Ann dismounted her bike and crouched behind some bushes near the entrance of the little airfield located on the edge of town. The hot Florida sun bore down on her bare arms as she examined the area. There wasn't much to see. America had just entered the space age by shooting John Glenn into orbit a few months before in a Mercury space capsule, but this place looked more like something Orville and Wilbur Wright would have called home sixty years earlier. The airfield consisted of nothing more than an old run-down wooden hangar and a faded wind sock hung from a rusty pole at one end of a long grass runway. An old decrepit camper trailer was parked near the hangar, but Ann couldn't see any indication that it was actually occupied. All the windows were covered by sun-faded curtains, and weeds grew around the flattened tires. She spotted a sign that someone had stuck haphazardly alongside the bumpy gravel road leading to the entrance of the airfield. The faded, weathered paint on the sign simply said "Airfield," with an arrow pointing in the general direction of the hangar. It didn't look like much, but it was the only place to land an airplane within thirty miles of Indiantown.

Ann wasn't there to watch the comings and goings at the forlorn little airfield but instead had come to perform a rite of passage so that she would be accepted by the local boys into their gang. She had tried to make friends with the girls in the neighborhood, but they were into playing with dolls, gossiping, and avoiding getting dirty. Ann much preferred the mischief the boys wound up getting into as opposed to "girlie" things. Her mother called Ann a tomboy as if that were a bad thing, but Ann wore the label with pride. She could do anything the boys could do just as well as they could, if not better, and she never backed down from an opportunity to prove it to anyone who would give her the chance.

"Well, are you going to do it, or are you going to chicken out?" Billy Henderson nudged her shoulder.

Billy was the ringleader of the little gang that included Joey Reed and Tommy Johnson. Billy was a year older than Ann but had been held back, so they would actually be in the same grade when school started in the fall. Joey and Tommy went along with anything Billy told them to do. Ann guessed this was primarily because Billy was much bigger and stronger than the two other boys put together. Ann had heard that Billy was known for passing out more than a few black eyes among his schoolmates and probably spent as much time in detention as he did in class.

"I'm telling you the old man is crazy," Joey said. "My dad says it's from all the chemicals he's been spraying all these years. The chemicals have eaten his brain out from the inside, making him loopy."

"I heard it was from the war," said Tommy. "I heard he shot down a bunch of Jap planes and then crashed on a deserted island. He was there for years until they found him, and by then he had gone nuts."

Billy gave them both a look of annoyance. "You are both idiots." He spoke with an air of authority. "He's just a crazy old drunk that's going to kill himself one day flying into a tree or telephone pole. You've seen the way he flies that old crop-dusting crate."

Ann watched in disgust as Tommy and Joey just meekly nodded in agreement. She had been hanging out with the boys for only a week but already knew that Tommy and Joey would always fall in line with whatever Billy had to say. She had already made up her mind that she wasn't going to let Billy intimidate her like he did the others.

"I'm not chickening out!" Ann snapped back at Billy in a determined voice. "I don't care if the old man is crazy or not. It doesn't matter to me. I'll do it."

Ann really didn't know anything about the owner of the airfield other than his name. She had never even seen a crop-dusting plane before she moved with her mother to Indiantown from Baltimore at the beginning of summer. But just a few days before, she had witnessed a plane with two sets of wings roaring just inches above the ground and spewing a cloud behind it as she pedaled her bike along the road. Ann had watched as the plane popped over a tree at the very last second, avoiding disaster. Based on what she had seen, Ann was inclined to agree that whoever was flying the plane was crazy, regardless of what actually had brought on the condition.

Ann's mother had grown up in Indiantown. When Ann asked her about the plane, her mother had told her that it was owned and flown by a man everyone just called Jack. His family had owned a large amount of land on the outskirts of town generations before, but the estate had slowly been whittled down over the years until all that was left was the little airfield. Jack had been flying planes out of the airfield since before Ann's mother was born. He didn't come into town much, and when he did, he wasn't known for being social. He had a reputation for being a grumpy, cantankerous old man. Ann's mother told her that she was to stay away from Jack's place if she didn't want to get into trouble.

Ann watched as Billy peeked around the corner of the bushes to see if anyone was around. She positioned herself so she could see over Billy's shoulder and get a better view of the hangar. Everything was still in the morning air. The old faded wind sock hung limply on the pole at the far end of the runway. There appeared to be no movement at the hangar or the trailer.

"All right, Jack has an old beat-up pickup truck, and it's not here. He must be in town," Billy said, turning back to face Ann. "If you want to hang around with us, you have to prove yourself by sneaking into the hangar and stealing something. Come back empty-handed, and you are out for good."

Ann considered the challenge. The thought of stealing something from the hangar didn't raise a moral issue with her. It seemed every time she moved to a new place — and there had been a lot of moves since her mother and father's divorce — she had to pass some rite of initiation with the local kids in order to be considered one of the gang. Such initiations often involved petty theft, such as shoplifting a candy bar from a corner store, but stealing something out of the hangar of a crazy old crop duster seemed a different matter. She had no idea just how crazy this old man might be or what he would do if he caught her. Still, Ann never backed down from a challenge, even when she knew better, so she would go into the hangar and come back with something just to show the boys they were no better than her.

"What does it have to be?" Ann asked.

"Anything," Billy replied. "A tool, a can of oil, a spark plug, anything — just get in there and bring something back. You better not rat on us if you get caught, or I'll give you a black eye, even if you are a girl."

"If I get caught, it will only be because you are making too much noise, flapping that big mouth of yours. Be quiet for a change, or you'll get us all caught," Ann said sharply.

Billy was taken aback by her snapping at him. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, let alone a girl. Tommy and Joey started snickering at Ann's reply to Billy, until Billy glared at them and raised a fist. They knew the look, and it wiped the smiles from their faces.

"Do you two find something funny?" Billy growled.

Ann watched as Tommy and Joey just stared at the ground.

Receiving no reply, Billy turned his attention back to Ann and the task at hand. "Quit stalling and move!" Billy said as he...