"Jessie, stop squirming in there," I whispered. "Not all of us have denim legs, you know. You're going to bruise my thigh if you're not careful."

"I can't help it," came Jessie's voice from inside my backpack. "I told you I didn't like being cooped up in small spaces. How much longer are we going to be up here, anyway?"

"How should I know?" I said. "It's not as though I can look out the window and spot landmarks as we fly over them. I've seen nothing but clouds for the past hour."

"Clouds?"

"Well, you saw the kind of rain that was coming down in Chicago."

"No, I mean, you can see clouds out your window?" said Jessie, with a hint of excitement in her voice. "Up close?"

I blinked. "Well, yeah. We're in a jet plane. Didn't they have jet planes in the '50s?"

"Probably, but I've never been on one," said Jessie. "I was made in a factory in Japan, carried on a ship across the Pacific to Long Beach, then put on a truck and shipped to a department store in Oyster Bay. Since then I don't think I've ever been on a long trip anywhere, unless you count when Louise and James moved to Manhattan, and the box of childhood mementos I was in got stuffed into the moving van with everything else. I've always been inside boxes – I've never gotten to see anything."

She was getting that telltale tremble in her voice again, and I wanted to kick myself. Wasn't I ever going to learn? The rule was perfectly simple: If you wanted your animate Jessie doll to remain happy and contented, don't start any conversations with her that might lead to the subject of all those years she spent being neglected by humanity. (Of course, as I was to discover over the course of the next few weeks, there were very few conversations that Jessie couldn't contrive to lead back to that subject. Still, in this case I should probably have seen it coming.)

Fortunately, there was a fairly simple solution this time. "Well, would you like to see something now?" I said. "I could unzip my backpack partway, and then you could peek out through the opening and see out the window."

There was a pause, and then Jessie said hopefully, "Would you mind?"

"Not at all," I said. This wasn't strictly true; actually, I was a little concerned that Mom, who was sitting next to me, would notice what I was doing and request an explanation. (Of course, why she should notice that, when she and Dad had both been asleep for most of the flight, I don't know, but you tend to get a little paranoid when you're trying to keep a secret.) On the other hand, I could always say I was getting out my CD player to listen to; in fact, I could do that anyway, and then I could spend the rest of the flight listening to Lee Ann Womack instead of getting lured into these hazardous conversations with Jessie.

Cautiously, I scooted myself closer to the right armrest, so the mouth of the backpack was as near to the window as I could make it; then I unzipped the backpack and pulled the flap down with the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. "How's that?" I whispered.

There was a slight scuffling sound inside the backpack that made me wince and glance quickly at Mom (who didn't seem to have heard anything), and then Jessie's painted eyes poked themselves out of the opening and blinked at the light from the window. "Is that the view you were talking about?" she said. "I can't see any clouds."

"Try looking down," I said.

She looked puzzled, but followed my suggestion – and then her eyes got even wider than they usually were, and she whispered, "Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln…"

"Not bad, is it?" I said with a smile.

"It's beautiful," Jessie breathed. "It's like the whole Fingerpainted Desert was made of wool, and I was one of the critter-birds flying over it." She laughed. "See, there's Ten-Gallon Mesa – and the little gap right there could be the Old Dried-Up Creek – and…"

She was interrupted by the voice of the head stewardess coming over the intercom. "We will be beginning our descent in about five minutes. Please return your seats to the upright position and fasten your safety belts."

"Upright position?" said Jessie, with a frown in her eyes. "What's that about?"

"The seats lean back," I whispered. "For people who want spend the trip to Denver staring at the ceiling."

"Oh," said Jessie. "I didn't think there was enough space between the seats for that."

"There isn't," I said, "but they do it anyway."

Jessie looked baffled, and I laughed softly. "Don't worry about it, Jess," I said. "Just keep an eye on the window. You're not going to want to miss this next part."


Sure enough, about five minutes later, the plane gave an abrupt lurch downwards, and we plunged into the heart of the cloud. At first, Jessie thought that was the next part, and inquired icily why she ought to be impressed by the inside of a cloud ("It's not as though I've never been cut off from the light before," she noted), but then we came out the other end and she got her first glimpse of Denver, and she forgot all about the Rule of Concealment and let out a tiny, high-pitched scream of delight.

