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mainstream. Through my friendship with her, gradually I was finding out exactly how much my life differed from hers, Grayson’s, the life of almost anybody whowas my age. My mom had never subscribed to any magazine or newspaper. I turned the newspaper page to the obituaries.
    Something flashed past the windows. I sighed with relief. Grayson was landing. I hadn’t heard his engine because small planes were hard to hear indoors, at this distance from the runway.
    But when I put down the newspaper and walked to the window to make sure he’d landed okay, I saw it wasn’t a plane at all. The flash I’d seen was Alec and Jake running past the office, closer to the end of the runway where Grayson would land. Mr. Hall chugged more slowly behind them.
    This was not a good sign. When one of us hooked a banner, someone else watched to make sure the rope and banner unfurled correctly, nothing got tangled, and no parts fell off the airplane. But we didn’t regularly watch each other take off or land. If even Mr. Hall was hurrying down the runway for Grayson’s approach, Grayson was in trouble.
    I adjusted a dial in the wall so the common traffic advisory frequency would play on the speakers outside. When Grayson announced over the radio that he was getting close, we would hear him. Then I zipped my thin jacket, the only coat I owned. It wouldn’t protect me from today’s cold, but I had to see what was going on. I pocketed the office phone and stepped through the door outside.
    The icy wind hit me in the face and blew my curls into my eyes as if the elastic holding them in a ponytail weren’t even there. The blue sky was still visible, but a bank of ominous gray clouds swirled over the trees. A few puffs scuttled overhead, their shadows racing along the ground faster than a plane. On one side of the office, the rope clanged against the flagpole over and over in the breeze, a strike and a hollow reverberation like a church bell. I should lower the flag forthe day before the storm came. The orange windsock high on its pole stood straight out, perpendicular to the runway. The crosswind was strong and frightening.
    Several yards away, the Halls stood in a line, each squinting at the sky in a different direction, looking for Grayson. I’d seen Alec and Jake often in the past few days, but never standing together, and I was struck by how much alike they looked now that Alec was eighteen, even though Jake was five years older. Same muscular build and bright blond hair, except Jake’s hair was cut ultrashort for the military. Same open, friendly face and easy stance in old jeans and sweatshirts and bulky hiking coats, hands on hips, model-handsome without trying at all. In the face, they looked like a picture Mr. Hall had shown me of their mom.
    Self-conscious to the point of blushing, I walked over to stand beside Mr. Hall. Alec was my age and I should want to stand next to him, not his middle-aged father. The truth was, after three years at the airport, I still didn’t know Alec, Jake, or Grayson very well. They came to Heaven Beach only for summers and holidays and occasional weekends. I knew them mostly by watching them while I sat on the front porch of the office and they loitered outside the Hall Aviation hangar. They competed with each other and insulted each other. Fights broke out occasionally, with one of the boys throwing a punch at another before the third brother shouted for their dad and pulled them apart. The glimpses I got of them filled my mind for days afterward. I would have given anything to join them and feel like part of their gruff, dramatic family. But there was a standoffishness about them, like they resented me for butting in.
    Then, around this time last year, right before Jake deployed to Afghanistan, Mr. Hall had told me to come over for my flying lesson as usual. As I’d crossed the asphalt and approachedthe door in the side of the hangar, I’d heard the boys’ voices echoing inside. I didn’t want to