The party had drained him so much that Robert was actually glad to return to the woods. Robert had talked more to Dalton and his buddies than he had in days. Now the forest’s darkness, thick as a blanket at one a.m., felt more like home.
He shrugged into the sweatshirt his mom had packed and unfurled the towel. The cheery yellow shade wouldn’t make good camouflage, but he might be able to hang it from some branches and fashion a makeshift tent. After a few minutes of trying, Robert rolled it back up to use as a pillow.
And then there was the fight with his mom, returning like a muscle cramp, like a side stitch, slowing him, winding him. One minute she was making sure he had clean underwear, the next she was telling him to never come back.
Could she have actually meant that?
Whatever, he told himself. Didn’t matter. He was leaving anyway. He just wished he’d made it clear it was his choice, his plan all along to be rid of Yannatok forever.
He knew he needed to think, to plan, but his head bobbed with exhaustion. Before he went to sleep he dug through the pine needles, darkening his fingertips, until he hit damp dirt. He smeared his forehead and arms with pungent earth, hoping to conceal any exposed flesh. Dirt mottled the rim of his hood and sweatshirt cuffs. Pine needles clung to his eyebrows.
He drifted in and out of a fevered sleep, the sting of insect bites interrupting his dreams. In one he had two hatchets instead of hands and kept accidentally scratching his face. An owl’s screeching morphed into the shriek of torquing metal, a plane’s squealing stop.
The trees were still wrapped in darkness when he gave up on sleep and woke for good. Robert stood, pressed his hands to the small of his back, unwrapped a granola bar, and chewed despite the gritty foulness of his unbrushed mouth.
Going to the party, getting his picture snapped, acting like a celebrity, had been a major risk. If anyone from the party had called the sheriff, then they’d know he was still on the island, hadn’t somehow hitched a ride or slipped onto the ferry. They’d be waiting for him at the airstrips right now. Yannatok County Airport, which he’d taken care to scope out, the only place he’d yet to break into, was probably lit up like the Fourth of July. A cop convention.
But what about Tomkins?
Surely they’d bulked up their security. Surely they’d warned their pilots, their staff.
But would they really expect him to return to the scene of his most recent crime?
No. They’d be waiting for him at Yannatok County, because they wouldn’t think he’d have the audacity to lift a second plane from the Tomkins airstrip.
But Robert Jackson Kelley, the Lollipop Kid, who they couldn’t keep locked up, most certainly did.
He sat up. Better to go now, while the darkness still hid him.
* * *
Yellow police tape fluttered across the door he’d jangled, bullied, and finally kicked in, three nights before, when he’d stolen his second plane from this very airstrip. The door hadn’t been replaced, the splintered wood still gaping like he’d left it.
Perhaps they were preserving evidence, but it certainly felt like they were inviting him in.
He stepped over the tape, but he knew he hadn’t crossed the finish line just yet.
Then he scrambled for the hangar door and pulled it up, rattling on its track. Cold air rushed by him into the cavernous room, chilling his clammy skin.
This time he had to move fast. No rummaging for food. No thumbing through the manuals. Pick a plane.
The Cirrus SR22, its nose tipped in sea-green paint, wasn’t what he’d flown before, but it seemed close enough. The ignition looked just as simple to jimmy with his screwdriver.
Robert jumped into the pilot’s seat and cranked the ignition, the grooves of the screwdriver’s handle twisting between his fingers. The engine roared. He taxied out and stopped just short of the runway.
A goose lazily flexed its wings in the middle of the tarmac. It stretched its curved neck and cocked its head at him, blinked one black eye.
“Shoo,” he said. “C’mon.”
He rolled a few feet forward, and the goose didn’t budge, turning to examine its own wing like it was performing a preflight inspection. It nibbled at a feather.
Robert leaned toward the windshield. Why wasn’t it flying away? Was it hurt? Had its flock abandoned it?
“Dammit. Move.”
He tapped the gas and inched closer. Would he have to get out and scare it off?
He wouldn’t run it over, leaving it bloodied and bent on the runway.
“Freeze! Don’t move!”
Three cops rushed from the trees, crouching low. Robert’s vision seemed to expand to take in everything: the heavy black vests that weren’t worn by any cop he’d ever seen on Yannatok, the weighty holsters, the shiny boots. Faces beneath plastic shields.
