Girls Don't Fly

Rising warm air, perfect for bird joyrides.

It’s our last day of class. As I drive to the marina, I look longingly at the sky, streaked with yellow and rose. Summer’s coming. I roll my windows down, even though it’s cold. Noisy robins line the old trees on the side of the road. The smell of grass and flowers comes in waves.

Pete is standing in the office talking on the phone when I come in. “It is a lot of money. I agree,” he says.

I go into the club room and see Pritchett and the twins. No Erik or Dawn. Ho-Bong and Ho-Jun look like they’re on their last supercylinder. Ho-Jun’s hair is actually messy. Come to think of it, so is mine.

Pritchett says, “Hey.”

“What’s up?”

“Dawn’s out,” he says. “She’s on the phone with Pete right now.”

I feel sick. “Why?”

“Hard to make a thousand bucks selling lattes.”

“I know about that,” I say.

“Not me,” says Pritchett. “I have a good gig.”

“What do you do?”

“In a band.”

This shouldn’t surprise me. Pritchett reeks of personality. I just have never met anyone who’s really in a band. “No way. What do you play?”

“Bass, vocals, and style.”

“Huh. Are you any good?”

“Good enough to make more than I would selling lattes.”

Pete walks in. He’s not happy. “Okay. We’re going to make it short today. Dawn’s out of the competition and Erik isn’t coming because he has a track meet. The due date for your proposals is May first. That’s three weeks. When you have your work done, all you have to do is mail it in. Otherwise I can help with questions. I hope you enjoyed the tour.”

“We came down here for nothing?” says Pritchett.

I have to admit I’d feel the same way, except I have to work in an hour.

“Do you have any other questions?” says Pete.

Pritchett throws his backpack on his shoulder with a dramatic sweep. “Do you think I’m going to need to get the SPF 30, or will I be okay with 15?”

“I’d hand your paper in before you pick out your Speedo,” says Pete. “If there’s nothing else, I have a ton of work to do.”

Ho-Bong and Ho-Jun walk to Pete and hand him two envelopes. “We’re done.”

“That’s great, guys, but I want nothing to do with your papers. Just mail them in and the judges will make their choices. I am not a judge, juror, or referee for any of it.”

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” says Pritchett. “Nice knowing ya.”

I’m sorry to see the last class end on such a sour note. I know Pete’s mad about Dawn, and I suspect he’s heard about Erik’s complaint.

I say, “Hey, Pete? Do you have one last cheer for us, before we go?”

Pete scowls. “I would need caffeine and seven more hours of sleep for that this morning, Myra. But you go for it.”

I pull out my chair and climb up on it. The four guys in the room look up at me like I’ve sprouted wings. I think about my chicken moves and start it up.

“When I say ‘go,’ you say ‘south.’

“Go.”

“South.”

Pritchett’s the only one who chants back when I point to him.

“Go.”

“South,” chants Pritchett.

“When I say ‘Galápagos,’ you say ‘Islands.’

“When I say ‘gimme,’ you say ‘money.’

“Goin’ south to the Galápagos ’cause I’m so stinkin’ funny. With all your stinkin’ money. Go Galápagos!”

I finish with the traditional jumping jack in the air and a graceless thud to the ground. The crowd (Pritchett) goes wild.

I work a boring shift for most of the day. The weather is so nice I wander around outside looking for a reason to be out on the pier. I show tourists the best place to wade in the water. I take a few pictures for families. There’s a little excitement when a couple gets their boat stuck in the channel and no other boats can get out. I call a few people to help and get yelled at by frustrated boaters, and eventually everything goes back to boring.

Ranger Bobbie comes in off the desert at lunchtime. “Four-wheelers!” she says, and slams her door. I see Pete while I’m cleaning a picnic table. He says, “Tourists!” and storms off.

When my shift is over, the sun is still high in the sky. I know I should go home and take care of my brothers while my parents finish their backyard fiasco, but I sit at the picnic table watching the birds. The gulls are everywhere, looping in the sky, diving for food. I pull out my notebook. I’m just three weeks away from reaching my goal of a thousand dollars. My pencil-box bank is getting full. Driving the smaller car and skipping lunch have helped. With any luck I’ll get a few bucks for my birthday too.

I feel hands cover my face. I jump away.

“Somebody’s edgy,” says Pete.

“Self-preservation instincts,” I say.

“Nice to know you’re using them these days. You logged out yet?”

“Yep, on my way home.”

“Want to take a spin on my sailboat?”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“This is work. We’re having a mini regatta for the yacht club tomorrow morning and some of the buoys aren’t where they’re supposed to be. I could use a hand.”

