Chapter 5 Brynn #2
more than once. This is your turf, Brynn. You just take control of this thing from the get-go, and you’ll be fine.”
Yep. There it was. That was the reminder I needed. My teeth released my bottom lip, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
Just another assignment.
“Thanks, Orly.”
I prepared to take the final two or three steps, but Orly tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you want me to get my camera out
now? Do you think we should start filming right away?”
Hmm. I took one more step forward and crouched over to see the entrance to the little shed-sized building that served as a makeshift
airport. When I was a kid, it had also been where Addie, Laila, and I came in the summer to buy snow cones with these gift
certificates we always had. I couldn’t remember where they came from, but I could remember us signing our names and having
access to all the snow cones we could possibly eat.
“Might not be a bad idea.”
“It would probably be good to capture your initial reaction to being back home and such.”
I turned back to him and nodded as he took his camera bag from his left shoulder, set it on a seat, and began getting his
equipment ready. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
Except I hadn’t been thinking that at all.
I’d been thinking about the first time I had signed my name B-R-Y-N-N . I’d been in California for about eight weeks when Adelaide Springs tracked me down for the first time. More specifically,
Addie Atwater tracked me down. I still didn’t know how she had found me. I’d had three paying jobs at the time (well, if you
added them all up, I almost got paid a living wage), but Addie managed to find me at Good Day LA , where I was just an intern picking up dry cleaning and taking coffee orders.
I saw Mike, another intern, heading my way with mail in his hands, and I knew.
Somehow I just knew that someone had tracked me down.
He wasn’t walking toward me in his usual “Jillian needs a protein shake” way.
I’d never been so happy to be unknown. To matter so little.
Because when he said, “You got mail from someplace called ‘Adelaide Springs, Colorado.’ I’ve never heard of it.
Is that even a real place?” I was able to cover my name badge with my hair, hand the envelope with Addie’s familiar handwriting back to him, and say, “No idea. That’s not even my name.
” And though he was a little confused, he didn’t know or care enough to argue.
I turned my back on him, walked to the intern director’s office, and changed all my paperwork from B-R-E-N to B-R-Y-N-N .
So many years later, it was difficult to remember why I had thought that was enough of a change. Why hadn’t I become Penelope?
Or Genevieve? Why hadn’t I thought to change my last name and break off that familial tie to the woman I had taken a bus nine
hundred miles to get away from? I really don’t know. It seems so silly to have been so satisfied. But for whatever reason,
I was. Everything changed that day.
“Ready when you are,” Orly said from behind me.
My reaction to being back home. I was guessing that handing the pilot my credit card and begging him to take me as far away as he could wasn’t the reaction
Orly was hoping to capture. That’s what B-R-E-N wanted to do. I just had to remind myself that wasn’t even my name.
“Zip up your coat, Orly. It’s a different sort of cold out here.”
I took a deep breath, and Orly must have attempted to fill his lungs at the same time.
“Holy cow! Where’d the oxygen go?”
I turned to face him again with a smile. “Have you ever been in the mountains before?” My smile faded quickly at the sight
of his paling face.
He shook his head. “My wife, Jenni, and I went to Vegas for our twentieth anniversary.”
Um... “Okay. Vegas has an elevation of about two thousand feet.”
“Lots of travel for work in the old days. Spent some time in Berlin,” he panted. “How high is that?”
I just ignored that question and chose not to tell him there were spruce trees right outside the windows of the plane taller
than Berlin.
The temps were hovering right around freezing as the sun set, and dropping fast, but sweat was dripping from Orly’s brow.
I looked up toward the cockpit, such as it was, to see if the pilot was available in case altitude sickness kicked in too strongly, but he’d left us alone on the plane.
I was no aviation expert, but I was pretty sure that went against regulation.
I was feeling a little bit of the burn, but my lungs were already beginning to acclimate. I supposed growing up in Adelaide
Springs and a few trips in recent years to cover the Telluride Film Festival for Sunup , not to mention being twenty years Orly’s junior, worked in my favor. A probably long-ago trip to Caesars Palace might not
have provided Orly with the recommended amount of endurance training.
“We’re a lot higher than Las Vegas here.”
“How much higher?”
He didn’t need to know all the details just yet. “About a mile.” And then another Vegas or so... “Do you need to sit? Here...” I tried to guide him back to his seat, but he shook off my assistance.
