TUESDAY

Nolan Cooper aimed for a cloud. As he sped toward the fluffy pillow in front of him, tendrils of moisture enveloped his plane. Then the cloud seemed to suck him in, and the world disappeared. He was surrounded by pure white. He felt motionless, suspended in space, alone. He heard only the steady hum of the engine. The white emptiness around him and the loud, unwavering engine seemed to merge into one. There was only the plane and himself in existence. Then he shot out the other side of the cloud and the earth and the sky returned.

His wristwatch alarm sounded, breaking the monotony of the engine noise. He had been flying for the better part of an hour and now it was time to go home. If he stayed out longer than planned, it would cost him money he didn’t have. He was fifteen years old, and for the past year had spent all of his meager income on flying lessons.

He studied the world outside his window as he circled back toward the airport. It was late spring. The land below was waking up. Clumps of budding trees glowed bright green in the afternoon sun. At this time of day, in this light, the houses could have been tiny models on a miniature landscape. He felt that he owned all he saw, that it was all for him.

He felt closer to the sun, flying at this altitude. It shone more brightly up here than at the surface, where it was filtered through two more miles of dense atmosphere. The numbers on his instruments stood out sharply in the light; everything in the cockpit was clear and bright. He pushed his blond hair out of his eyes and felt that it radiated the warmth of the sun.

Nolan checked the time again. A gradual descent would take too long; he decided to bring the plane down faster.

His hand gripped the throttle and pulled it down to idle, silencing the engine. The propeller slowed so that it barely turned.

He pulled back on the controls and pitched the plane toward the sky. The green earth in the lower half of the windshield dropped away as the plane moved upward at a steeper and steeper angle. All he could see in the window now was blue and white. He was no longer pointed at the horizon, straight and level and safe. He was pointed toward the sky and rapidly losing airspeed. A warning horn went off. The wings were stalling.

In a quick, confident motion, he performed a maneuver that terrifies even experienced pilots. His own flight instructor refused to show it to him; he had to learn it from an old pilot who was more adventurous. He pressed the right rudder to the floor while twisting the controls to the left. At once, the plane violently flipped upside down and pointed toward the earth. The window, no longer filled with sky, was all green. He was headed straight for the ground.

The plane rotated rapidly as it fell through the air like a brick. The altimeter unwound itself, hundreds of feet per second, as he sliced through the sky. The rotations came faster as the pasture below grew bigger and closer. If he waited one rotation too many… if he miscalculated one step… if he lost too much altitude… if he failed to regain control of the spinning plane… then the view through the windshield would be the last memory of his life.

At the right moment, without so much as a drop of sweat on his forehead, he jammed the opposite rudder and pulled the plane out of the spin. It swooped through the sky back to stable, horizontal flight. The horizon returned to divide the window in half, and the engine and prop sped up as he added power. He was no longer plummeting toward the ground, spinning straight down to his doom.

He saw the runway ahead. He would return to society, for now.

***

Nolan rode his bicycle home from the airport, as he always did. The airport was three miles from the edge of town, surrounded by the farmland he had just flown over. As he rode he looked out at the fields sprinkled with dots of yellow. It was spring and dandelions were popping up everywhere.

Nolan turned on to his street, a suburban enclave of vinyl clad boxes on the edge of town. He rolled up to his house, where his father was hunched over, working in the lawn.

“How was school?” Joseph asked his son.

“Oh, it was fine,” Nolan said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He just left out where else he had been. “What are you doing?” he asked his father, changing the subject.

“Killing dandelions.”

“Why?”

Joseph looked up at his son, annoyed at being asked a question that had a self-evident answer, like the kind a small child would ask. The kid might as well have asked him what was the color of the sky.

“They’re weeds, Nolan.”

“They’re flowers. They look nice. Why not let them grow?”

“Dandelions don’t belong in a lawn. They’re weeds. That shouldn’t need explaining,” Joseph said, turning back to his work.