All the weirdness of the last few days since Ms. Miller told me about Erik’s complaint runs through my head. I can tell by the edge in Pete’s voice that he knows what we aren’t talking about. And he doesn’t care. That’s why Pete is Pete. He doesn’t care. That’s why he can go to the Galápagos Islands or hitchhike to South America.

I look out over the shimmering water. It’s a gorgeous day. And I want to go sailing with a pirate.

“Sounds fun,” I say.

My phone rings. It’s my house. I don’t pick up.

Pete shouts out the names of a dozen different ropes for me to pull and tie as we leave the dock. Who knew that sailing was so complicated? I bounce from side to side of the small boat, trying to get the hang of tacking first, which is basically moving the tail of the sail into alignment as we’re “coming about” or turning into the wind. Then I work on jibing, which mainly involves throwing ropes and scampering across the front of the boat and not getting clocked by the mast. As we pick up speed, a hundred pounds of home blows off my shoulders.

We get to the buoys in twenty minutes and have the problem fixed in thirty. It was hard, but I don’t think Pete needed my help at all.

“Where to now?” I say.

“We’ll hoist the spinnaker if we get a little more wind, but let’s just relax for a minute.” We drop the anchor and Pete pulls out his pack. He tosses me a sandwich and a can of soda. “Sea rations.”

I sit at the front of the boat and let the sun warm my skin. The salty wind opens my lungs up. I smell the brine and salt beneath me. “Tell me more about living down there,” I say.

He lies back, eating his sandwich while he looks up at the sky. He doesn’t answer for a few minutes. “In the morning when the sun comes up over Isabela Island, the sky lights up with red-streaked clouds. Sometimes there will be a gold flare coming from behind the island’s dark silhouette. The gulls and sea lions circle the boat looking for food. The waves lap up on the anchored boat. Drying clothes flap in the wind. Everything smells like the ocean until someone starts to cook and the frying food reminds me I’m starving. But I don’t want to go in with the team, because then the day will start, and before I know it, it will be over. The trick is to hold on to each day as long as I can, and then once it starts, I go till dark. Turns out there’s a lot of daylight at the equator.”

“Every day is like that?”

“Not at all. Some days it’s so hot you sweat in the water, and other days it rains and the water is so rough we can’t dive or eat or even drink, which is saying something.”

“I keep thinking about that quote you read from Darwin’s journal, about not knowing what you should be looking at until it’s gone. What don’t I see?”

“That’s easy.” He hitches up half his mouth. “How amazing you are.”

I love that Pete is almost flirting with me, but once I stop being giddy, I think about what he’s saying. And he’s right. I look up at the same sky Pete does, but I don’t see the same thing.

Pete keeps talking. “You also don’t see where you are. You want to go to the Galápagos because it’s not here. And you should. But there’s plenty here to blow your mind if you’d stop trying to please everyone all the time.”

“You sound just like my sister.”

“Smart girl.”

“Yeah, she’s a genius. So smart she got pregnant before she married the guy and then dropped out of school and lost her scholarship.”

“And that’s why you’re trying to please everyone?”

“I’ve always tried to please everyone. I’m just not very good at it anymore.”

Pete rolls in the anchor. “Let’s go find another place to park.”

With a quick wind we curl around to Antelope Island in forty minutes. I try not to wonder what the phone call from home was about. I comfort myself by knowing that if it were a big deal, they would have called me a half dozen more times.

Pete drops anchor in Farmington Bay. He pulls out his binoculars to share, and we quickly spot mergansers, scaups, green-winged teals, canvasbacks and redheads, egrets, and grebes, all winging around, chirping and diving. It’s a bird frenzy.

“Every year this lake has five million feathery visitors and two hundred species. And the lake effect ...”

“You told us ...” I say.

“Do you know that without this bay and the other stopover habitats that this lake provides, the ecosystem of the earth would change?”

“Should I be taking notes or taking a nap?”

“Cut the attitude. This lake is beautiful and important. And most people think it’s a sewer.”

“What did you bring me out here for, Pete?”

“Most people don’t want to grow and change and discover new things, Myra, not really. But you do. Be a student right now. See your life.”

He sits next to me and takes my hand, looking off into the water at the heron that is coasting on the air above us. There’s no wind, but I feel like I’m sailing again, and I could pitch off into the water at any time. And I love it.

“You’re beautiful and important.”

“You’re just saying that because I scraped the mold off your office.”

“No. I was fine with the mold. It gave the office a little personality. I’m saying this because I find you beautiful and important.”

I look up at his face. His hair is deep red in the sunlight. His eyes are pinched in a smile. In my head I know getting attached to Pete could cause us both a lot of problems. Plus he likes mold. But somewhere deeper than my head, I feel like Pete is nothing if not honest, and this is only wrong if I make it that way.

I hold my face up to his and he kisses me as softly as the sun.