Chute Roll

Chapter Eight

The flight school is a big old building just off one of the airport runways. It's not much of a building — just an wide open warehouse with room to part some planes, and with some rooms and offices at the front. Of course, it's not much of an airport either. The big airport in Las Vegas is where all the jets come in. This airport is way out in the desert, and it has a couple small runways built for small propeller airplanes.

I punched the time clock to start work.

Sabella went to the pop machine and got us some colas.

She found me at one of the tables, packing parachutes.

"Here," she said, handing me a cola, "thanks for the lift."

"No problem," I said. "Are you heading up soon?"

"Yeah," she said, "Spike is going to make the runs for me."

Spike is somewhere between forty years old and sixty years old. It's hard to tell exactly, because he usually has so much engine grease on his face that the wrinkles are filled in. Spike has been a pilot forever. He wears old coveralls that are dirtier than his face and hands. When he's not flying one of the small airplanes, he sits in the coffee room and chews tobacco and spits the juice into a pop can. He's the first one here every day and the last one to leave. Everyone calls him Spike because is bald except for one short black hair that sticks up from the middle of his head.

"Take this for your first jump," I said, handing her a parachute. "I packed it myself."

"Thank you."

I pointed at a a mess of rolled up parachute in the corner. "That's yours from yesterday. I'm going to see if I can figure out what happened."

She shuddered. "I'm trying not to think about yesterday."

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"I've never been more scared," she said. "That's why I snuck out of the house this morning. I have to prove to myself I can still do it."

Her eyes were wide as she spoke. "You see, my father told me I could never jump again. He's too afraid it might happen again."

"I can understand how he feels. People who don't jump do get nervous thinking about what we do."

"No!"

She surprised me with her sudden anger.

"No," she said again. Softer. "Jeff, my mom died before I could remember her. My father has controlled everything I do since I was very little. Sky diving is my way of breaking away. I fought and fought just to get the chance to do it. If I quit now, it's like letting him run my life forever."

"From what I've seen," I said, "parents usually know what they are doing."

"I'm not going to explain my home life to you," she said. Her mouth was tight with anger. "I spend enough time in that gold cage."

"But—"

"But nothing. I've probably already said too much. If I tell you anything else, you might get hurt. Bad. So no more questions, okay? Leave me alone."

I snapped my mouth shut.

Spike stuck his dirty face through the doorway. "Plane's ready," he said.

Sabella marched away from me for her first jump of the day.

I went back to work. I tried to make sense of everything she had said, but I couldn't figure out a thing. A half hour later, when I got around to looking at her parachute, though, I did figure out one thing.

And it made me very afraid.