And there must be more, because a burst of static had punctuated the command to halt, and none of these guys had a megaphone.
Because they all held guns.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Robert stayed still, but his heart stampeded and his hands trembled. He touched the screwdriver, realized the plane’s engine was still rumbling. Its shuddering jolted his every cell. His eyes vibrated.
One of the cops stepped closer. The black point of the gun’s muzzle blotted out everything else, like a solar eclipse.
The goose flapped its wings and disappeared into the sky.
“Slowly raise your hands over your head!”
Six feet by eight feet. He’d walked around a jail cell before. Six steps. Eight steps. A window without a view, just a hole in the bricks. A ceiling, blank as a movie screen before showtime, where he could rewind every mistake he’d ever made. If Deb hadn’t come to bail him out, Robert wouldn’t have lasted the night.
His dad had outrun them.
The. End.
Robert stomped on the pedal.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the officers dive for cover, as though he might mow them down. But he was blazing past them in one direction only.
Up.
He bounced down the runway, like he was hitting the tarmac’s every divot. He heaved the throttle. His knees rattled. The meters’ needles veered.
Popping like fireworks on his left.
Were they shooting? Were they trying to kill him?
Had they missed?
Or were these warning shots, like those fired at geese to hurry them off the runway?
“Go! Go!” He shouted at the plane, at the runway that flashed past.
And then that subtle snapping, that lift, as he left the ground. He stole just a glance out the window and saw the cops shrink as he pulled back on the yoke.
He panted. Wheezed. His ears popped. He clutched the controls so tightly his palms ached.
No way Holt had been there. Because if the sheriff had been in charge, they wouldn’t have shot at him.
And now he wasn’t paying enough attention. He hadn’t even entered a destination into the GPS.
Was there a way to make the plane fly faster?
He freed his hands just long enough to plug Vancouver into the GPS, clicking on the map and zooming in on a clear patch of Canadian land.
Forty-five minutes. In forty-five minutes he’d ditch this plane and run. The race would be over. He just had to stay in the air until then.
He would not think about what could be waiting for him on the ground.
He was going to land this one. He was going to leave it whole, on this, his last chance. He would only think about that. He willed his fidgety brain to cooperate and it submitted as he scanned the GPS, checked the view through the windshield, turned his attention to the meters. GPS, windshield, meters. GPS, windshield, meters, until his heart slowed. He told himself this was just a simulation, that if he looked to his right, he wouldn’t see the black night sky, but the trailer’s television and his mother watching Law & Order.
“Bring around the beverage cart. What’s for dinner tonight? Lobster or steak?” He had no idea what pilots ate on planes that weren’t stolen, but he tried to joke, turning to address an imaginary smiling stewardess with bright red hair and straight white teeth like Mira Wohl. His voice shook like a frightened puppy. He made himself smile despite the pain in his neck. Then he called to the invisible passengers, comfy in their gray leather seats. “And you buckle up. We could see some more turbulence ahead.”
He forced himself to write his own headline. “Lollipop Kid Steals Third Plane, Is Never Seen Again, Leaves Cops and Islanders Baffled. Gets Away with It.”
And then there was a flash, so quick he wasn’t sure he’d seen it at all, but for the blue afterimage that danced before his eyes. Then a cloud to his left lit up again, flickering and then fading. A lightning bolt. The cloud cover thickened from stretched-out cotton balls to denser, bulkier thunderheads. The flashes came faster, thunder rumbling in their wake. The plane jerked to one side. Robert overcorrected and wrenched back the opposite way. The bumps jolted him in his seat. He’d jinxed himself by joking about turbulence.
The plane plunged. Robert felt the roller-coaster drop in his stomach.
He hadn’t buckled up.
He jerked the throttle and the plane’s nose held steady, then climbed, recovering. Another flash illuminated the ashen clouds. Could lightning strike the plane? If lightning struck the plane, would it strike him?
His focus was shot. Could he go under the storm? Above it? Around it? How?
He wasn’t going to reach Vancouver. That plan had been destined to fail. He couldn’t make it to Seattle. What made him think he could flee to a different country?
Because just for a little while, he’d believed he was the damn Lollipop Kid.
He pounded his fist against his knee. He was still so close to Tomkins he could see Yannatok’s beach, but he couldn’t turn around. The cops’ shots still rang in his ears.
