"Hello?" I asked as I wandered through the saltwater exhibit.
I heard faraway laughing in the background. "Hey Israel," she said, "I'll be ready to be picked up in fifteen, is that okay?"
"Uh, yeah of course. How did it go?"
"I'll tell you all about it when you get back."
"Okay, sounds good," I said with a smile on my face. "Can't wait to see ya again."
"Same here. I'll talk to you in a bit."
She hung up the phone and I quickly found the exit.
I pulled up to the same curb early, but Emma was waiting at the door for me. She waved a last goodbye to her mom and gave her a hug. She had a soft smile on her face as she climbed into the shotgun seat.
"I'm assuming it went well?" I asked.
"Yeah, it did. It went really well," she replied. "After the first ten minutes, which were extremely emotional, we told stories about what's been going on for the past eighteen years. She talked about how much it hurt to have her only child taken, but that she didn't have much of a say in it. She said the daycare noticed how thin I was getting and got concerned. My mom was addicted to almost every type of drug at the time, so she didn't listen to them. Eventually, they called Child Protective Services.
"They held a trial and my mom didn't have much of a case to keep me. She wasn't married to my dad, he wasn't even there for the birth. So she was single, addicted to drugs, and unemployed. That made her a prime candidate for CPS to take me away.
"After they came to take me, though, she immediately put herself into therapy. She checked herself into a hospital and they transferred her to a rehab center. After she got clean, she tried a couple of times to get me back. But then she relapsed after she had periods of psychosis because of the withdrawals. She almost went to court one time for me, but apparently I never got to know about it. She was still a single woman with barely enough money for herself, and with a pretty terrible rap sheet. She was a textbook case for someone who shouldn't have a child."
I looked back at the house. If I was being objective about it all, I wouldn't think a child belonged in there either.
"And so what happened to your dad?" I asked, carefully choosing my questions.
"I couldn't find him when I was trying to find my mom, but she gave me a lot of closure on him. She said he was kind of around during the pregnancy, but he was in a very similar situation to my mom. He was a one-night-stand that turned into a lot more, and when my mom asked a lot of him he got distant.
"It all culminated in a big mess where he left his apartment, changed his phone number, and moved away. She said he was involved in the drug trade, so she wouldn't be surprised if he was dead or in jail at this point."
"Oh Emma, I'm so sorry about that."
"Don't be. I mean, yeah, it would have been cool to see my dad, but I've imagined and made peace with really any scenario that could be possible with my real parents, soI was prepared for it."
I nodded my head. "Well, what was she like? I mean, she gave birth to you so I could only imagine."
"Oh my gosh, we're exactly the same. She's super spontaneous, funny, kind, and light-hearted, and she has some wild stories from when she was my age."
"Did you just use your mom to compliment yourself?"
"Yes I did, and the best part is that if you try to contradict any of it, I'll slap you. I'm on the adrenaline high of a lifetime right now so don't think I won't do it."
I laughed. "I'm glad it went well."
"Me too, but there's one more thing. I asked her out to lunch tomorrow with us both. Are you okay with that?"
"Absolutely!"
On the outside, excitement. On the inside, paralysis.
"Really? You want to do it? I didn't know if you harbored any harsh feelings with what I've told you about my life and everything."
"No, really," I said as I grabbed her hand on the dash. "I would love to have lunch with you two. At the very least, it would give me something to do that's not an aquarium."
"You didn't like the aquarium? I thought I was really going to entertain you with that one."
"Well there's going to an aquarium for fun, and then there's going to an aquarium so that your girlfriend can have her first real interaction with her birth mother. The latter, although much more exciting, doesn't really make me wanna learn about fish."
"Duly noted. You will have to find something to do, though, because after lunch my parents are taking my other parent out to dinner, just the four of us. And, as much as I'd like you to be there, it's closed-door."
"I'm sure I can find something to take my mind off things. I'd probably get too nervous anyway and end up saying a lot of stupid things."
"Well at least you're aware of all the stupid things you say," she said back.
"Rude," I said with fake anger in my voice.
"Okay, well let's keep this rollercoaster of emotions going, shall we?"
"Where's the next destination?" I asked.
"It's time to cross another thing off of the list."
She plugged an address into her GPS and we set off on our course. We winded through city streets until we eventually left them behind. I tried to think back on what things on the list we still had to cross off, but once I realized what signs we were following it became clear. We were headed to the airport.