Nolan wondered why his father couldn’t tolerate anything unusual or different, even hypothetically. He did whatever was expected of him, without ever considering why he was expected to do it and whether he should.

“Every lawn is always the same,” Nolan wondered aloud. “Not one person in this town seems to want a green lawn with yellow dots. What a coincidence that everyone wants exactly what everybody else has.”

His father stopped his work again. “There’s something called public opinion. It’s my responsibility to take care of this yard and keep it presentable. Dandelions are weeds. Weeds don’t belong in a yard. You’ll understand when…” he was about to say “when you get older,” but he realized that his son should understand these things by now. “You’ll understand when you own a house someday.”

“If dandelions were sold in stores, nobody would call them weeds,” Nolan countered. “They would be like any other flower. Apparently flowers that you pay for are okay, but flowers that you don’t, aren’t.”

Joseph rolled his eyes, trying to wave away his growing agitation. “Nolan, come on. Maybe you would let weeds take over your own yard, but I happen to care what people think. How would you like it if your neighbors let their grass grow eight inches tall?”

“It’s his property. Why should I care?”

Now properly wound up after having his words repeatedly questioned, Joseph snapped. “Enough already!” he shouted. “I’m not gonna argue this with you!” his father screamed, turning red. Nolan took a step back and whispered “Sorry.”

Joseph added, still upset, but almost apologetically, “Why do you have to ruin my day by analyzing everything I say? Can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?”

They looked at each other for a moment, not sure how to end it.

“I think I’ll have some dinner,” Nolan muttered. “Good idea,” his father said, voice returning to normal. He turned around and went back to the dandelion he was strangling.

Nolan went inside and stopped in front of an old family photo, elegantly framed, hanging beside the front door. It was just his mother, his father, and his three year old self in the picture. There were no brothers or sisters. If his Mom had still been around, maybe he would have a few by now. As for the rest of his family, if he had any aunts or cousins or grandparents, they might as well have lived in China. It was just Nolan and his father.

Nolan studied the father in the photograph. The eyes, the nose, the shape of the face. Were they actually related?

It had dawned on Nolan, not too long ago, that he had grown more and more distant from his father in recent years. It was hard to admit, but he and his father did not share the same outlook on life.

Joseph Cooper was a forty-eight year old widower. He paid special attention to outward appearances. At the top of the list was his perfect lawn. He loved it so much that he carried a photo of it in his wallet. Then there was his waxed and polished car, his neat, tasteful clothes, his slowly graying crew cut. The visible exterior of Joseph’s life was textbook perfect like the vinyl siding on his house. But the siding, and his outer life, concealed a very different interior. He was bored with his bureaucratic little pencil pushing job. His house was an unlivable mess, full of junk he bought to make himself happier, but only briefly. He had ulcers from chronic worry, even though he had nothing worth worrying about. And his social life? His coworkers were friends only to the extent that they didn’t threaten each other’s jobs. The people Joseph spent most of his free time with were actors pretending to do things on primetime TV.

Nolan was nothing like that. He was the typical round peg that society wants oh so much to pound into a square hole. He didn’t care about making a lot of money and impressing people with his possessions. Some people are said to follow the beat of a different drummer. Nolan took it one step further: he didn’t do any following, period. He was passionate, with a tendency to be obsessive about things. If Nolan worried, it was about missing opportunities in the future, rather than about mistakes he made in the past. Where other people seemed bogged down with the boring particulars of day to day life, even at fifteen, Nolan had the vision to see five hundred miles away to the next shore. The downside was that he often didn’t see, or downplayed, all the steps it would take to get there. Quit your job and start a business? No problem. You have three kids, a wife, a mortgage? Details. Nolan was a little naive in that way. But he figured his energy would take him where he wanted to go, as long as he fixed his gaze on that distant shore.

Nolan and his father lived in the same house, but in two different universes.