He banked to the right, away from the darkest clouds, tilting the ailerons. The storm shook the plane so hard he bounced in his seat. Robert slid his sweaty fingers over the screwdriver, making sure it was secure. What would happen if the damn thing fell out?
Another flare, so close it temporarily blinded him.
The beach, the same beach he’d crashed onto on his second flight.
Should he try to land here, where he knew he had a chance at fleeing into the woods?
All he’d needed was forty-five minutes. The trip was a sprint, an errand, a commute. But now he was a giant moving target, a bull’s-eye with wings.
His dad had made it on foot, ditching that cruiser.
Robert would have to ditch the plane, but he would try to land it. His A+, his honor roll report card, his diploma. Even if he was the only one who knew he’d earned it.
But his indecision had cost him precious yards of sand. He threw down the landing gear and lifted the nose. Nudged it higher, higher, trying to break his speed. He raised the elevator. Still he was coming in too fast.
He clattered onto the shore, bouncing down the beach before heaving and wobbling to a complete stop.
For half a second, he thought he’d done it. The landing had been bumpy and clumsy, for sure, but the plane was in one piece.
Then Robert heard a whoosh and suddenly all was white. The plane’s air bags had ballooned into his chest and chin.
Gasoline burned his lungs. The fuel tank must have ruptured. Another pop, this one so much louder than the cops’ guns, and then only the air bag kept his face from igniting with the tank. He couldn’t see the flames, but he felt them, the scorching reddening his cheeks, his arms.
Like the snowy plane crash in Hatchet, the smoke billowed into the cockpit, deadly and thick as an avalanche.
What did you think when you realized you were an idiot? What did you think when you realized you were going to die?
The Lollipop Kid was going to kill Robert.
He coughed, choking, as heat rose before him.
Had Mr. Drew ever talked about how not to burn yourself alive?
The smoke jammed its sooty fist down his throat, snatched his breath. His eyes teared, stung, burned.
He gagged and fumbled for the door handle. Flames crackled and hissed. His throat burned. He kicked at the air bag, white and solid as an unmarked tombstone. Something dripped down his forehead and he couldn’t tell if it was sweat or blood or his own melting face.
He’d always heard that before you died, you saw some light. You were supposed to move toward it, up to heaven or whatever. But all Robert could see was thick gray. He felt for the door handle, the metal hot, searing his hand. He pushed, he jammed his shoulder against it, he strained against the window, the glass that wouldn’t break and set him free, and suddenly he remembered pushing open the window the last time he had seen his father.
His whole life didn’t flash before his eyes: just a few choice scenes. His dad drumming on Robert’s windowsill, chuckling about how he was sticking it to the sheriff. The grin before he took off into the woods. That sour drunk smell.
Robert Senior had never been to Iraq, never flown a plane, never saved anyone. Never dodged gunfire.
Blisters rose on Robert’s fingers, at the tip of his nose.
His father hadn’t outrun anybody. He hadn’t hit a deer.
The truth threw sparks. Robert burned with it, like the engine fire had blazed a path through his memory banks, his blood.
Robert Jackson Kelley Senior had killed someone that night. And then he’d decided to cruise by and brag to his boy. He’d decided to tell his son a different story.
And Robert knew now how it could happen. How a risk could go wrong and end in a body.
How eventually, everyone got caught in their own traps.
His lungs seized, his chest straitjacket tight.
Robert flashed back to the sleeping couple whose house he had broken into. Standing there in that house, about to be caught, he’d probably never looked more like his dad. Like he’d been in a fight—and in a way he had been: with the planes, with the island, with the sea and the sky. With the truth.
His mother hadn’t been lying to him. He’d been lying to himself.
He had to tell her, to say he was sorry, that he finally got it, before he lost his chance to one more miscalculation, one more gamble.
Robert threw himself at the door, his whole body ramming against the metal as the smoke shrank the cockpit. Pain ricocheted up his arm and through his neck.
And then he tumbled onto the sand, cool as a bedsheet. His eyes teared and ran, and he wanted to close his heavy lids and just lie there. Let the ocean chill him on one side and the fire warm him on the other.
He decided then that he wouldn’t take the chance of dying in a flaming bird, or drowning in a steel winged cage in the icy Pacific. But still, before he blacked out, he couldn’t help but think:
I know I could do it.
I could land one of these planes.
If I tried one more time.