“You have flown before, yes?” the stranger asked.
I ignored him. I would not die in a fiery plane crash because I neglected the (mostly useless) safety card for a pair of beautiful semisweet-chocolate eyes.
The recorded voice ended the safety presentation. I tucked the card away in the seat pouch in front of me, tightened my seatbelt, and clenched my eyes shut while the plane struggled to lift off from the runway. On the third midair dip, I pressed my head back against the seat, as if holding a rigid posture would somehow get the plane in the air safely.
The first three minutes after takeoff and before landing were the most prone to mishaps. For 180 seconds, I prayed the only way I knew how, visualizing the opposite of all of the horrible potential outcomes running through my head. Breathing deeply through my nose, I pictured the plane lifting off, maintaining a nice straight path through the air, and landing in Half-Moon Hollow with my purse and person intact. I was calm. I was safe. The book was in my hands, and I was presenting it to Jane Jameson-Nightengale, intact.
And when I opened my eyes, my purse was open on my lap, and my hands were swimming through the contents, searching for the package. Across the aisle, the stranger’s head was bent over a magazine. I felt faint, as if I were falling inside myself, separated from my own body as my arm started to lift. I could see myself yanking the package out of my purse, as if I were watching it happen on a movie screen.
What was I doing? I hadn’t pulled the package from my bag since getting through security. Why would I show it to this person I barely knew?
As suddenly as it began, the spell was over, and I practically sagged against my seat. My long, sweater-clad arm was still raised and my hand still stretched as I shook off the strange, dizzy sensation. I’d never felt anything like that before. Was I coming down with something? Had I had some sort of stroke? I didn’t feel tingling or numbness in my extremities. I wasn’t confused, beyond wondering what the hell had just happened to me. Maybe it was an inner-ear problem? Or maybe the veggie wrap I’d eaten at the airport sandwich shop was contaminated? I should have known better than to trust airport cuisine. I probably had some sort of dirt-borne E. coli from unwashed lettuce.
I glanced across the aisle to the stranger, still poring through his magazine, completely unaware of my inner turmoil. I sighed. I was a very special sort of weird. I turned my attention back to my book. While the takeoff was fairly smooth, the rocking of the plane and the dark, quiet space actually made me a little dizzy again, and I wondered if I really was coming down with some strain of bacteria that affected the inner ear. Stupid airport lettuce.
With the stranger distracted by magazine articles about abdominal workouts that would change his life, I traveled through Dante’s rings of hell with the aid of the weak overhead light. After twenty minutes or so, I got tired of the weird, dizzy sensation intermittently flashing through my head and set my book aside.
“Not quite the beach-read romp you were promised?” the stranger asked.
I looked up to find him staring at me again, intently, on the edge of attempted smoldering. And when I didn’t respond, he tipped over that edge into full smolder, and I scooted back in my seat. He seemed surprised by this and leaned forward. Maybe he thought I didn’t have a close enough view of his cheekbones? Was this the sort of thing that normally got him a response from women? Was he one of those guys who flirted with everything that moved because he was trying to score by the laws of probability?
Forgetting every lesson my mother had ever drilled into my head about good manners and eye contact, I gave him the full-on “disapproving professor” face I’d learned as a teaching assistant.
He was not fazed.
He did, however, get distracted by a child’s truck, a toy left over from a previous flight, rolling down the aisle toward the cockpit. (And, coincidentally, that didn’t make me feel much better about the cleanliness of the plane.) Wait, toward the cockpit? The plane’s nose seemed to be tipping downward. I checked my watch. We were only twenty-five minutes into the flight, which was too early to be starting our descent into the Hollow. I exchanged a glance with my handsome seatmate, who was frowning. Hard.
A metallic crunching noise sounded from the front of the plane, catching our attention. After flipping a few switches and hitting some buttons, Ernie the pilot yanked what looked like an important lever from the control panel and stuck it into his shirt pocket. And then he took a heavy rubber mallet from his laptop bag and began swinging it wildly at the panel. He got up from his seat, snagging what looked like a backpack from the copilot’s chair. The stranger and I sat completely still as Ernie eyed him warily.