Uncharted(12)

Between the light flashes, I watch things unfold in a series of disembodied still frames. The flight attendants scrambling for emergency rafts in the overhead bins. Half-empty drinks careening toward the ceiling and shattering on impact. Glass shards whipping through the cabin like razor-sharp raindrops. Air masks deploying from the ceiling like yellow plastic pi?atas.

The intercom crackles on, filling the cabin with terse orders from our captain that cut in and out every few seconds. Despite the static, I recognize the strain in his voice.

“Ladies and gen… unexpected turbul…”

The words of the captain are drowned out by the loudest bang I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a bomb has gone off. The entire vessel jolts violently sideways in the air as we’re thrown off course by the force of the engine exploding. My body slams to the left like a rag doll in a twister, the canvas belt across my lap cutting harshly against my waist but mercifully keeping me in my seat.

Some aren’t so lucky — with growing horror, I watch as the male flight attendant is hurled into the air and slammed against a storage compartment. He crumples to the floor with a sickening thud, blood gushing from his temple. He does not get up again. The emergency raft rolls from his limp hands, far out of reach.

I pray for the plane to level out again, as it has before, but this time…

We simply keep falling.

Half-convinced I’m dreaming, I operate on auto-pilot, yanking my mask over the lower half of my face then grabbing the one swinging in the air beside it.

Sophie.

She’s crying — cheeks red, snot streaming from her nostrils. I want to tell her it’ll be okay. I want to take her in my arms and promise we’re all going to be fine. But I can’t. Not only because she can’t hear me over the screaming storm splitting our fuselage in two… but because I know it would be a lie.

“Emergency… left engine…”

The captain’s panicked words cut out as the plane loses all electrical power. The lights flicker one final time, then never come back on. I hear someone screaming — I think it’s Samantha, but more voices join in as we continue to free-fall through the air. A chorus of terror, harmonizing with the shrieking wind.

I’m going to die, I think ludicrously, hyperventilating into my air mask. I wish I could force my eyes to close. I don’t want to see what comes next, but I can’t stop watching. It’s like a bad horror film, the kind you can’t tear your eyes from even when you know it’ll end horribly for the heroine.

Except this isn’t a movie.

I am the doomed heroine.

Or… maybe not the heroine at all. Certainly not a hero. No more than a cowardly side character, who dies before the audience can become too emotionally invested.

In the imaginary crises I sometimes allow myself to conjure up while lying in bed at night, I’m always brave. Smart. Strong. Leaping through fire, charging toward danger. I thought, in an emergency, I’d save the world — or at least my own life. But here I am, living a nightmare, and I’m paralyzed with fear. I watch my own demise unfolding around me and can do nothing to stop it except stare straight ahead, hope slipping through my shaking fingers.

Waiting to die.

The green-eyed stranger in the seat across from mine is gesturing wildly to get my attention, the whites around his irises flashing like surrender flags on a battlefield. He’s scared, too. I can’t see his mouth beneath the mask, but his eyes are screaming indecipherable instructions at me. When I see him pulling a neon bundle from beneath his seat, his message clicks.

He’s telling me to put on my life vest.

Panting hard, I pull the deflated plastic over my head. I do my best to get one over Sophie’s blonde pigtails, but it’s hard to control my limbs, the plane is jerking so much.

The stranger is gesturing again — this time at my feet. In the turbulence, the compressed life raft has rolled my way, coming to rest just beside my backpack.

Grab it! The stranger’s eyes are flashing. Grab the raft!

I watch my hands like they belong to someone else as they close around the straps and pull the thick roll of yellow fabric up into my lap. It’s surprisingly heavy. I cling to it with desperation, afraid another bump might make me lose my grip. When we hit — because, in these horrid, frozen instants, it has become increasingly clear that impact is not a matter of if but when — it may be the only salvation from the crushing embrace of dark water.

I should be crying, by my tear ducts refuse to cooperate. I cling to the emergency pack, my mind empty except for a single thought I repeat over and over, a prayer to any god who happens to be listening.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die.

I want to go back — back to that curb at Boston Logan international Airport, to wrap my arms around my mother one last time. Back to before I got on this plane. Back to that simple town I couldn’t wait to escape. Back to that picture-perfect future I dismissed with such disdain.

But I can’t.

The only thing I can do, here and now, is adjust my grip on the raft and reach out for Sophie. I feel her small fingers slip into mine, and squeeze hard to tell her I’m here with her.

You’re not alone.

Looking straight ahead, my gaze locks on a steady sea of green within the chaos. It’s strange that the last thing I’ll ever see are the eyes of a stranger, burning into mine.