He worked hard to keep the two universes separate, lest they collide in some starry cataclysm. Nolan had stopped telling his father things about himself and his life. Pretty big things. Like the fact that he had a job at the airport. And the fact that he had earned his pilot’s license with the money from that job.

There was Dad out there, working on the lawn, doing the required maintenance and upkeep on his normal, middle class, suburban life. And Dad had no idea that his son floated above his head in an airplane just a few hours ago.

Nolan wanted desperately to reveal his secret life. The time would come when Joseph would either learn the truth, or he would have to hear it straight out. Either way, it would hit him like the sudden shock of an earthquake. How badly it would rate on the Richter scale was anyone’s guess.

***

That night, Nolan lay in his bed, thinking. He remembered the day his life suddenly became far more complicated and exciting. It all started one year ago, just after school let out for summer. He remembered it like it was yesterday…

Nolan stood at the railing of the Jackson Street bridge. It was an old wooden bridge, with no fence to obstruct the view. The railroad raced ahead of him into the distance. It cut the small town of Beaver Creek in half, sometimes going above roads, sometimes going under them. There was nothing happening below, which wasn’t that different from the rest of town. He kicked a pebble over the edge and watched it drop down, never to be heard from again.

Dewey Fackler sat against the railing, facing the street. He had been Nolan’s best friend since first grade. Dewey, like Nolan, was glad to have nothing to do, since it meant not having to go to school for awhile. But Dewey’s parents had other ideas. They rarely allowed their son to run free on summer break, or at any other time. They had high expectations for his life and a long list of mandatory activities, goals, and tutors that would help get him there. He was like a pawn in a game his parents chose to play, supposedly for his own benefit, but mainly for theirs. With a decade of schooling behind him and all the crap his parents pushed on him, he was glad to have some time to himself, even if he was wasting it sitting on a decaying bridge. Had they been up there twenty minutes? An hour? Who knew?

Then Nolan smiled. He saw a headlamp in the distance, at the tree line where the tracks disappeared. “Something’s coming. Finally!” he said.

Dewey got up carefully. He grabbed the railing and stood next to Nolan, watching the tracks. He didn’t particularly like heights, but once again, it was better than being in some programmed activity, with an attendance record and a grade and a certificate at the end.

The tiny point of light shined in the distance, solid and still. “Is the train stopped?” Dewey asked.

“No, it’s going really fast. You can’t tell, though. Not yet,” Nolan said.

You wouldn’t know it, but that train was doing seventy-nine miles per hour. And yet its tiny little light just sat there. But slowly the little light crept closer and the faint shape of the train emerged behind it. The train still seemed like it was just promenading down the tracks, taking its good sweet time. La-de-da! But there was a place, somewhere between the tree line and the bridge, where suddenly the train stopped growing slowly. It started to grow faster and faster, as though the train itself was speeding up. You could begin to hear it now as it approached the bridge.

The old Jackson Street bridge had been constructed to absolute minimum standards. It gave enough clearance for anything that might come down the tracks, but barely. The train that was roaring along at seventy-nine miles an hour, the two locomotives guzzling diesel fuel and the five thousand tons of cars and freight behind it, would pass mere inches under the deck of the bridge. Exciting things did happen in town, now and then.

Bigger and closer, bigger and closer. You could see the logo on the nose of the engine. Bigger and closer and louder. Nolan waved frantically. The engineer noticed him and let out two brief, but ear-splitting, toots from the horn.

Then, all at once, the train reached the two boys. What seemed so tiny and slow in the distance was now an enormous, hulking steel monster. Anything in its path — a raccoon, a drunken hobo, a school bus full of nuns — would experience a violent end. And this giant death machine would speed just beneath the feet of the two teenage boys who stood there, slack-jawed, witnessing doom come within arm’s length. Only one of them was smiling.

The rickety little bridge shook like it was hit by an earthquake, hurricane, and tsunami all at once. The shaking died down once the engines passed, but the thundering continued for several minutes as endless cars of corn syrup, soybeans, and taconite rolled east. Then the train was gone, and the show was over. It was among the best entertainment Beaver Creek could offer.