“It’s okay.” His breaths grew deeper, and I became less worried that we’d need the pilot to drop the oxygen masks. (As if
this plane had oxygen masks. Yet another thing I didn’t need to mention to Orly.) But he still looked as clammy as I’d ever
seen anyone look, and I’d once attended a traditional New England clambake on a beach in Maine where Elena dressed as Elvis
and Lance dressed as an actual clam to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the film Clambake .
“What’s the holdup?” I heard steps come up the stairs at the front of the plane.
Sure. Now the pilot bothered to check on things. “Wow... Really appreciate your help.” I whipped around to face him. “Everything seems to be okay now , no thanks to you.”
He tilted his head. “Excuse me?”
“First you made the poor man fear for his life in this crap bucket you call a plane, and then you don’t even stick around to make sure everyone survived the Flight of Terror?”
He folded his arms across his chest and smiled. Smiled! “For the record, I wasn’t the one who decided to call this a plane. I’m not quite sure whom you need to file your complaint
with on that. The engineer? The dictionary, maybe? Leonardo da Vinci or Orville and Wilbur may have some responsibility in
this. But I do not.”
“Hey, Brynn...”
“Not now, Orly!” I snapped. I wasn’t done chewing out the infuriating pilot for the rude and inconsiderate way he had treated
my cameraman. “And another thing—”
“Okay, stop talking now,” the pilot said as he put his hand up and looked around me. “Orly?”
Oh no. Had he passed out? I was going to lose some of my righteous ground if he swooped in and played the hero now. I looked
behind me—determined to finish this once we got Orly hooked up to an IV or something—but he was fine. He was just standing
there, no longer sweaty, squinting at the pilot.
“I thought that was you!” Orly took a step forward and looked around me in the narrow aisle, just as the ball-capped pilot
was doing. “Nah! Can’t be.” He started laughing and took another step toward him. Basically through me. “What in the world are you doing here, man?” He extended his right hand past me, and I was forced into the nearest seat
row as the pilot did the same and matched Orly in an enthusiastic handshake.
“I was going to ask you the same thing...” His voice trailed off, and the smile fell from his lips. “Oh.” He turned his
head and examined me. Not in a look-me-up-and-down sort of way, though. No. He just looked straight into my eyes a little
longer than was polite or comfortable and then back to Orly. The smile returned. “What’d you do to get stuck with this assignment?”
“It’s not a bad gig. Rickety planes and thin air aside.” Orly laughed again and glanced at me, the humor still evident. Something
in my expression must have squashed it. He cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’ve met Brynn Cor—”
“That’s not necessary.” I picked my bag back up from the seat where it had landed during the handshake rigmarole and hoisted
it back onto my shoulder. I turned to the pilot. “Look, no offense. Any friend of Orly’s is a friend of mine, but the truth
is, it’s been a long day and some of us take our jobs seriously enough to want to put our best foot forward. So let’s just
forget about the subpar service and the blatant rudeness from a few moments ago.” I stepped back into the aisle, toe to toe
with the stranger. “I just want to get off this plane—”
“I thought we were going with ‘crap bucket.’”
“Alright. That’s enough. Where are you based?”
“Where am I based ?” He squinted his eyes at me, and his smirk grew.
“Yes, where are you based? Telluride? Denver? Grand Junction?” I hoisted my bag higher and took another step forward. I wasn’t
going to be intimidated by some crop duster who wanted to believe he was Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon .
Rather than step back or move out of my way, something in him seemed determined to double down. He leaned over and placed
his elbows on the headrests on each side of the aisle. “I’m based here.”
Admittedly, that was a bit of a surprise. “Here? In Adelaide Springs?” He looked to be about my age. Maybe a few years older,
but definitely of the same generation. When I was growing up here, there had never been any local pilots. Small charters like
the one we were on flew in as needed, if the exorbitant price was right. Was it possible there was actually enough business
to merit having someone based in town?
Hopefully none of that interfered with the booming snow-cone trade.
“Well, then, please tell me whom you report to.”
“Whom I what ?”
Orly tapped my shoulder. “Okay, seriously, Brynn.”
I ignored him, of course. It was almost certainly going to be a week of unpleasant reminders that I was once again in the