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“Give it time,” he says. “I might grow on you.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Like a tumor.”

“Listen to that,” I tell Padgett. “The romantic tension is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a chainsaw.”

“Ugh,” Brianna says, and slaps me on the arm. “Come on, let’s go over and talk to Bobby.”

We push our way through the crowd that’s gathered around Angelica. Richard and the captain are checking her over as Bobby and Dad talk. While Mom is probably more worried than I am about this flying deal, Dad is completely behind it, says he may take her up himself one of these days. He even went over to Sparks a couple of times with Bobby to sit in on the flying lessons. Of course, Dad doesn’t know what I know—that Bobby sat on the captain’s porch right in front of me that one night and talked about how Angelica was a Russian roulette machine, and as long as she got up in the air, it didn’t matter if she crashed. I have a hard time shaking that out of my head, but I tell myself Bobby didn’t really mean it. Besides, he’s different now.

After giving Angelica one last thorough inspection, Richard and the captain tell Bobby she’s good to go. He puts on his black helmet, his goggles, and his gloves, and then lets everyone in the family hug him before he goes up. I’m the last in line. It’s the best hug I’ve had from him since he got back. I don’t want to let go.

“Okay, Mr. Pilot Man,” I tell him. “I don’t want to see you trying any daredevil stunts up there.”

He steps back and smiles. “Me? Daredevil stunts? You know I’d never do such a thing.”

“You better not. You have too many people who love you around here to go trying stuff like that.”

“Hey, what’s not to love?” he says. Then he leans in and whispers in my ear, “You’re my number-one girl, and you always will be.”

After that, it’s all business. He climbs into Angelica’s sparkly blue seat, and Richard and the captain strap him in. “Remember,” says the captain. “You have to get on the right vibration level. Buoyancy is key.”

They fire up the engine, and I know there’s no turning back now. Dad clears the crowd from the flight strip, and the captain stands out front and counts down from ten. At zero, he waves his hand and jogs out of the way.

Angelica chugs across the field, slowly at first, then picks up speed. She rises from the ground then bumps back down three or four times as the engine whines louder.

“Yeah, Bobby!” shouts Chuck. “Let ’er rip, buddy!”

His little girl waves her arms and squeals happily.

Angelica bounces a couple more times, then begins to rise steadily. She’s going twice as fast as what the captain was doing in her that night on the highway. Twenty feet up, thirty feet,
forty. Everyone in the crowd cranes their heads as she climbs. They look like flowers following the sunrise.

At the end of the field, there’s a patch of small cedars, and Bobby clears them easily as Angelica soars farther and farther into the perfect blue sky. Cheers bust out all around. If any of the kids from school were hoping to see a crash, I guarantee they’ve forgotten that now. Everyone’s whooping and hollering. Everyone’s on Bobby’s side, willing him to stay in the air.

From the look of pride on my dad’s face, you’d think Bobby was the first astronaut headed to Mars. I know Mom still has to be worried, but she’s shoved every trace of it off her face so that it can’t infect anyone else. My sisters, my little brother, the uncles, Gillis, Brianna, and Padgett all look up with expressions of pure, glorious triumph. The captain smiles broadly, but it’s a regular-person smile now. With all the medication he’s been taking, he hasn’t seen the Nogo Gatu in weeks, but he doesn’t see the Yimmies anymore either.

Angelica makes a wide circle high over the field. She and Bobby look so small, so light, it’s like gravity has nothing to do with them anymore. It’s beautiful the way she soars, the sunlight glinting on her decorated frame. I know why Bobby wanted to fly her now. I know why the captain did. It’s free up there.

Still, I want Bobby to stay over the field. Don’t fly over the trees anymore, I plead with him in my mind. You can’t land that thing in the trees. But my ESP must be broken because the next thing I know he’s soaring far out over the woods, farther away than we’d planned on him going. Come back, my mind shouts to him. Come back.

This time it works. Angelica turns and begins to swoop lower. But she’s still above the spiny tops of the trees. “Give me
your binoculars,” I tell Padgett, and rip them from his hands almost before he can get the strap loose from around his neck.

Angelica’s coming down more steeply, but she’s still too far away for me to get a good look at Bobby, even with the binoculars. What can he be thinking? He hasn’t even been up that long. It’s too soon to try to land now.

Closer and closer he comes. Lower and lower. It looks like Angelica’s wheels might clip the treetops. Pull up, Bobby, my mind shouts. Pull up. He doesn’t, but misses the trees anyway. Now he’s heading straight our way, the sound of the engine growing louder but not loud enough to drown out the cheers from the crowd.

Finally, I get the binoculars zeroed in on Bobby’s face. I hope to see a look of ecstasy, the pure joy of knowing he’s beyond the flames that pulled Covell down, but that’s not his expression at all. Instead, his mouth is set in a straight, hard line, his eyes completely focused. His hands grip the controls as if they are part of the machinery of life itself. Every molecule in his body and all the energy in every one of those molecules strain toward one purpose—to keep on going.

He whooshes low over our heads, waving at us as he does. The cheers boom louder than ever. Then he starts climbing again, flying like he was born knowing how. He soars higher and higher, freer and freer, the sky welcoming him like a favorite son.

“Wow,” says Padgett. “He’s a flying ace already.”

“You should’ve seen the expression on his face,” I say, leaning into Padgett’s side. “He is one hundred percent B-A-D-D.”

He wraps his arm around me. “You do pretty good at that yourself.”

“Yeah,” I say, staring into the sky. “I guess it runs in the family.”

Tim Tharp lives in Oklahoma, where he writes novels and teaches in the Humanities Department at Rose State College. In addition to earning a master’s degree in creative writing from Brown University, he has also spent time as a factory hand, construction laborer, psychiatric aide, record store clerk, and long-distance hitchhiker.

Tharp is the author of
Falling Dark
, for which he won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, and two young adult novels:
Knights of the Hill Country
, which was an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, and
The Spectacular Now
, which was a National Book Award finalist in 2008.