***

They picked up their bikes off the sidewalk and walked them down the bridge.

“You’ll be a junior next year, won’t you?” Nolan asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do?”

“When?”

“When you get out of school.”

“Well, college, of course.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to go, though.”

“You have to go to college.”

“What for?”

“So you can get a job!”

“See, I don’t want that. I want to be independent. I want to make my living running a business or something. College would just be another four years of high school, but worse. With debt. I don’t want to borrow a bunch of money just to get a piece of paper that’s supposed to impress people.”

“It’s hard to succeed without college. I don’t really like how my parents are pushing me to become a lawyer, but at least I know I’ll be able to find a job. Who will hire you if you don’t have a diploma?”

“I just don’t care, Dewey. I would rather starve than sit in some office and take orders for fifty years. Isn’t it strange, the way things are? They put you in school for twelve to sixteen years and tell you what you should know. Then most people go to a job where they do what someone else wants all day. When do you get to do what you want?”

“You don’t, I guess. Well, you have to make money, so you can buy stuff. And then you get married and have kids and they go to school…”

“And then you die and the cycle continues forever. Something isn’t right about the whole thing, this path most people follow through life. I want more out of life, somehow. I don’t want to become like them.”

“Who?”

“I guess you could call them grown-ups. I’ve never liked them, at least the ones I know. They’re so cynical. They complain about their pointless jobs and mean bosses but just accept it. They don’t try to get out. They just say, that’s life. And they’re hypocrites! Aren’t your parents hypocrites?”

“Yeah. Big time. They punish me for having a messy room, but what do you think their bedroom looks like? It’s always a pigsty. I wish they would practice what they preach.”

“Exactly. You want know another grown-up hypocrisy? I mean, a huge, impossibly huge, grown-up hypocrisy? The draft. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

Dewey rolled his eyes. “Well, sure, but you don’t have to worry about that. That’s in the past.”

“I know, but still. Think about it. It really happened, in this country. They actually told us, we have to fight this enemy because they want to take away our freedom. So we’re going to take away your freedom and make you join the army. We’re going to defend your freedom by taking it away from you.”

Dewey shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

“I feel sorry for those people who got those draft notices in the mail and believed they had to follow the orders. If I got a letter that basically told me I didn’t own my life any longer, I would just laugh and throw it away, and let them come and haul me off to jail. Or I’d hide. How can you take something like that seriously? The law is supposed to protect your individual rights, but when the law says ‘You have no rights,’ I’m sorry, but the law and the entire country is a joke by that point. See if they ever teach that in school.”

“Why do people go along with stuff like that?”

“I really wish I knew. It’s all tied together, somehow. The strange way grown-ups behave. Mediocrity and hypocrisy. Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on negative stuff. I can’t stop thinking about it sometimes. I just think there’s more to life than the path everybody usually takes. I don’t want my life to be pretty good. That’s a synonym for average. I want to be great. I want to become really excellent at something. I want to devote my life to some purpose, something that means something to me, instead of just bumbling along. You know how most people end up in their jobs by chance, not because they really wanted it? Could you imagine a little kid saying ‘Mommy, I want to be an actuary when I grown up.’ Or ‘Mommy, Mommy, I want to be a claims adjuster.’”

Dewey laughed. “Or, Mommy, I want to be a lawyer and sit behind a desk for twelve hours a day and lose my hair and have two heart attacks by the time my kids are in high school.”

“Yeah. If you could go back in time and tell your dad how his life would turn out, he wouldn’t believe you. Neither would mine. You know what? That won’t happen to me. I’m going to be something great. I’m not sure what, or how, but I will.”

They walked on along the streets of small town houses, silently, until they came to Main Street. They stopped in front of the old five and dime. Like the bridge, it was another relic from the past that Beaver Creek was known for.

