Writers Abroad Magazine Issue 7 November 2017 | Page 20

WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE: THE THIRD SPACE
UNKNOWN TERRITORY
BY Maggie Shelton
Emily’s Cessna 152 dropped a hundred feet before
it was caught in a violent updraft that slammed
her head into the ceiling. She moaned with fear
and grasped the yoke hard with one hand while
she tightened her seat belt with the other. Using
her skirt to wipe the sweat first from her eyes, then
the sweat off the yoke, she watched the needle on the altimeter begin its slow
move back up to five thousand feet.
This was her maiden flight, the first time she’d been in the plane without an
instructor. If she made it back successfully, she’d be presented with her pilot’s
license. But she didn’t care about that now. All the joy was gone, knowing he’d
not be waiting to celebrate with her.
'Cessna 5929M, this is Los Angeles Center, do you copy?' At first she did not
register the call, then it echoed in her head. Cessna Five Niner Two Niner Mike.
That’s me he’s calling, and not for the first time, she realized. His voice shocked
her back to the sweltering cockpit. As impersonal as he sounded, it reminded her
she was not alone. She grasped onto that thought.
She knew what he wanted, he wanted to know what the hell she was doing,
circling around and around. She was surrounded on three sides by mountains,
and their tops loomed over her, thirty-five hundred feet up. The record-breaking
heat had thinned the air and forced her little plane to strain for every foot of
altitude. She needed to get over them, but she was frozen with terror. Passing so
close to the mountains that she could see individual boulders, she worried her
wings might brush the bent and warped pines clinging to the sides. They’re like
me, she thought, warped by betrayal and bent from the fear of raising four half
grown children alone. Her hard-earned husband gone with a woman who
promised him a life without responsibility. She and the children, Emily thought
bitterly, discarded like waste down the garbage disposal.
'Cessna 5929M, do you read me?' Impatience marked the controller’s words,
and Emily knew she’d have to respond.
'Affirmative, Los Angeles Center, I read you. Go ahead.' Surprisingly, she’d
taken some strength from his business-as-usual-tone, and her own voice
sounded steady in her headphones.
'Please state your intentions, 29M.'
Emily thought about going back, but realized she’d only charted her course in
one direction. She wouldn’t be able to plot it on her map in this bucking and
shudderin