Don't Fail Me Now(77)

“Me too,” I say. Tim grins, and we both lean forward, two atoms succumbing slowly to an electromagnetic force.

“Are you gonna kiss again?” Denny’s yell is punctuated by barely concealed giggling, and Tim and I leap back, hanging our heads to conceal our self-conscious smiles.

“I don’t know,” he says, letting his fingertips brush mine as we make our way to the stairs. “I think we can find someplace more romantic, don’t you?”

“Definitely,” I say.





TWENTY-ONE


Wednesday Night

Los Angeles, CA Baltimore, MD ?




“Please direct your attention to the front of the cabin for a safety demonstration.”

There’s shuffling throughout the plane as a flight attendant with thick foundation and a bad case of bitchy resting face steps out into the aisle and begins miming buckling a seatbelt.

“Do they do this every time?” I whisper to Tim, who’s sitting to my left, in the middle seat between Denny and me.

“Yup, there’s even a video.” He points to the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of me, where actors are inflating life vests and jumping onto emergency slides with the calm, blank faces of people who’ve recently been given heavy doses of sedatives.

“If this plane goes down, I will kill you,” I say, only half joking. I was all right until we got into the twisting, narrow jetway that led us from the terminal to the plane. Then I started feeling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, my old, familiar panic winding around my ribcage and pulling tight. But Tim’s been explaining everything—every ding and snap and a terrifying whooshing sound like we’re about to be sucked through a wind tunnel to our untimely deaths (which apparently is just the flush of a chemical toilet). It also doesn’t hurt that Denny thinks the inside of an airplane is the coolest thing he’s ever seen and has been painstakingly illustrating a replica of our Boeing 737 ever since one of the flight crew brought him up to meet the pilot.

“Relax, everything’s going to be fine,” Tim says. He means the plane. As for everything else, that’s a big ellipsis with no end in sight. But I feel ready to take it one day at a time. We land in Baltimore at ten P.M., which means first it’s back home for a reunion with Mom and then back to school tomorrow to beg for makeup tests and extra-credit projects so I can finish out the semester without my grades tanking. After that it’s time to run for the border to ask Yvonne for my job back. I’ll need all the income I can get, since we’re now without a reliable mode of transportation—although Mr. Harper did mention he has an old Volvo from the mid-’80s rusting in his spare garage and that if Tim and I can get it running, I can have it. I told him it’s a deal, except I want to do it with Leah as my co-mechanic. Just the old two-long-lost-sister-princesses-fixing-a-car story, you know how it goes.

The Harpers seem great so far. They bought us dinner at the airport and listened to (an abridged version of) our story and managed to be warm and open even when they were clearly pissed. They weren’t mad at any one of us individually, just understandably freaked out by the whole thing. Tim’s not allowed to drive without an escort until he graduates, and Tim and Leah are both grounded until their parents can devise what they called “a more original punishment.” But Tim and Leah didn’t even seem upset. When they all got reunited in front of the JetBlue ticket desk, everyone cried a little bit, even Cass. Tim says he didn’t, but I know what I saw.

Up front, the flight attendant demonstrates how to use a seat cushion as a flotation device, and Cass taps me from across the aisle.

“There’s a whole empty row behind us,” she says. “I say we stockpile them to make a raft.” I nod, and we discreetly fist-bump. That’s Devereaux thinking right there. That’s why we pull through.

As the plane taxis away from the airport, all I can see is a lot of concrete and some far-off trees listing in the wind, as small as dandelion heads from here.

“Not much of a view,” Tim says, seeing me stare. “But every airport looks the same, anyway.” Strip malls, airports, hotels—all trying to make me feel like I could be anywhere. Walking down the hallways at school, trying not to stand out, like I could be anyone. It worked for a while, but I don’t want that anymore. I want a place to belong. I finally want to land.

“Excuse me, sweetie,” an older, kinder-faced flight attendant says, stopping in front of our row and grinning forcibly at Denny. “I’m gonna have to ask you to lock your tray table for me.”

“But I have to finish my assignment,” Denny protests, and I do a double take. My brother has never once passed up an excuse to avoid homework. One of us usually has to sit with him and physically force him to focus.

“Well, aren’t we the model student?” she says. “Don’t worry, you can pick up right where you left off once we’re in the air.” Denny begrudgingly slides his paper and pen into his lap as Tim helps him get the tray table folded.

“What are you doing?” I ask once she moves on to her next victim.

Denny holds up his airplane drawing and flips it over. On the back, he’s sketched out a copy of the family tree from the handout he showed me at the police station. Me, Cass, and Denny are the roots that anchor the tree, with our parents dangling perilously over our heads. I wonder if whoever designed the worksheet knows that it’s supposed to be the other way around.