Dewey’s attention gravitated to a detailed model of the big starship from Space Rangers that hung in the store window. He was obsessed with the show. He tried to get Nolan to watch it with him, to no avail. But at least he did manage to interest him in model building.

“I finally saved enough. I can’t wait to take it home. You’re getting your plane today, right? You could come over and build it while I work on mine.”

“Huh? Oh, the Concorde model. Yeah, I have the money.” Nolan had a knot in his stomach. “You know, I think I’ll hold off. I… should save my money. I don’t really need another toy.”

Dewey’s face showed his disappointment. “Oh, okay. Well, you’re still coming over tonight, right? We can do something else.”

“How about tomorrow, Dewey? I need some time to think.”

“Well, okay. So I’ll see you later then?”

“Yeah.”

While Dewey went into the shop to buy his starship, Nolan rode off on his own. He turned left at the ornate old town hall and rode under the railroad tracks.

He didn’t have anyplace to go. He had a lot on his mind and just wanted to ride around town and think.

He thought about everything he said to Dewey. How he didn’t want to lead a mediocre life. How he didn’t want to follow the usual path. He was still in school, but he felt ready for something more. But what? And how? He was just a kid, stuck in Beaver Creek, with no car, no income, and not a whole lot of money. What could he do?

Then Nolan heard an engine, far away. It was a small plane, slowly making its way across the sky. He suddenly had a stomach full of knots, full of excitement and anxiety. Somehow, his body knew the full extent and consequences of what he was thinking before the words entered his mind.

There’s some kind of airport just outside of town, isn’t there? I saw it on a map once. And I have money with me. Wouldn’t it make sense? Instead of buying a model airplane, to fly a real one? Could I really do that? Could I just walk up and buy an airplane ride? Why not? Isn’t that what those small planes are for? They’ll probably turn me down. I’m just a kid. But my money is as good as anybody’s. Could I do it? Could I really do something so crazy? What if I ride all the way out there, and there is no airport? Or I get lost? I might be gone all night. Dad will wonder where I am. Or maybe I will get a plane ride, but the engine will fail and I’ll die. What if? What if? What if?

Then Nolan closed his eyes, concentrated, and silenced all the what ifs. Somewhere inside, the path became clear. If I don’t want a normal life, then I have to take risks. I might waste my time, I might waste my money. I might make people mad. But I have to do it. I’m going to ride out there and see what happens.

***

Nolan remembered finally pulling up at the entrance of the airport, exhausted. He had never ridden that far in his life. He didn’t recognize the area at all. There were so many planes in the sky that day, it was easy enough to follow them to the source.

He leaned his bike against a long, low building with floor to ceiling windows that overlooked a distant runway and walked inside. There was a girl at the desk listening to an old man on a couch.

“Ah, back in those days gas was fifty cents a gallon,” the old man said. “Did you see that gas guzzler Clark Williams is building? Boy, what a beauty…”

The girl noticed Nolan and looked at him square in the face. “Can I help you?” she asked.

Nolan opened his mouth, trying to find the words. He fidgeted with his shirt as he spoke. “Do you have… is there… can I get… a plane ride or an introductory lesson or something?”

There, I did it, it’s out there, he thought.

“Certainly! Have you rented from us before?” the secretary said cheerily.

“Um… no. I’ve never even been in an airplane. I’m not sure what…”

“Oh, then you should talk to Tom. He can get you started. By the way, how did you hear about us?”

“I… uh… followed an airplane here.”

The girl smiled. “You’re funny! Tom’s actually in right now, if you want to go back and talk about flight lessons.”

Nolan was momentarily stunned. All he asked for was “a plane ride or an introductory lesson or something,” not a full course on how to become a licensed pilot. It was out of the question. He hadn’t even considered the idea, would he like to take flight lessons. The cost alone had to be way more than he could afford. And forget about Dad giving him the money.

Nolan hesitated. What should I say? I… I guess I do want to be a pilot. If I could do it, wouldn’t I say yes? I know it can’t happen, but… what if I say yes?… what would happen?…

“Did you want to talk to him?” the girl asked again.

