Rosa and Hannah Take Off

A novel excerpt from This World and the Next by Dave Essinger

Rosa and Hannah Take Off

“I don’t want to,” Hannah said, her hand still on the propeller blade. “It seems really dangerous.” She fixed her gaze on the ground, her dyed black hair curtaining her face from both sides and showing off the new mouse-brown stripe of natural color on each side of her part. Rosa thought it was a striking effect, but now wasn’t the time to mention that.

“Look,” Rosa said patiently, “we blocked the wheels. And if you swing your leg out, like I showed you, you could only fall away from the propeller.”

Hannah looked up sharply, her eyes tight. “I didn’t mean, dangerous for me!” she said. “What if you crash?”

Rosa shrugged, taken aback. “I won’t,” she said lamely.

Hannah said, “Cars won’t even work, what if it starts, and then breaks in the air?”

“It doesn’t work like—” Rosa said, breaking off and trying again. “It might not even start,” she said. “But if it does, I can see what’s out there.”

Hannah shook her head stubbornly. “If you die,” she said in a cramped voice, “how do I keep doing this? Without you?” She looked at Rosa hard, her eyes filling up.

Their faces were inches apart. Rosa stood still, letting Hannah’s eyes search hers. Finally, she said, if Hannah felt that way about it—there were two seats.

Hannah blinked, struck.

Rosa tried to smile brashly, and said, “I’m pretty sure I can not kill us.”

Hannah’s expression shifted, and she twisted her lips. “Well, it wouldn’t be a slow death,” she quipped.

Rosa laughed, bubbling over, sounding dorky and not caring. A thought seized her that choked her up too much to voice: if it worked, if they got the plane up, together, they wouldn’t have to come back, they could find some stretch of road or somewhere to land miles away, and just leave, just the two of them. A long beat paused where she didn’t breathe, her lips numb and not a sound coming out. Then Hannah broke eye contact, smiling foolishly and ducking her head, and the time for saying it was gone.

After takeoff, Rosa told herself. She could present it as an option then.

Starting the airplane wasn’t easy, like the video she’d seen. The engine wouldn’t catch, and she wondered how many tries it had taken in the clip online. It was hot and her mouth felt dry, and she had a headache like she was dehydrated. She climbed out and said, “Like this,” reaching high onto the propeller blade and then heaving it down, exactly as Hannah had been doing, though Hannah being taller had more leverage.

“I can’t help I’m not strong enough,” Hannah snapped, tugging at her sweaty shirt.

“Well, let’s think about it,” Rosa said.

“Maybe if I stood on something,” Hannah said.

Rosa shook her head: that would be asking to fall into a spinning prop, though she didn’t think explaining this graphically would help.

“Maybe if we both try then,” Hannah said.

Rosa refused peremptorily, but then she thought about it. The brake was set, the wheels blocked. If they were able to exert enough force together, and throw the prop blade in sync and stay out of each other’s way, why not? “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think?”

Hannah gave her a long look and a shrug.

It kept seeming like a bad idea. “This thing could take your hand off,” Rosa said, “or worse.” The thin two-bladed propeller looked so harmless when it was still.

Hannah said, “Duh.”

Rosa laughed once. “OK,” she heard herself say. “We’ll start everything over though.” Even when doing crazy shit, or perhaps especially then, it was important to be methodical. She thought: were the magnetos off? Throttle closed? Brakes set? They were. She reached up to cycle the prop once, then twice, and a third time. A chuff came from within after each revolution, which was what was supposed to happen. She took a deep breath, looked to Hannah again, and went to turn on the ignition and push the primer in the cockpit.

Then she returned and positioned their hands on the back of the blade, Rosa’s on the inside. Her palms were slick with sweat, and she flexed her fingers on the metal. “Keep a flat palm,” she said for the fiftieth time, “and jump back, no matter what.”

Hannah looked at her seriously and gave a nod. A loose strand of hair hung in front of her eye, but she kept her hands where Rosa had put them. “Does somebody say, ‘contact’ now?”

“We’ll count three,” Rosa said, then clarified. “I’ll count three.”

And then, feeling short of breath and dizzy, she spoke the numbers. Rosa thought she pulled down first, but instantaneously Hannah’s force followed hers, or maybe it was the propeller catching already, because there it was, coughing and whirring in front of them, both Rosa and Hannah rocked back and rolling on the ground, hands whole and unhurt and clutched to their chests.

“Oh! Whoa!” Hannah shouted, and Rosa put up an arm to hold her friend back from the blade spinning so fast now it was invisible.

“Go all the way around!” Rosa shouted, and it took a moment to make Hannah understand she would have to pull the blocks, while Rosa sat behind the controls.

Then they were moving, bumping over the concrete, and Rosa tried to keep calm as Hannah laughed giddily in the seat beside her. After only a couple of turns she had the open runway she needed, and it was like every other time, opening the throttles and feeling not the immediate lift so much as the smoothening, the loss of vibration as their wheels left the ground.

Rosa was thinking how little she’d thought this through, and wondering which direction they should explore, when Hannah shouted, pointing, “What’s down there?!”

It was on the other side, Rosa couldn’t see, but her friend’s eyes were huge with alarm. “I think—I think I saw people!”

This World and the Next, published in 2024 by Main Street Rag, is Dave Essinger’s second novel.
Icon courtesy of Freepik.

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