"What was that?" Mom murmured. (She had woken up when the plane started descending; it's a trained reflex, she says, when you've traveled as much as she has.)

I made my face look as innocent as humanly possible. "Dunno," I said. "There was a baby a couple rows back who was crying earlier; maybe that's what it was."

If she had been fully awake, I doubt that explanation would have worked, but Mom's spatial hearing tends to be bad when she's just gotten up. She glanced toward the back of the plane, nodded vaguely, and returned her attention to rousing Dad from his slumber, and I grinned and looked back out the window.

I couldn't blame Jessie for getting excited. I mean, I've taken this trip every summer since I was eight, and it still gets to me when I see that huge metropolis framed by those breathtaking mountains. For a Yodeling Cowgirl who had basically lived her entire life on Long Island and Manhattan, the sight of the Mile-High City from two miles high must have been something like a religious experience.

Still, we did have a secret to keep, so I whispered, "Nice work, Jess. Next time, maybe you could consider pitching it a little higher so the stewardesses can hear you, too."

"I know, I know," Jessie whispered back. "I'm sorry, it's just… well, look at it. How else can you react to something like that?"

"You could yodel," I said facetiously, and then winced as I realized that Jessie was in just the mood to take that suggestion seriously.

She didn't, though – mostly, I think, because she didn't even notice it. "The Colorado Rockies," she whispered. "The country of mountain men and hill people, where elk bugle and cougars prowl – where the sun sparkles down on the snow-fed rivers – where the wind scatters the snow on the crags, and the aspen trees tremble and sway. It's enough to break a poor cowgirl's heart – and you're telling me you live here?"

"We live here," I said.

"Yes, we do," said Mom, overhearing this last comment. "Eight years, come September. And I can't say I'm sorry. Como's been pretty good to us, all things considered."

I smiled and didn't say anything.

"Incidentally, Jake," Mom added, "you should probably get your backpack closed up again. We only have a few minutes before we touch down, and you know what the press on one of these major flights is like three minutes after the plane stops moving. Best to get in as close to the front of the line as possible."

"Yes, ma'am," I said dutifully.

"That goes for you, too, Don," said Mom, turning to where Dad was still lying inert in his aisle seat. "If you could see your way to resisting the power of gravity long enough to get our bags down from the overhead compartment, we'd be in a much better tactical position."

"Can't do that yet," Dad muttered. "The safety-belt sign's still on."

"What do you think God gave you arms for?" Mom demanded. "I specifically packed that compartment so you'd be able to reach up and grab all the major bags without leaving your seat. Now go on and start earning your keep, or I just might have to drop by the Husband Store in Denver on our way home and trade you in for a better model."

As Dad sighed and reached for the suitcase handles that were hanging down from the edge of the baggage compartment (muttering something about "high-maintenance women" as he did so), I zipped up the flap on the backpack and felt Jessie settle back into her previous crouching position between Harry Potter and Beth's copper Woolworth Buildings. It was strange how much I could tell about what Jessie was feeling just by the position of her body in my backpack; before, she had been curled up in a little ball of resignation, but now she was sitting upright with her arms supporting her, and there was a kind of excited tension about her whole figure, as though all the energy and high spirits that she had lost during her thirty years in Aunt Louise's attic had been pumped back into her by her first sight of Mount Bierstadt.

I sighed, and stared out the window at the rapidly approaching ground. This was always my favorite part of a plane trip: watching the airport grow from an anthill into a full-size building, seeing the grass beside the runway coming into focus as though you were changing the resolution of a microscope, feeling that satisfying thump! as the airplane's wheels made contact with the ground, and then watching the whole airport whoosh past at those ridiculous speeds. It was something of a letdown when the plane slowed to a halt, and when the stewardess made the ritual announcement, "The captain has turned off the safety-belt sign. Have a good day, and thank you for flying Northwest Airlines."

"So that's it, then?" came Jessie's voice as I got up from my seat and slipped my backpack over my shoulder. "We're here?"

"Yes, we are," I whispered back. "Welcome home, Jessie."