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I nodded. “Because I live in a trailer.”
“That is not”—Alec paused in midsentence as he realized that’s exactly what he’d meant—“what I meant,” he finished weakly.
We both looked toward the Admiral’s plane as he started his engine.
“I’ve never been in the military,” I said slowly, “so I don’t know for sure. I can only judge from what I’ve seen, living in trailer parks with mostly military families when I lived near the Army base and then the Air Force base.”
Alec opened his hands, prompting me to go on. “What did you see?”
“I saw that the military treats people like dogs.”
Alec’s fresh face hardened. “If you lived in a trailer park with them, you probably mean single enlisted men. Privates.”
“I mean the military treats its personnel like dogs,” I insisted. “The military treats the personnel’s families like dogs. The personnel start treating their own families like dogs because they’ve been treated like dogs themselves.”
Alec’s brows went down behind his shades. “I would have a college degree, though. I’d be an officer. I’d get a bigger housing allowance, and I wouldn’t live in a trailer park.”
“You would have no choice about what you did for your job,” I promised him, “or where you did it. You wouldn’t have a lot of say in where you lived. You would be a bigger dog.”
Alec backed a step away from me. “You’re awfully down on the military.”
“Because I’ve lived with them!” I said. “That’s what I’m telling you. You have no idea.”
“I do have an idea,” he insisted. “My father was in the military, and my brother.”
We both fell silent. He was hearing what he’d just said, and I was waiting for him to hear it.
“Why did Jake join?” I asked him. “It seems like your dad wouldn’t have wanted him to, honestly.”
“He didn’t want him to,” Alec confirmed. “But Mom didn’t want Jake to go into business with Dad. I think Jake finally joined up because he was so frustrated with both of them telling him what to do and trying to control his every move.”
“He joined the military out of frustration?” I asked, incredulous. “I’ll bet he regretted that.”
Alec shrugged. “He never said he did.”
“Of course he couldn’t admit it,” I said. “Not to your dad. He’d be admitting that your dad had been right all along. From what I’ve seen, that’s not how your family works.”
The whole scenario was making me ill. Jake joining up out of frustration. Regretting it the instant he got sent to Afghanistan. Mr. Hall knowing Jake regretted it, and feeling responsible because he’d driven Jake to that point in the first place. And then, when Jake died, Mr. Hall was in a dark place.
“So, if you’re interested in joining,” I said, “I wouldn’t do it just because you thought your dad wanted you to. I’m sure he didn’t.”
Alec frowned at me. I realized what I was saying was none of my business. I went on anyway, because it was important. More important than making him like me. Actually, I was beginning to realize how closely connected all this was.
“Your brother died three months ago,” I said, “and your dad died two months ago. So recently that you and Grayson and I hold our breath when one of us brings them up. You’re grieving, and you’re not thinking straight. Anything you do because Jake did it or your dad might have wanted it—that’s suspect. You have no perspective. And especially something like this, a decision that will tie up your life for, what? Five or six years after college? The next ten years of your life? You should make that decision with a clear head. There’s absolutely no need to jump into it now. You could wait six months and make the decision then.”
Alec still frowned at me. “You sound like Grayson. Have you two talked about this?”
“No,” I said honestly. I hoped I sounded honest. Really I was beginning to feel guilty. Now I saw exactly why Grayson had wanted me to seduce Alec. I’d been manipulating Alec all week without knowing why. Now I knew.
“Well, listen,” Alec said, a small smile returning to his lips. “I’m going to miss you tonight, but I’m having dinner with my recruiter.”
I blinked. “Your recruiter?” This was serious. “Alec, please think about what I said.”
“I will,” he promised. “But that means I won’t see you tonight. We hadn’t made plans, exactly, but we’ve all been going out together, and I thought you and I…” He took my hand and rubbed my palm with his thumb. “We haven’t said we’re dating exclusively or anything, so I don’t mean to assume too much. I just wanted you to know where I’d be. And I wanted to explain it to you while we’re alone. Grayson’s going to have a fit that I’m seeing my recruiter, like it’s any of his business.”
Oh, it was Grayson’s business all right. He’d made it his business. But all I said was, “Thank you.”
Alec kissed me on the forehead. “And I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He turned for the Hall Aviation hangar and walked back toward the yellow Piper, while Molly out in the field struggled to pull his banner along the grass and hook it up between the poles.
My last flight of the day was ruined. I loved that rush of takeoff, that sight of the world spread out below me. I hadn’t played a lot of video games in my life, but I was sure threading the needle by pointing an actual plane toward two tiny poles to pick up a banner was more fun than any fake flying scenario ever invented. I loved fighting the engine, throttling down, nearly stalling, and negotiating a peace between the airplane and the sky.
That is, I loved flying when I could think about flying. But when my mind was filled with something else, flying was a chore. And right now my mind raced in circles, taking Alec and Grayson down a whirlpool with it.
I understood now why Grayson had blackmailed me. I believed that he believed what he’d told me last night: fooling Alec was a matter of life and death. That didn’t make it right. Showing Alec that they could make the business work was one thing. Adding me into the mix was evil. Now he was no longer convincing Alec. He was manipulating Alec.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether Grayson had made up all those dire predictions about my crop-dusting job too. I wouldn’t have put it past him, to make me do what he wanted.
I wondered whether last night at the beach had been just another method to keep me on his side.
This was what I was thinking as I dropped my banner and came around again to land. I should not have been thinking about anything but flying the plane, and Mr. Hall was scolding me in my head, but I couldn’t help it. I analyzed every detail of what Grayson and I had done together on the beach. I’d never felt so good in my life. Was it possible that he had faked everything he felt? I didn’t think so, but I didn’t have a lot to compare him with.
