Summary: As Jake’s plane burns, he thinks about everything that he has lost.
Author’s note: This was written for Jake McKenzie Appreciation Week. The dialogue is taken from Endless Summer, Book 1, Chapter 5.
As the group approached the airstrip, Jake saw smoke coming from the hangar. A sense of dread filled him as he stared in horror. “My plane!” he cried out.
Jake had lost so much already. He still had nightmares about his best friend Mike’s death. Jake had been able to eject from their plane before it was shot down, but Mike’s eject lever was jammed, and he hadn’t made it out of the plane in time.
He had lost his freedom too. Commander Lundgren had been selling weapons to the enemy, but framed Jake and Mike for the crime. Now Jake had a bounty on his head, and he couldn’t go back to the United States. If he did, he would be arrested and sent to prison for a crime that he didn’t commit. He couldn’t see his mother or his sister, and they thought he was a traitor. They must be so disappointed in him.
All he had left was Delilah…his plane. He invested everything he had in her. He did not have many happy memories, but the day he had purchased Delilah was one of them. He had been able to support himself by flying passengers all over the Caribbean. Although he had lost so much, at least he had one thing left that mattered to him.
He and Sean rushed over to the hangar to try to open the doors, and the others followed. As they pulled the doors open, smoke billowed out and rose up into the air. As he waved away the smoke, he looked inside the hangar, and was horrified to see that it was too late. His plane was gone. As he watched it burn, he felt sick. Now he really had lost everything.
Taylor rushed into the hangar and picked up a metal object. To Jake’s horror, the gasoline line caught fire, creating a trail of flames that rapidly burned in the direction of the plane. He immediately lunged for her, pushing her out of the way just as the gas tank exploded. He lay on top of her, covering her from the explosion.
Once it was over, he lifted his head and looked her in the eye. “You still with me?”
She looked back at him. “Jake, you could’ve gotten yourself killed. Why’d you save me?”
“Think you can leave me alone with this crowd? Guess again, Princess.” He took her hand and helped her get up. “I ain’t leaving this island without you, understand?”
He gazed at what was left of his plane, wondering how it could have caught fire. Taylor held out the metal object that she had grabbed from the hangar. As he glanced at it, he was stunned to realize that it was the padlock to the doors. He knew he had locked up the hangar. The lock was not broken, so someone must have unlocked it, and had probably set fire to his plane. Who could have done it?
As he looked at Taylor, he suddenly had the feeling that maybe he hadn’t lost everything after all.