Then Luke pulls his chute and the canopy opens up above him with a snapping sound that fills my heart with relief. He hits the ground softly, on his feet as if he’d just walked right out of the sky, and the camera wobbles and jumps until he comes to a stop. The bright yellow canopy falls like a giant windblown blanket off to the side of him.
Luke shows me several of these videos, and I can’t understand how I can feel so afraid and inspired at the same time. I can see how Luke can say that BASE jumping is the most freeing experience, just by watching them do it. A part of me, a part so small yet so powerful wishes I were that brave, because I’d love to drink the sky and feel what they feel, but I know I never could.
“No disappointment,” Luke says beside me.
“Huh?” I glance over, snapping out of my spinning thoughts and back into the moment.
“Kendra”—he reaches out and presses stop on the DVD—“there’s no disappointment in that girl after any of those jumps.”
“Definitely not,” I say. “She seemed as happy as the rest of you.”
Seth’s bad brakes whine briefly, sharply, as his Jeep pulls into the drive out front.
Luke turns the television off.
“Don’t say anything about those videos with Kendra here,” he suggests. “She’ll want to watch them. I told her I got rid of them.” He crouches in front of the television again and puts the DVDs away, sliding them back in between other clear, square jewel cases.
I get up from the couch.
“Maybe she needs to watch them,” I say. “It might give her some closure. You can watch them and he was your brother; maybe she can handle it, too.”
Luke pushes himself to his feet and looks at me, a somber expression in his eyes.
“Kendra watched my brother die, Sienna.”
I gasp sharply, quietly, and my heart stops.
“She was at the bottom,” he goes on, “not experienced enough to make that jump in China herself, but she was there, standing two thousand feet below him, waiting for him. When he hit the ground she saw and heard everything.” He says this all so casually, with absolutely no emotion, as though he’s worked very hard toward being able to explain without breaking down, despite working even harder to never have to talk about it at all. This I find incredibly sad, that Luke would ever have to work to suppress such emotion because he knows it’ll kill him if he can’t.
Seth and Kendra’s voices move toward the front door, and seconds later there’s a knock.
I can’t move, or breathe, and I’m trying so hard to force down the tears burning their way to the surface of my eyes. I feel as if I’m looking through Landon’s eyes, seeing the ground, two thousand feet beneath me, coming up to meet me in the most violent way imaginable. I can’t fathom what he must’ve been thinking, the terror in his heart, knowing that he was about to die—he faced my worst nightmare.
And I picture Kendra, looking up at him from the bottom, knowing something is wrong—the horrific sight and sound of his body hitting the ground. My God, how can she hold herself together? I can barely hold it together just imagining it.
My breath finally releases in a shuddering exhalation; my hand flies up, pressing against my breast.
TWENTY-SIX
Sienna
Seth lets himself in after the second knock, peeking his shaved head around the corner of the door, the scar running along the side more prominent in the light. I wonder how he got it, if it was from this crazy stuff they all do.
“Knock, knock,” he says with a big grin. “Get your clothes on!”
“Come on in,” Luke says and reaches out to grab Seth’s hand. They bump chests and let go.
“Feels odd knocking, bro,” Seth says.
Kendra comes in behind him, long blond hair pulled into a ponytail, tanned skin stark against the white tank top and red ball shorts she wears. Seth is like a gorgeous, bald-headed giant standing next to her, with buff bronzed arms and strong calves rippling with muscles underneath his knee-length cargo shorts. When my eyes fall on Kendra’s for the first time since I saw her last in the hotel, mine aren’t holding as much of a smile as I had wanted. There’s more sadness in them, I know, but I try my best not to let it show.
Stepping up, I pull Kendra into an awkward hug—awkward because she apparently isn’t much the hugging type, but she doesn’t push me away, and pats my back and says, “Yeah, uh, it’s good to see you too,” and then she chuckles.
I can’t imagine what’s going on inside of her, what she’s been keeping down, the nightmares she must wake up to in a sweat at night, the replay of Landon’s horrific death going over and over in her mind, all while at the same time putting on this brave face and pretending, every single day of her life, that she’s OK.
Kendra is anything but OK.
I take a step back and look between her and Luke. Seth walks past us all and goes straight into the kitchen.
“Please tell me you have beer,” he calls out.
I decide to follow, to give Luke and Kendra a moment alone, and I pass Luke a soft smile as I walk by, which he returns.
“Yeah, he just got back with beer,” I tell Seth as he’s pulling the fridge door open.
That makes him happy, but then again, Seth always seems happy. Nothing much ever seems to bother the guy. “Awesome,” he says and pulls two bottles out, wedged between the fingers of one hand.
I sit down at the table after Seth gives me a beer. He joins me in an empty chair, slouching his tall height against the back, stretching his long legs out in front of him.