I knew how my boyfriend had acted when we did it at the runway when I was fourteen. He hadn’t been in love with me. I knew how Mark had looked when we made out. I was so confused now about his motivations that I had no idea what to think. How would he have acted when I kicked him out of my trailer if he’d really loved me?
That led me back to my conversation with Alec right before we took off. He’d asked me what I thought of his plan to go into the military. I’d told him. I realized now that what I’d said was all wrong. That’s why he’d been frowning at me. If I had fallen for him, I would have hugged him and cried and begged him not to join up, and he knew it.
I’d blown that part of Grayson’s scheme without even meaning to.
There was no help for it now. As soon as I landed, I was going to have a long talk with Grayson and convince him that if he wanted to change his brother’s mind, no matter how important the issue, this was not the way.
That was my plan until I came in for my final approach. I should have been focusing on the runway, but my eyes drifted to the Hall Aviation hangar, where Grayson’s and Alec’s planes were already parked. Then to the lot beside the airport office, where my mother was stepping out of her boyfriend Roger’s ancient Trans-Am, the door a different color from the body.
As I landed, taxied over to the hangar, and stepped out of the plane, I didn’t see my mom anywhere outside. I scanned the hangar as I walked inside, but she wasn’t there, either. Grayson, Alec, and Molly were talking in front of Mr. Hall’s Cessna, all of them looking grim. Probably this was a very important discussion of the Chinook and the lieutenant and what Grayson had said to him, but none of that mattered right now.
I walked up and put my hand on Grayson’s chest. He stopped talking and looked down at me in surprise over the top of his shades.
“My mother is here,” I told him, “and you’re my boyfriend. You’ve been my boyfriend for three and a half years, except for my week with Mark.”
“What?” he yelped, panic in his eyes that I’d ruined my fake relationship with Alec.
“I can’t explain it right now,” I said impatiently. He wasn’t the only one engineering fake relationships around here. Couldn’t he see that? “I actually don’t work that many hours at the airport office, and when I’m not working there, I’m spending time with you.”
“But—”
I cut him off, turning to Alec. “You and I aren’t dating. Okay? Just for right now.”
“Okay,” Alec said dubiously.
I turned to Molly. “You… haven’t met my mother. Just keep your mouth shut.”
I turned to the side door of the hangar, which my mother would come through any second. “She’s at the airport office,” I said, keeping my eyes on the door. “Leon is telling her I’m working here instead this week. If he tells her I’m flying, I’m screwed. If he doesn’t offer that detail, I’m just your secretary, do you understand?”
I slipped my arm around Grayson’s waist and stared at the Cessna for two seconds until, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the hangar door open.
I was astonished at how she looked. She seemed the same as always, and it had only been ten days since I’d seen her—the night she told Mark he could move in. What surprised me was how much she looked like that girl in Mark’s truck, the one he’d taken to the beach, except that my mom was fifteen years older.
I walked over to her, calling, “Hey, Mama!” I hugged her. “Hey, Roger,” I said over her shoulder as he came in the door.
She beamed at me. “Baby, I’ve got some news.”
Since she’d just come back from the Indian casino, the first idea popping into my head was that she’d won fifty thousand dollars. But if she had, she would have spent it all on the way home. She and Roger would have rolled up to the hangar in a sparkling new club cab pickup instead of his Trans-Am.
“What is it?” I breathed.
“We’re moving to Savannah!” my mom announced. “Roger’s cousin says he may be able to get him on at the backhoe plant.”
I went cold in the broiling hangar. My brain tried to process this information. It did not compute. The backhoe plant, or for that matter any factory in the United States, would require three things of its employees that Roger did not have and could not get: a clean drug test, references, and the ability to drag his ass into work more than two days in a row. But in my heart I knew it would take a couple of weeks for my mother to figure this out, if she even cared. By that time we would be living in Savannah.
In a trailer park next to the airport.
And I would have to start over.
seventeen
“It’s beautiful in Savannah.” My mom made a vague waving motion that seemed to indicate Grayson, Alec, and Molly. “Your friends can come and visit,” she told me, as if she was feeling very generous, and this would make up for everything. “So come on back home, Leah, and get your stuff together. We’re leaving tonight.”
“Tonight?” Grayson asked sharply, sending a cold chill down my neck.
I turned to them. Alec and Molly whispered with their heads bent. Grayson watched my mom in disbelief. In his world, families didn’t move to a different town on the spur of the moment. They didn’t need to. And that’s when I realized what must be going on.
“What’s wrong?” I asked my mom suspiciously. “Why were you suddenly hell-bent on driving to the Indian casino last week?” Usually it took at least a couple of days for her to hatch that plan. A sudden turnaround reeked of desperation. Like, she needed a lot of money fast.
“Nothing’s wrong!” she exclaimed, her cheeks two spots of pink, and not from a day at the beach. “I just wanted to have a little fun. It’s spring break!”
Spring break was for students like me, not unemployed waitresses like her. I wondered whether she still qualified as an unemployed waitress. She’d gone so long without working that at some point she’d stopped being an unemployed waitress and became just plain unemployed.
I put my hands on my hips. “How far behind are you on rent?”
“That’s not why we’re moving,” she snapped. “Roger’s cousin says—”
“That’s why we moved from Golden to Equality,” I said. “That’s why we lived in every shithole in Equality at least twice. That’s why we moved from Equality to the Army base, and from the Army base to the Air Force base, and from there to Heaven Beach.”
