Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online Page A

up, and tomorrow we’ll go back and get the plane.”
    “Florence is seventy miles away,” came Grayson’s voice. “I don’t have enough gas to make it.”
    “Roger,” Mr. Hall told the radio. He glanced at the wind sock again.
    Alec and Jake had wrestled the unwieldy banner into a big, sloppy roll and plopped it on the porch, behind a rocking chair and against the wall, where it wouldn’t blow away. We all walked out to stand on the tarmac again and watch the plane fly parallel to the runway, then turn. Grayson would go through the same motions as on his first pass, but this time he would land.
    Or try.
    It wasn’t right that he fought through this alone. He and I had no bond, but I would have been the one in the plane instead of him if I hadn’t taken my turn first. Raising my voiceover the wind, I told Mr. Hall, “Seems like there’s some advice you could give him.”
    Mr. Hall shook his head. “I’ve taught all of you correctly. Whether you learned it correctly or not, I don’t know. That kid never had the sense God gave a goat. He probably thinks this is fun.”
    True, Grayson was the live wire in the family, the adrenaline junkie who would do anything on a dare, who’d gotten in trouble in the past year for smoking, drinking, weed, speeding, skipping school—Mr. Hall had spilled it all to me while we were flying. Mr. Hall worried constantly that his ex-wife couldn’t handle raising Grayson on her own. Alec got in trouble only for refusing to rat Grayson out. But I doubted even Grayson enjoyed trying to land the plane in this windstorm.
    Worried as I was, what Alec was going through must have been ten times worse. Grayson and he looked nothing alike, and they’d never seemed close. Alec was closer with Jake, glomming onto Jake really, and Grayson was off by himself, getting into trouble. But Grayson and Alec were still brothers, and twins. I wasn’t surprised when Alec crossed one arm on his chest, propped his other elbow on that arm, and put his hand over his mouth.
    What did surprise me was that Jake put his arm around Alec’s shoulders.
    Over the loudspeaker, Grayson calmly announced his approach. The red plane dropped out of the sky, skimming twenty feet above the runway, then ten.
    I squinted and struggled to stand against a cold blast of wind. On that gust, the sound of the tiny engine drifted across the field to us. The motor suddenly roared in a higher pitch as the plane jerked to the left. Grayson was using the stick and the rudder pedals to fight the wind. I was fighting it too,sympathetically, my hands balled into fists, arms tense, toes curling in my shoes. And holding my breath.
    The plane made several more agonizing darts this way and that, wings jerking up and leveling off. Finally he was one foot off the runway, inches, then none. The plane landed as straight and level as if the wind were calm.
    Mr. Hall said, “Perfect.”
    The plane was still rolling fast when the wind swept under it and tipped one wing up to the sky, the other down to scrape the asphalt.
    “Damn it,” Mr. Hall barked. I made a noise too, something between a yelp and a scream, and Jake pressed one hand against Alec’s chest to keep him from running across the field. There was nothing we could do for Grayson, and nothing he could do either. Helpless, while someone chanted “No no no no no,” we watched the wing tilt as far up as it could go without the plane turning upside down. The plane seemed to be sinking then, the wind tiring.
    That’s when a gust caught the tail instead and spun the still-rolling plane all the way around backward in a ground loop, exactly what we’d all been afraid of and exactly why most people didn’t fly these old-fashioned planes anymore. The wind spun the plane all the way forward again, then lobbed it at the trees.
    Now we were running. Jake and Alec shot past me. I hoped they knew how to help Grayson when they reached him. All I could see was the bright red plane propped at an