Page 15 of Boiling Point
No response—just the steady crackle of an open frequency. A beat passed before Gabrielle released the brake, and the plane rolled forward. No permission granted. No unseen authority approving our fate.
“Isn’t someone supposed to answer?”
“Nope,” she said easily. “Not unless there’s a problem. This is Class G airspace.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s no control tower. We announce our moves on an open frequency. If no one objects, we’re good to go.”
My stomach twisted as she maneuvered onto the taxiway, feet on the rudder pedals, hands light on the yoke. The aircraft bumped and rattled over the pavement, the vibrations crawling up my spine.
Yellow taxi lines stretched ahead, curving past painted numbers and runway markers that meant nothing to me but seemed to anchor her. Gabrielle moved with certainty, following rules I couldn’t decipher, her gaze flicking between the tarmac and the horizon.
Painted on the asphalt in stark white: 29. Bold and final. The end of solid ground. We paused at a white line just short of the runway—the place where everything stopped. She scanned the sky, eyes sharp and assessing, and keyed the mic again.
“Grayson traffic, Cessna 150 Aerobat departing runway two-niner, northbound.”
She tilted her head, listening. Nothing but silence.
She looked at me, her expression edged with amusement. “Last chance to back out.”
I swallowed hard, gripping the seams of my trousers. “Just get us in the air before I come to my senses.”
Her smirk widened. “Copy that.”
She pushed the throttle forward, and the engine roared, surging us down the runway—slow at first, then faster. My spine pressed into the seat as we gathered speed, the centerline blurring beneath us. The plane’s nose lifted.
A sudden lightness stole my stomach as we left the ground, the wheels parting from the earth in a moment so unnatural, I forgot to breathe.
Wind nudged the aircraft, and it responded with a subtle, fluid tilt—nothing violent, but enough to remind me just how small we were up here.
Beside me, Gabrielle was composed—a study in serene focus—as she coaxed the plane into a smooth upward path, her hands light on the controls. Her calm accentuated my disarray.
My breaths came shallow and quick inside the headset’s cocoon, each one deafening in its isolation.
Her voice filled my brain. “How are you doing over there?”
I hesitated on honesty and settled on something close enough. “Holding together.”
“You’re shaking like a leaf, Dr. Hawthorne.”
“Cal.”
She glanced over, puzzled. “What?”
“My name is Cal,” I clarified. “You hold my life in your hands right now. I think you’ve earned the right to use my first name.”
A smile spread across her face. “All right, then. You’re shaking like a leaf,Cal.”
The sweetness in her voice twisted something in my chest, and for a moment, I forgot the thousand tiny deaths waiting beyond these thin walls. I managed a laugh—tinny and nervous inside the headset.
“I’m better now,” I lied, watching in a terrified awe as the world fell away beneath us. Fields and roads shrank into a patchwork quilt, each line and square growing smaller, more abstract. The whole of it seemed impossibly fragile, like a child’s model left carelessly out in the garden.
Gabrielle leveled the plane, and, at last, my stomach caught up—a welcome relief after the gut-twisting terror of ascent. The engine’s roar eased into a steady hum, like the breath of a sleeping beast.
“See? Not so bad,” she said, her voice laced with teasing confidence.
I forced my fingers—stiff, foreign things that barely seemed mine—to unclench. “Not so bad,” I agreed, though I was still acutely aware of every shiver and sway.
