“WE’VE GOT TO STRAIGHTEN OUT!” she shouted to Micky.
“WHAAAAT?” he yelled back with his eyes shut.
“STRAIGHTEN OOOOUUUUT! STAAAAR SHAPES!”
“STAR SHAPES?”
“YESS!”
To show what she meant, Molly pushed away from him and pushed out her legs. This leveled them a little, but still they flipped.
“DO IT!” Molly screamed.
As Micky straightened his legs, he stretched his arms out, too. He and Molly were joined where their hands held each other’s harnesses. Their legs flailed behind them like the forked tails of strange high-altitude birds.
“BETTER!” Micky hollered. And it was. Without the mad spin, they could think properly. Both braved the sharp air and opened their eyes. Molly looked once again for Lily, and now for Malcolm, but they were nowhere to be seen. She wished she could check on Petula. Micky glanced at his altimeter.
“Forty-five thousand feet!” he cried.
Both knew what this meant. Both looked down. Like a terrible beast that was waking up to the twins’ imminent arrival, the clouds below them roared and flashed. Lightning showed Molly and Micky what was to come—a diabolical, dark mass of air, full of electrical storm. And in the next moment, they were in it.
At once hail hit them. Freezing cold, hard, icy lumps the size of walnuts smashed in their faces and pummeled their bodies. But neither Molly nor Micky let go of each other to shield their faces. Seconds felt like minutes, but still they clung bravely together.
Eventually the hail turned to icy rain. Now Molly and Micky felt like flies inside a massive cold shower. Then, with a sudden rip and a tug that felt as though a giant was poking them, their parachutes began to open.
Both Molly and Micky opened their eyes.
“GOOD LUCK!” Molly shouted.
“KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE COORDINATES!” Micky shouted back. And then, heeding Malcolm’s warning, with a push the twins separated.
Molly’s parachute unfurled, and Molly felt the weight of her body supported by the canopy above. And as soon as she was able, Molly put her cold, half-numb hand inside her bag to check Petula’s oxygen mask. It was still fixed to her. This was a comfort, but not enough to make Molly feel better. She was now alone with Petula in the unrelenting rain. She wondered if the parachute had opened too early. Maybe it would have been better to drop like a stone as fast as possible through the tumultuous storm. Instead they were going to have to parachute slowly down through it.
Molly did up Petula’s bag safely and began to observe the horrific weather below. Thunder rolled around her deafeningly, and lightning coursed through the heavy air. Molly caught a glimpse of Micky hanging like a barnacle from the bottom of his jellyfish-shaped parachute. She thought she saw another parachute behind him, too, but wasn’t sure whether she was simply imagining it. Whipping her face, the wind now gripped Molly’s parachute with a vengeance. Its gusts were so violent, it could rip the silk of the canopy apart. Molly looked down as another blast of thunder and lightning thrashed the sky. Beneath her dangling legs was a dreadful swirl of black tunneling cloud, like some hellish plughole. It was, Molly realized, some sort of tornado. Molly hugged Petula close. “I’M SORRY, PETULA!” she yelled. Molly wished she could climb into the bag and snuggle up with Petula. But she couldn’t, so she did the next best thing. She silently asked her pet, What are you thinking?
Like a magical screen, a thought bubble popped up over the nylon bag. In it were images, not of the storm, but of fields and flowers and blue skies and of places that Petula loved. There were the llama-filled meadows of Briersville Park and pictures of Micky and Rocky. They were all looking happy. And then Molly saw images of herself laughing and throwing sticks for Petula to fetch.
Though the slapping rain hurt Molly’s eyes, she kept them open. This was exactly what to be thinking about now, Molly realized. For these moments in the air might be the very last moments of their lives. Molly’s eyes filled with tears as she saw the people in her life who she loved. Her tears were washed off her cheeks by the howling wind. She thought of Rocky and wondered whether she would ever see him again. She remembered how she’d been dreading lessons and wishing for some adventure last time she’d been with him. How she would love to be doing math homework now!
Then her mind turned to all the people she hadn’t seen for a long time. Not Rocky and Ojas, Lucy, Primo, and Forest, but people from her past, the other orphanage children who were now in Los Angeles. She thought about Mrs. Trinklebury, the kind old lady who had, years before, found Molly in a box on a doorstep and saved her. She wished a giant Moon’s Marshmallow box would suddenly appear and scoop her and Petula out of the sky. Molly shut her eyes and held Petula close to her. And she wished. As her parachute was buffeted and she was swung violently underneath it like a human pendulum, she wished. She wished and wished with all her heart that everything would be all right.
And then the rain began to subside. Moonlight slipped through a crack in the clouds, and Molly saw that the storm was above her now. The worst of the storm was over.
She glanced down. There was one very bright spot on the land below. But Molly had no idea how far below her that bright spot was. Nor could she imagine why one spot was so bright when all the rest of the land was so dark. Then Molly realized. The plane they had been in must have nosedived. And the brightness below was fire—fire from its explosive crash. She hoped Malcolm hadn’t gone down with the plane. She glanced at the altimeter on her harness.
10,000 FEET, it read. Molly didn’t know how long it would take for her parachute to drop through ten thousand feet of air, but she suspected it wouldn’t be long. So, reaching for her coordinate compass on her harness’s left strap, she clicked on its tiny light and tried to work out which direction she should be heading. The compass indicated that southwest, and the spring of the Coca River, were straight in front of her. She assumed that she was going in almost the right direction. She reached for the toggles on her parachute. They were, as Micky had said they would be, above her ears, hanging down from the parachute’s canopy strings. Molly pulled on the left-hand toggle to try to start moving westward.
Above her, the canopy sagged a little as she redirected it, and the parachute turned. Molly checked the compass. Its arrow flickered and altered. The altimeter now read 7,000 FEET. Molly hoped the wind was strong enough to get her to where she wanted to go, but not so fast that it would push her past the spring of the Coca