"Oh, son of a bitch," I said, remembering the only thing on her list that involved an airplane.
She laughed at my pale face. "Well look who's becoming a little detective!"
"If I piss myself while this happens, it's on your conscience."
"I think you're greatly underestimating how much I want that on my conscience."
We pulled into the airport and I followed signs to a private hanger. Once we reached it, there was a small crowd of six people already in jumpsuits, listening to two guys in their mid-twenties point at a whiteboard.
"... So your backpack is going to have multiple fail-safes, so you don't need to worry about the parachute mechanism failing," one said to a pale-faced woman nodding her head quickly.
"There they are!" the other man said upon seeing us two walking towards them. They both had a "surfer dude" accent as if they both flew from Venice Beach to teach this course.
"Did we miss too much?" Emma asked.
"You're about a half-hour late, so we're almost done here," the other man said happily. "But you two are matched with us for partners so we can give you the scoop as we head up in the plane."
We nodded in unison and they handed us our jumpsuits and backpacks. We struggled with them over our clothes as they continued to take more questions. It looked like the only other people in the group were a family of three along with their own instructor partners.
More specifically, it looked like two scared-shitless parents and the daughter that talked them into doing it.
They answered a couple more questions like if it was possible to die from terminal velocity, how many people died a year from skydiving, and one really weird one about what if a bird attacks your parachute and rips it up, to which the instructor specified that there were no more death-related questions allowed. "I swear, it's safe," he said. "If it wasn't, then I'd probably be dead by now because I've been doing it three times a day for five years."
After that answer and a clap of their hands, we buddied off and climbed into their small plane. I assumed it was a military plane by the the mesh seats that faced the opposite wall, the dingy lights above us, and the general lack of comfort.
Emma was seated across from me. She stuck out her tongue as her instructor closed the door to the plane.
"So the name's Rob, but mos' dudes jus' call me Boogie," my instructor said to me.
"Boogie as in the dance or the stuff you pick out of your nose?" I joked.
"I like you man," Boogie laughed. "I'll letchyou decide which one."
"So what do I need to know for me to, ya know, not be a human pancake by the end of this."
"Well, for first-timers like you, I really do most of the work. You just need to know a couple of things so ya have more fun."
"Okay, give it to me."
"Well first, don't try to do tricks or flips right out of the gate. Stay straight and have your arms out as much as possible. Once we get used to the resistance and we're not moving sideways at 200 miles per hour, then we can maybe do some epic shit."
"Okay, sounds good. What el-" The plane's engine burst into full speed down the runway. My nerves suddenly tripled and my stomach went into my throat.
Boogie must have seen what happened because he held onto my arm and yelled, "hey man, you're already in the plane so there's nothing to worry about. You have two choices: worry about the jump until you do it, or take a couple of deep breaths and get pumped about it. Either way, the jump is going to be the time o' your life. It's only going to get better depending on your mindset beforehand."
I nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. I looked ahead again at Emma. She was talking with her instructor, but of course, she was joking around and laughing the whole time. I tried to channel my inner Emma myself and look around the plane with a different attitude. I saw the two parents on the other side of the wall as well. Both were ghost-faced and worried.
"Hey, well at least I'm not them," I said, pointing at the parents.
Boogie laughed. "We always got people like that, least one on every flight. They fight it up until the very last minute and then, nine times out of ten, they jump and have a kick-ass time."
"The funny thing is, I didn't know that this is what we were doing until about ten minutes before we got to the airport."
"No way, how?"
"My girlfriend and I are taking this road trip where she gets to plan everything and I don't get to know what we're doing until it happens. She said it's better that way."
"Mad props to her, dude. You two seem like a pretty tight bunch."
"Yeah, she's amazing," I said while looking at her. She caught my eye and winked at me under her goggles. I smiled as she turned back towards her instructor to say what I assume was the punchline of another amazing joke.
"Well I hope you two make it all the way, man."
"Uh, yeah," I said, unsure whether I should tell him the truth, "I hope we do too."
A loud beep went through the cabin and a red light on the top turned green.
"Alright ladies and gentlemen, that was the all-clear!" shouted Boogie. "Remember, do whatever your buddy says and you guys are gonna have the time of your life!"
Emma and her instructor were the first ones lined up at the door with the rest of the jumpers behind them. Boogie told me that we were manning the back of the line to make sure all of the scared jumpers actually went out.
