hours and your degree, but do it more slowly, as you save up your money. You don’t have to get that license the day you turn twenty-three.”
“True.” But if I didn’t get it at twenty-three, I would never get it. That life was too hard, always looking to the future and never living in the now, saving for an impossible goal. Thirty years later I would still be working in the airport office for minimum wage. There would be a rumor that I had been a pilot once, but most people wouldn’t believe it, looking at me.