“Yeah. Yes. Yes I do,” Nolan responded, knowing full well he was plunging head first into the unknown. He had no idea what would happen next. He was terrified. And he loved it.

“Okay, then. Let me get you some information,” she said, pulling some papers out of a filing cabinet. “Here’s a list of our rates and the details of what it would take to get your license — rental fees, instructor fees, books, equipment, medical certificate, flight time needed. Tom is our chief instructor. I think you’ll like him. He’s in the lounge at the very end of that hallway,” she said, pointing, “just go in and introduce yourself.”

Nolan took the papers and thanked the girl. He turned down a long, narrow hallway, not sure what to expect next.

***

As he lay there in his bed, he remembered his first flight. He remembered sitting down in the back room with the instructor, who was incredibly nice and friendly and funny, and talked about aviation for more than an hour. Nolan became more and more excited listening to Tom tell stories about planes and pilots and the things that go on at airports. He was convinced he could get his license, somehow. He didn’t know where he would get the money, or what his dad would think, but he knew then, talking to Tom, that he would do it. Somehow.

He had just enough money for an hour long flight with Tom. Not a ride, but an actual lesson that would be logged in a logbook and count toward the pilot’s license he knew he would get, had to get, somehow. They walked a long way to where the planes were parked outdoors, on something called a ramp. The sight of the plane surprised Nolan. It looked old and beat up. He actually asked if there was a chance the wings would fall off!

Tom was all smiles as he looked over the airplane, then opened the pilot’s door for Nolan. He would be sitting in the pilot’s seat. The actual seat where a pilot actually sits inside an actual airplane.

It was so cool. There were so many dials on the panel. A set of flight controls were right there in front of him. He looked out to his left and saw a wing. Tom sat to his right and shut the door.

He remembered the engine starting and seeing a propeller spin, right in front of his eyes, for the first time ever. Tom was friendly and helpful explaining things as they taxied out to the runway. Nolan heard almost none of it. He was thinking — I’m sitting in the pilot’s seat of an airplane — we’re about to go up — I just spent everything I have — what am I going to tell Dad? — am I going to die? He admitted it to himself. He was afraid. He was actually shaking a little. He had never done anything like this, ever. Gone out on his own, asked to do something big and dangerous. But he knew it was right. He knew it was the right thing to do. He had never been so excited, and so afraid in his life. The part of him that felt fear, he didn’t fight. He accepted it. He accepted that it was screaming “What the hell are you thinking? Get the hell out of there now!” Another part of him said, “Do it anyway. This is right. This is the way forward.” That was the one he listened to.

He remembered the moment they lifted off the ground. He looked out to his left and saw the building he had just come from shrink away as they climbed higher and higher. The long country roads he pedaled so hard on, that he thought he would never see the end of, now fit into his entire field of view. He saw the town, the high school, the garbage dump. Dairy Twist. Dewey’s street. The park.

Tom was all business, talking about the instruments and then plane and asking Nolan little questions to see what he knew. “Do you know what a stall is?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with the engine quitting,” Nolan answered. “It has to do with the wing slowing down too much, right?”

“That’s right. You already know more about flying than most people who come to me for lessons,” Tom said.

Halfway into the flight, Tom said, “I’m tired. Why don’t you fly awhile?” Just like that? Yes, just like that. Nolan took the controls gently and looked to his right. Tom’s hands were in his lap, and he smiled at Nolan. Nolan looked forward out at the horizon and pushed in, just a little. The plane went down. He pulled back, just a little. The plane went up. He said nothing. He was intoxicated with passion and love and terror and excitement. He was flying. He knew his life would never be the same.

***

Nolan remembered coming home after his first flight, physically down on the ground, but mentally still flying.

His dad made a nice meal and they sat down to eat. His dad was in a good mood and talked about work. Nolan’s brain raced to find a way to explain what he had just done. He had to find just the right words, so Joseph would see what a good thing it was and wouldn’t forbid him from flying.

