Eleven
This is the day of my first skydive. I wake up excited and the feeling does not go away until he walks through the door.
‘Hey,’ I say.
‘You ready?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Scared?’
‘Are you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, you.’
‘I’m not like anybody you know, Billie. I don’t get scared of danger. I get excited.’
We stare at each other. Every day I become more and more intrigued by him.
‘Let’s go then,’ I say.
When we get downstairs Jaron steers me toward a Pagani Huayra with gulf wing doors. I stop suddenly.
‘Is that yours?’ I ask in a shocked tone.
‘Last time I looked, yeah.’
‘Wow!’ I squeal, running my eyes over the aluminum and glass trimmings. ‘I love this baby.’
He chuckles. ‘Its name means god of the winds in Quechua.’
‘And why haven’t you told me about this car before?’ I demand aggressively as I start walking toward it.
He clicks his remote and the wings go out and up.
‘Whoa,’ I cry with serious admiration, and dash toward the driver’s seat. He pulls me back by my jacket. I turn around and look at him enquiringly.
‘You’re in the passenger seat,’ he says with his eyebrows raised.
‘Can I at least drive on the way back?’
‘Maybe. Let’s see how you feel after your jump.’
‘OK,’ I agree, and slide into the plush leather seat, as happy as I have ever been in my life. ‘I always saw you as an all black McLaren P1 guy.’
He glances at me curiously. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, but I was wrong. This actually suits you perfectly.’
As soon as we hit the motorway Jaron puts his foot on the accelerator and the car zooms forward so fast I actually feel a knot of fear and excitement in my belly. No wonder he didn’t want me to drive, if this is what he calls driving. We fly along, tearing past the rolling countryside until we turn off at the road leading to the airfield.
Jaron hauls our equipment out of the car and we go into the low building. He is well known there and so I am in a large locker room kitting myself out in a jumpsuit that goes over my clothes, gloves, goggles, and a helmet. Next is the harness. I step into it and Jaron pulls it up over my shoulders, and tightens all the straps to make it nice and secure. He checks it.
‘All right?’
‘A OK,’ I say although a whole swarm of butterflies has invaded my belly at the thought that soon I will be jumping out of a plane.
‘OK, face down on the floor,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll show you what position to free fall in.’
I lie on the floor, and he tells me to bend my legs at the knee and lift them about six inches in the air. We practice a few more moves and Jaron straps on his parachute.
‘Ready to skydive?’
‘Yikes,’ I joke, but by now I am a jumpsuit of nerves. We walk over to the plane. I shuffle along and sit on the bench. Jaron waves to the pilot and shows the thumbs up signal. The plane taxies off and Jaron turns to me and attaches our harnesses together, tightening all the straps again to be certain that they are all safe and secure. For the next fifteen minutes while we ascend to jumping height, Jaron seems very calm and relaxed, and that helps a lot, but it is still a really strange feeling. I trust Jaron implicitly, especially after having seen the video, and for some weird reason I love the idea of having my fate tied so irrevocably with his. Also the way he has his large, gloved hand on my knee is dead protective and I am getting off on that. We clear the clouds at nine thousand feet.