“Being a feminist doesn’t mean you have to personally like every woman,” Imogen points out reasonably. “Especially one who is, like, a human slice of Ezekiel bread.” Thenshe grins. “Just don’t have sex with her boyfriend, and you’re good.”
My jaw drops. “Mean!” I exclaim, sitting upright.
“I’m kidding,” Imogen says. Then she makes a face. “I mean, kind of. Seriously though, don’t.”
“Is that really what you think I’m going to do?” I ask, stung. “Because it’s not. I’m notlikethat anymore, Imogen. I don’t—” I break off, weirdly afraid I might be about to cry all of a sudden. It feels very, very important that she believes me.
Imogen can tell. “No no no,” she amends quickly, “hey, I’m just playing. I’m sorry.” She reaches and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing; I can tell by the stricken look on her face that she really was just kidding around. “Some things aren’t for joking, I’m sorry.”
I shake my head again, pulling it together. “No, you’re fine,” I promise, tucking my hair neatly back behind my ears. “Clearly I’m wound a little tight about the whole thing, is all.”
“All of us being cooped up in my fucking dollhouse isn’t helping, probably,” Imogen says. She looks out the window: it’s stopped raining, clouds breaking up and buttery-yellow sunlight spilling through. “You know,” she says thoughtfully, twisting a strand of her hair around two pale fingers, “There is actuallyonething to do here, if you’re looking to blow off some steam.”
“Oh yeah?” I raise my eyebrows with some trepidation,thinking of last night’s game of Never Have I Ever. “What’s that?”
Imogen grins. “How do you feel about skydiving?”
“You guys are ridiculous,” Sadie says an hour later, standing in the tiny front office of the County Kerry Parachute Club with her arms crossed inside her Outward Bound hoodie. “I’m just saying, if you’ve got a death wish, I’m sure there are easier ways to go about it.”
Gabe is grinning at her. “So I take it you’re not going to go up, then?” he teases.
Sadie shakes her head. “I’ll stay down here and hold purses, thanks. And call your moms to tell them we had to scrape your flattened bodies out of a field somewhere.”
“Oh, I don’t think it will come to that,” says Ralph, one of the instructors, slightly built with friendly blue eyes and a sandy-blond beard, oddly normal-looking for a person who makes his living plummeting through the atmosphere at breakneck speed. “We hardly ever have two calamities in one week.” Then, off Sadie’s horrified expression, “I’m joking, love.”
“Uh-huh.” Sadie nods, profoundly unamused. “Right.”
“I’m surprised this isn’t your kind of thing, actually,” Ian tells her. “Outdoor girl, all of that.”
Sadie waves her hand, dismissive. “Hiking is totally different,” she points out. “No matter how high you’re climbing, you’re still technically on the ground. Give me a dozen kidsto take out on trail, I’m good.Thisnonsense, on the other hand...” She shakes her head ominously.
“I’ve actually always wanted to try it,” Gabe puts in, skimming the release form before signing his name with a flourish and handing it over to Ralph. “My brother did a smoke-jumping thing last year in Colorado. Well, he started doing a smoke-jumping thing, I guess. Then he punched a kid in the nose and got kicked out of the program.”
“Can we all go up together?” I ask Ralph, blurting it out before Gabe can say anything else about whatever physical altercations he or his brother might have gotten into last summer—or my involvement therein. “I mean, can you take all of us at once?”
Ian looks at me with interest as he hands his credit card over to the woman behind the counter. “You’re in?” he asks, sounding surprised.
I hesitate. I don’t know if I’m in, actually; I was undecided on the drive over here, close to an hour in Imogen’s ancient clunker. “Um,” I hedge, “potentially?”
“Oh, come on,” Gabe says. “You love an adrenaline rush.”
Ian laughs out loud.“Molly?”he asks, incredulous. “Molly—and I say this with love—is probably the least adrenaline-seeking person I’ve ever met in my life.”
Gabe looks confused. “I mean, fair enough,” he says after a moment. “I guess you’d know better than me.”
I cringe. There’s something in Gabe’s tone I don’t like—afaint whiff of goading, maybe. But I also get why he thinks of me as someone who’d be up for something like this. There was a time I was game for anything, skinny-dipping in Star Lake or a middle-of-the-night road trip or a clandestine make-out in the woods behind the Lodge. But I learned my lesson. All too oftenadrenalinereally meant bad decisions, fire-breathing dragons woken from slumber. All too often adrenaline meant me left holding the bag.
But that’s over now.
Isn’t it?
I take a deep breath, looking at the various warnings posted on the walls of the office.You may not skydive if you have a heart condition. You may not skydive if you are under the age of sixteen, or under the age of eighteen without the consent of a parent or guardian. You may not skydive if you are pregnant.
“Yeah,” I say, lifting my chin in quiet defiance. “I think I want to go.”
Which is how we wind up nine thousand feet in the air in matching gray jumpsuits like something out of an action movie, the roar of the engines all around us, physical as a cloud. I’m strapped to a cheerful green-eyed instructor named Rose who calls meloveand promises we’re in this together—literally, in fact. “You nervous?” she asks as the airplane climbs.
I wave my hand to say so-so, though the reality is it’s taking every particle of self-control in my body not to start shrieking and demand the pilot turn around immediately.“Um, it’s not the heights, really,” I yell over the cacophony. “It’s more the whole, like, surrendering all control and putting my life into the hands of the universe thing!”
