Chapter 7 #2
She pushed the throttle forward, and the engine roared, surging us down the runway—slow at first, then faster. My spine pressed into the seat as we gathered speed, the centerline blurring beneath us. The plane’s nose lifted.
A sudden lightness stole my stomach as we left the ground, the wheels parting from the earth in a moment so unnatural, I forgot to breathe.
Wind nudged the aircraft, and it responded with a subtle, fluid tilt—nothing violent, but enough to remind me just how small we were up here.
Beside me, Gabrielle was composed—a study in serene focus—as she coaxed the plane into a smooth upward path, her hands light on the controls. Her calm accentuated my disarray.
My breaths came shallow and quick inside the headset’s cocoon, each one deafening in its isolation.
Her voice filled my brain. “How are you doing over there?”
I hesitated on honesty and settled on something close enough. “Holding together.”
“You’re shaking like a leaf, Dr. Hawthorne.”
“Cal.”
She glanced over, puzzled. “What?”
“My name is Cal,” I clarified. “You hold my life in your hands right now. I think you’ve earned the right to use my first name.”
A smile spread across her face. “All right, then. You’re shaking like a leaf, Cal.”
The sweetness in her voice twisted something in my chest, and for a moment, I forgot the thousand tiny deaths waiting beyond these thin walls. I managed a laugh—tinny and nervous inside the headset.
“I’m better now,” I lied, watching in a terrified awe as the world fell away beneath us. Fields and roads shrank into a patchwork quilt, each line and square growing smaller, more abstract. The whole of it seemed impossibly fragile, like a child’s model left carelessly out in the garden.
Gabrielle leveled the plane, and, at last, my stomach caught up—a welcome relief after the gut-twisting terror of ascent. The engine’s roar eased into a steady hum, like the breath of a sleeping beast.
“See? Not so bad,” she said, her voice laced with teasing confidence.
I forced my fingers—stiff, foreign things that barely seemed mine—to unclench. “Not so bad,” I agreed, though I was still acutely aware of every shiver and sway.
“Weather’s perfect today,” Gabrielle went on. “Smooth air up here.”
The sky stretched, flawless and blue in every direction. Wisps of clouds lingered far below—delicate streaks painted on a vast canvas.
I risked another glance at the ground. What I assumed to be Lake Texoma emerged like a splash of spilled ink against paper, its shimmering surface reflecting fragments of sky.
“This your first time in a small plane?”
I nodded, trying to outrun the churn of disbelief and adrenaline. “And possibly my last.”
“Don’t worry,” she teased, voice warm. “I haven’t crashed a plane yet, and I don’t want a black mark on my record.”
My laugh sputtered, too thin to cover the chaos of fear and exhilaration exploding in my chest.
Gabrielle banked right, and I felt the shift before I saw it.
The sky stretched vast and endless, an indifferent expanse that cared nothing for the fact that I was entirely out of my element.
Far below, Lake Texoma shimmered like a forgotten world—distant and unreachable, the last solid thing before gravity ceased to matter.
Gabrielle leveled us off, and her voice crackled through my headset. “So,” she said casually, as if we were merely out for a Sunday drive, “are you ready to have some fun?”
“Gabrielle,” I said slowly, “I struggle to define what we’re currently doing as ‘fun.’”
She laughed, easy and warm. “Come on, Dr. Hawthorne—sorry, Cal. You’re a physicist. You understand the principles of flight better than most.”
“Yes, and I also understand the physics of crashing, which terrifies me infinitely more.”
“You should be fascinated, scientifically speaking.”
“Oh, I’m utterly fascinated,” I assured her. “That humans, in all their wisdom, looked at the ground—a perfectly good, solid place to exist—and thought, ‘No, let’s strap ourselves into a tin can and see what happens if we defy nature.’”
She smirked. “You’re going to love this next part, then.”
Dread coiled in my already twisted stomach.
She keyed the mic again. “Grayson Traffic, Cessna 150 Aerobat maneuvering over Lake Texoma, aerobatics in progress, four thousand five hundred.”
I inhaled sharply. “Did you just warn the public? Should I be concerned?”
Gabrielle’s grin was entirely too satisfied. “Just good etiquette. Let’s start with something easy.”
Easy, she said.
The plane tilted sharply, banking into a tight, steep turn. The horizon slanted at an unnatural angle, and the G-force pressed me into my seat. My pulse tripped over itself as I watched the world spin sideways, the lake rising unnervingly toward the cockpit window.
“Nice, right?” Gabrielle asked, holding the bank effortlessly.
I managed a breath. “That was very…turn-like.”
She rolled us back level, the horizon righting itself as if nothing had happened. My vital organs, however, remained unconvinced.
She shot me a look. “Not bad, actually. You didn’t scream.”
“I’m British,” I muttered. “We internalize our suffering.”
She chuckled, then reached for the throttle. “Okay, you ready for a roll?”
“A what?”
The plane pitched up, and before I could object, she turned the yoke smoothly to the left.
The world tilted—no, flipped—entirely over.
For an impossible moment, we were upside down, sky where earth should be, ground where sky had been.
The harness bit into my shoulders as gravity upended every expectation I had of it, pressing me down in ways that felt fundamentally wrong.
And then, just as suddenly, we were upright again.
At some point, my hand had found Gabrielle’s arm, fingers clutching the cool, supple leather of her jacket. She glanced at it, amused.
I let go immediately. “Right. Well. That was…” I swallowed. “An entirely unnecessary perspective shift.”
Gabrielle grinned, her eyes glinting with mischief. “You survived.”
I forced my shoulders to relax. “So I did.”
“Which means you’re ready for a loop.”
“If this is payback for yesterday’s quiz, I stand by it.”
Her laughter was instant and bright. “Oh, you are absolutely paying for that.”
I barely had time to process my impending doom before she pulled the nose up.
The engine strained as we climbed—too steep, too fast. My stomach dropped as we arched backward into a full vertical loop.
G-force pinned me into my seat, the pressure so intense I experienced my own weight in a way I never had before.
Until the top of the loop, where we hung weightless.
For a breathless second, I was floating, suspended, the world still.
And then—
The nose pitched down, the shift from weightless to crushing snapping through me as the lake rushed back into view.
Gabrielle leveled us out smoothly, her hands steady, her breathing infuriatingly normal.
I, meanwhile, was gripping the harness as though it were my only tether to the living.
She let the silence stretch, then finally asked, “So? Worth it?”
I blinked at her, forcing my fingers to uncurl. “Gabrielle,” I said, voice hoarse, “I believe I saw my soul leave my body somewhere over the lake.”
She laughed. “And did it look impressed?”
“I think it was questioning my life choices.”
She grinned, easing back into straight and level flight. The engine settled into its steady hum, the world mercifully calm again.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. My heart slowed. I loosened my grip. My body accepted its survival.
And then Gabrielle turned to me, a quiet warmth in her expression. “You did good,” she said, softer this time.
I exhaled, glancing at her—the golden sunlight catching the curve of her smile, the easy confidence in her surroundings, the way she still looked at home here in a way I never would.
Something twisted in my chest, something that had nothing to do with physics or aerodynamics.
I looked away, out at the vast, endless sky, and found myself smiling.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I’d still prefer the ground.”