Mirage Read Online Free Page A

perfect landing. I ease into my arch.
    There’s nothing to do now but fall.
    It’s odd being out here alone again for the second time today, not part of a formation, and not goofing off with Dom, kissing in freefall. It’s extremely lonely, like I’m disassociated from what I’m doing. Like maybe I’m not real. Not as if I’m dreaming. More like . . . like I could be someone else’s dream.
    What if I was?
    If I bounced, would another girl sit up in bed, sweating and panting, grateful it was just a dream?
    This thought spooks me, makes me distrust myself for the first time, and this is one jump where I can’t afford doubts. Every fluttering gnat of fear in my belly is squashed by the weight of my stubborn will. I have to do this. The risk I’m taking is worth it. It is. I’ll show my father I’m precise.
    The number I wrote on the slip of logbook said simply
1K
. I wish I could see his face when he realizes what it means​—​eight hundred feet below oh-shit altitude, where we must make a decision in an emergency. I had to turn off my automatic activation device to do this jump.
    I’d laugh if the wind weren’t pulling my cheeks back to my ears.
    Dom is filming me, and I’m going to give him something memorable. But I can’t fight the lonely drag as I fall; it’s like no one, not even God, is watching me right now. I think of the specter eyes in the mirror, the spooky sensation of being watched instead of being the watcher. How can my own reflection scare me so much?
    For a moment in that motor home, I was my own ghost.
    I blow through the altitude where I’d normally pull. But this is no normal jump. I’ve had one jump when my chute failed to open and I had to deploy a reserve. This time, this one time, if there is a problem, I won’t have time to deploy my reserve. My objectives are: Pull as low as I can. Don’t die.
    It’s like playing chicken with the earth.
    With every five hundred feet I lose, my heart hammers five hundred beats faster. My fingers are twitching to pull. It’s all I can do not to reach for the cord. The ground is rushing at me so fast, and I can see people lined up around the drop zone. I’m certain I’ll hear their gasps on the video later.
    There’s no taking my eyes off my altimeter now. I reach one thousand feet above ground level and pull, and my chute fans open in a violent gust. My legs swing hard underneath me as the chute jerks me upright. I do a quick check of the canopy and lines as I grab the toggles, realizing I have time for one-quarter of my turn before my feet touch the earth. I slam into the ground and roll. All breath has been knocked from me. Desperately I struggle for oxygen, but my body refuses to take in air.
    For too long, all I see is white.
    Did I ever pull at all?
    Did someone just cry out in her sleep?
    Peripheral vision opens up, color streams in fragments, and footsteps batter toward me. Dom stares down with the video camera pointed at my face. A wild-eyed mania has replaced his normally cool expression. I scared him. I excited him too, but the dilated fear is still in his eyes.
    â€œJesus, Ry! That was . . . Whooo! You are unbelievable!”
    I fight to pull air into my lungs. Now the camera is annoying me. Avery skids up next to him. “What, are you crazy?”
    â€œWhat, are you new?” my voice croaks. As I start to push myself up, my fingers alight on something smooth and hard in the dirt. I grab it and hold it out to the camera with a wide smile. “The penny, bitches.”
    Dom stops filming and holds his hand out to help me up. “Damn, that was something. When I said ‘call it,’ I didn’t mean for you to call a suicide altitude. I don’t know if I’d ever do that,” he says, much more serious.
    I glare at him and his backpedaling support. “Well, those who can’t do . . .