Emma gave me two thumbs up as she and her instructor attached themselves together and did a huge jump out. The daughter of the parents hugged both of them and jumped out with her instructor too.
Next, the dad gave the wife the parting hug you would expect out of a spouse going off to war, did the sign of the cross at the cockpit, and jumped out as well.
The wife had other plans.
Right after the dad jumped, the wife started wailing and fell to the ground. She clung to the seats and metal bars, essentially blocking herself from ever leaving the plane and told the instructor that she didn't want to go. My instructor went up and talked to her while I waited back.
After a small while of their back and forth, the wife got back up, did the same sign of the cross, and took her leap of faith.
"Alright come on up," he yelled back to me.
"Don't kill me," I yelled back as we strapped onto each other.
"How about we catch up to your girlfriend."
"Sounds good to me," I said with a nervous smile on my face.
We stepped up to the door, he gave me one last pat on the shoulder, and we jumped. My every muscle constricted and my heart turned into a pipe bomb. I'm not sure whether I was screaming my ass off or if I could make any noise at all.
It was a couple of seconds before I realized I didn't even have my eyes open. When I did, I mean, holy shit. Hundreds of feet below me was everyone else. Thousands below was the Earth.
I looked to the world I was blasting towards like a comet. My adrenaline heightened my senses to where everything around me was happening in slow motion.
Rather than a stark horizon, the world fazed out in the far distance, exaggerating how miniscule everything actually was. Phoenix wasn't a city, it was a thumbtack. I could cover mountains with the sole of my shoe. I've never seen the world painted in this light.
I started screaming, but not because I was falling and scared. I was truly, genuinely, overjoyed. I wasn't thinking about anything other than this moment. It might sound bad, but I wasn't even thinking about Emma. For once in a very long while, Emma was the accent. She was the bass guitar player in the back, the lighting crew, or the supporting actor to my experience.
It feels weird and wrong to say it, but there will be a time of my life without her. And it's not all too unknown when that's going to be. She's somehow going out with both a huge bang and a long, slow sizzle.
Sometimes I forget that there's also a life outside of her.
I forget that this world, this enormous world that I'm seeing from ten-thousand feet up, is still going to be here after she's gone. And I need to be here for it as well.
At that moment, my body became addicted to taunting its own mortality. I was playing poker with death and I had an ace up my sleeve. It felt powerful to do it, like I was further embarrassing death with each foot I dropped.
My instructor leaned forward in the air and we gained speed down towards the parachutes that were beginning to deploy. I could see the one I knew was Emma's. It was the first to deploy as well as the furthest one down. My instructor shook my shoulder and pointed towards it as he leaned closer to a nosedive.
We eventually raced past the other three skydivers and deployed the parachute. He maneuvered us through the sky towards Emma.
We flew next to them as we drifted below the clouds. Emma looked over at me and gave me two thumbs up. I saw through her goggles two very wide eyes, giddy with excitement. I gave my two thumbs up back and blew a very animated kiss. She reached out both arms and pretended to catch it.
And then proceeded to toss it behind her shoulder.
Only a couple of minutes passed before we were all on the ground. I detached myself from my instructor and helped him ball it up while Emma fell a couple of seconds behind us. She immediately detached herself and jumped up and down screaming in excitement.
"ISRAEL DID YOU HAVE AS MUCH FUN AS I DID?" she yelled.
"That was amazing," I said back breathlessly.
"Oh my gosh that was magical. I mean," she took a couple of deep breaths, "the best thing I've ever spent my money on."
"I would never do anything like that before I met you. I mean, not even counting everything you and I have done together, just today would be insane to two-month-ago Israel."
"Well, I'm sure that if you mentioned that the twerp finally got a girlfriend, he would find it much easier to believe."
I laughed and shook my head at her. "But seriously," I continued, "You changed me for the better. Every possible thing I lacked, you fixed. I used to love the idea of getting out of this world and making my own. I wanted to change everything and hide in my own bubble. But I-I don't want to do that anymore."
We walked over to everyone else and made some friends. The parents, as it turned out, loved it. The kid, unsurprisingly, said a lot of I told you so's to them. The instructors cracked jokes they probably made after every jump and dropped a location for a van that was supposed to come pick us up.
As for Emma and I, we were just passing the time until we could be together back in our bed.