“So, Dad, you know how the school always has career stuff at the end of the year? I was thinking, maybe I could become a pilot.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I think it would be a good career for me.”

“Well, let me tell you a few things about that,” his father said, still eating. “Flying an airplane is no better than driving a bus. With your intelligence, you ought to get a PhD.”

“I don’t really want to go to college.”

“What, and throw away your future? Come on, let’s get serious.”

“Everything I know, I taught myself anyway. You don’t need a college degree to fly airplanes, either.”

“But a degree won’t stop you from flying. I don’t want to hear you talk that way about college again.”

“Tom said…”

“Tom who?”

“Oh, uh… Tom… a guy who came to, uh… career day a few days before school let out. A pilot.”

“Obviously some salesman just trying to get young people to waste their lives. Come on, Nolan. Flying is too dangerous. Do you want to die in a plane crash? If you even make it that far. I work with a guy who used to be a pilot. He quit and now he processes invoices, but at least he’s making a living! You want to know why? Pilots don’t make that much money. Flying is extremely competitive. There are hundreds of applicants for every flying job, and the jobs don’t last very long anyway.”

“I’ll take it, if it means doing work I would enjoy.”

“Come on, get serious. Nobody gets to enjoy his work. If you become a pilot, what will end up happening is you’ll spend your life hopping from gig to gig, scraping to get by. Do you want to learn the value of security and stability the hard way? You have no common sense whatsoever. It’s time for you to stop dreaming and get with the program, young man. You’re too old for this. You’re going to college, and you’re going to get a regular job and stick to it like everyone else.”

“Dad, I don’t want the same life everyone else has.”

“Nolan, you’re giving me a headache. We’ve had discussions like this a hundred times already. I will not pay for you to become what amounts to a trade worker. You are going to college like everyone else. You will live in a dormitory and share a room with a roommate. You will study and get good grades and do what your professors say. You will work at a job you probably won’t like and suffer like everyone else. You will learn to live with the fact that this is the way life is. How else do you expect to survive?”

“First, I didn’t ask you to pay for it. Second, there are a lot of ways that people can live. What about all the innovators and entrepreneurs in history…”

“Flukes. If you want to flop around in a gutter so you can have a slim chance at calling yourself the boss of your life, be my guest. I’ll kick you out when you’re eighteen and you won’t see a penny from me. See how hard it is. Wise up, boy, and learn to compromise for once. Accept that this is just what society demands from you. You will always have someone to answer to, and it won’t ever be yourself. Even if you become a boss, you’ll still have a bigger boss, or the government telling you what to do. The sooner you get used to it, the better.”

“I don’t…”

“End of discussion.”

“That’s not what I…”

“Drop it, young man.”

Nolan looked down at his plate and continued eating. There was no way his Dad would ever understand. And there was no way he would let go of his dreams. He would have to keep the flight a secret. And that meant not telling anyone, not even Dewey. It would be too risky.

Nolan wanted his father to understand that he had no intention of following the typical path in life, going to college and then getting a job in some faceless corporation somewhere. He wanted to rise as far as he could on his own, instead of climbing some corporate ladder. Even if Joseph didn’t agree, Nolan hoped that his father could someday appreciate his point of view. But how? Joseph couldn’t even tolerate a single dot of yellow disrupting the smooth mediocrity of his lawn.

Nolan’s attention turned to the question of where he would get the money for all this. Certainly not from his dad. He could sell some of his stuff on the internet. Not some; he would need to sell all of it. Then he could go to garage sales and find more stuff to sell. He could mow lawns. Wash cars. Or maybe wash airplanes. He knew he would give up everything he had, he would subsist on macaroni and cheese if he had to, to become a pilot. If he could get the money, he could do it all before summer break is over. Nobody would know. But he would have his license. And then he would decide what to do next…

Nolan remembered all of this, and then drifted off to sleep.