Dear Edward(89)

They’re both quiet for a while. Maybe Edward dozes off, though he feels highly aware of his surroundings. He can sense the geometry of the lake—both its surface area and depth—and the moon, which is pinned halfway to the horizon. He can feel the loss of his brother, as if that loss has the solidity of one of the trees behind him. Edward breathes in, and when he exhales, he can feel his molecules travel into the air around him. Maybe I am a little asleep, he thinks. He’s aware of Shay beside him. Her molecules are mixing with his; he’s not just himself; he’s made up of her too. Which means he’s composed of everyone he’s ever touched, everyone he’s ever shaken hands with, hugged, or high-fived. That means he has molecules inside him from his parents and Jordan and everyone else on that plane.

The letters always referred to the weight he had to carry, and he’d thought of it that way himself: He had to carry the burden of so many lost lives. He had to make it up to the people who died. It was him pulling 191 dead people, like a fallen parachute, in his wake. But if the passengers are part of his makeup, and all time and people are interconnected, then the people on the plane exist, just as he exists. The present is infinite, and Flight 2977 flies on, far above him, hidden by clouds.

He told John the truth in the garage, that he would never leave anyone behind, but now that idea has expanded. He sits beside his brother on the plane, and lies on the ground beside Shay. Jordan argues with their dad about harming animals, and he kisses the fifteen-year-old Mahira, and the older Mahira loves him from behind the deli counter, right now.

“Shay?” he says.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I used to have this crazy idea …” He pauses. “And I guess I still do, that as long as I stay on the ground, the plane will stay in the sky. It’ll keep flying on its normal route to Los Angeles, and I’m its counterweight. They’re all alive up there, as long as I’m alive down here.”

“The twelve-year-old you is up there too?”

Eddie, he thinks, and nods.

“I can see that,” she says, her voice sleepy. “That makes sense.”

He grins, his eyes still closed, because Shay can see it too. He pictures his mother pressing a finger against her comet-shaped birthmark, in her first-class seat. His dad, making the surprised expression he made when he thought about his math problem. Edward pictures himself, in the future, teaching twelve-year-olds in Principal Arundhi’s school and trying to convince them that they’re okay. Future-Edward is wearing a handsome tweed blazer, and he’s telling the kids to help others when they need help, and to accept help when they need it themselves.

Edward remembers watching Madame Victory double over with laughter, her face shining with what looks like joy. He hears her say to him, Nobody chose you for anything. He hears the camper’s question: Did it hurt? He can feel Shay’s fingers in his own. Moonlight beams through his eyelids and he can see, as if it’s the lake in front of him, the pain and loss he’s been swimming in for years. In the moonlight, though, the pain is revealed to be love. The emotions are entwined; they are the two sides of the same gleaming coin.

He and Shay walk home slowly that night. They weave around fat trees and cross quiet roads. When they reach their street, Edward stops in front of his aunt and uncle’s house. He looks up at the window of the room that was supposed to be a nursery, but never was, and never will be. He can remember standing at that window, held up by crutches, etched with pain. He moves his gaze higher, where—beyond his field of vision—a young boy sits in a plane, with no idea what’s about to happen.





2:11 P.M.

The co-pilot says, “I’m in TOGA, right?”

TOGA is an acronym for Take Off, Go Around. When a plane is taking off or aborting a landing—“going around”—it must gain both speed and altitude as efficiently as possible. Pilots are trained to increase engine speed to the TOGA level and raise the nose to a certain pitch angle at this critical phase of flight.

The co-pilot wants to increase speed and climb away from danger, but he’s not at sea level; he’s in the far thinner air of 37,500 feet. The engines generate less thrust here, and the wings generate less lift. Raising the nose to a certain angle of pitch does not result in the same angle of climb but far less. Indeed, it can—and will—result in a descent.

While the co-pilot’s behavior is irrational, it is not inexplicable. Intense psychological stress tends to shut down the part of the brain responsible for innovative, creative thought. When frazzled, people tend to revert to the familiar and the well rehearsed. Though pilots are required to practice hand-flying their aircraft during all phases of flight as part of recurrent training, in their daily routine they do most of their hand-flying at low altitude—while taking off, landing, and maneuvering. It’s not surprising, then, that the co-pilot reverts to flying the plane as if it were close to the ground, even though this response is ill-suited to the situation.

The plane now reaches its maximum altitude. With engines at full power, the nose pitched upward at an angle of 18 degrees, it moves horizontally for an instant and then begins to sink back toward the ground.

The pilot: “What the hell is happening? I don’t understand what’s happening!”

Linda says, “I need to use the bathroom.”

Florida says, “Are you crazy, girl? You’re not getting up from that seat.”