Terminal Velocity

Ready, set, grief.

AP Physics.

We circle Mr. Peterson like planets around a dying star. Eighteen students clutching identical stopwatches. I'm the only freshman, orbiting the edges, an observer.

"Pok!" The tennis ball smacks linoleum.

"Time!" Mr. Peterson calls out.

“0.61000 seconds,” Trina Martinez announces, fanning the room with her Seiko S23601 for all to see.

"0.58," argues Marcus.

"0.64?" whispers Sarah.

I say it’s "0.598."

Trina etches our numbers onto the board with clicking, screeching chalk.

Mr. Peterson looms above us.

"Again," he says, holding up another ball.

"Pok!"

"0.620!"

"0.57!"

"0.632!"

"0.60000," Trina proudly displays.

More numbers squeak across the board. Another cluster of guesses around some invisible truth.

"Who can tell me what's happening here?" Mr. Peterson wants to know.

I know.

No matter how accurate the instrument, no matter how steady the rate of descent, we all see it differently. And none of us react the same.

“Pok!”

Absolute Certainty.

Dad leaves the house at 2:30 to be on air by 5:00. Comes home around noon. Probably.

Not that I'd know.

His Post-it notes cover the fridge like dead leaves: ”Lunch money on counter.” “Trash day.” “Remember calculator.”

He studies chaos for a living. Meteorologist, ABC Action News Tampa Bay.

Seven different radar feeds on his laptop. NEXRAD Doppler. European Centre models. GFS forecasts refreshing every six minutes.

He's always tuned in. NOAA weather radio crackling in the background—barometric pressure readings in real-time on his phone.

He predicted clear skies for Mom's funeral. Closed casket. Big turnout. He stood in the foyer, checking his phone.

It poured.

Pressure Systems

Mom used to help people condense lifetimes—200 words or less.

Obituaries, funeral programs, four panels of cardstock.

She'd sit with crying people, teaching them to subtract adjectives until only facts remained, crossing out words they thought they needed.

"What’s the one thing you remember most?" she'd say.

She could shrink anyone's life to fit the space they could afford. Loving husband. Devoted father. Survived by. Preceded in death.

When she got sick, she wrote her own obituary.

Forty-seven words.

I counted.

Mass and Acceleration

Sarah Williams says Mr. Peterson is wrong about objects falling at the same rate.

"That's only true in a vacuum," she argues, like she's discovered something revolutionary.

This is obvious to me.

Everyday things always get in the way.

Air resistance. Friction. Career. School. Friends. Drivers Ed.

Mom fell fast.

Six months from diagnosis to the kitchen table conversation.

"Cancer," she said. One word. Two syllables.

Atmospheric Disturbance

Dad predicted “sunshine and blue skies” for the day we cleaned out Mom's office.

He was wrong about that, too.

I found a legal pad in her bottom drawer. Her practice runs.

Different versions of her own ending.

Draft after draft of her own life getting shorter.

Editing herself down to nothing.

The final version fit on a business card.

Laws of Motion

Mr. Peterson says that terminal velocity is when an object stops accelerating as it falls.

When air resistance equals the pull of gravity.

When falling becomes floating.

I think about this during lunch when my cafeteria pizza slice slides apart as I pick it up.

The cheese hits the tray with a wet slap.

Thanks, gravity.

Forecast

Dad smiles into his monitors. Three screens of radar show a Category 4 swirling across the Gulf bearing down on Tampa Bay on repeat.

"It'll turn north by the weekend," he tells the cameras. "Standard high-pressure steering," he smiles.

The European models disagree. But what do they know?

I look at the sky. Still clear. Deep blue.

I want to believe he’s right this time.

Sunday finds us at the cemetery. The headstone reads "Melissa Franklin." Date dash date. Nothing else.

Mom would have approved.

Margin of Error

Driving home, Dad can’t keep his eyes off the Doppler feed on his phone. He checks at every stoplight. Every break in traffic.

Red and purple pixels swirling closer.

Above us, cirrus clouds form in slow spirals.

"Still heading north," he insists. "Has to."

The first massive droplet smacks our windshield a block from our house.

"POK!"