Flight #116 Is Down Read online

  Heidi had become curiously resigned to her exile. She even thought of it that way: she was in another country and would someday go home.

  Two

  SATURDAY: 5:15 P.M.

  Kissing their mother good-bye made them feel guilty, so they hadn’t.

  Daniel, the older, was fifteen and still so consumed by anger it was difficult for him to face either parent. His mother should have behaved differently, that was all, and kept the marriage together. Daniel could not forgive Mom for allowing Dad to divorce her. As for Dad, he should not have played around with Linda. Dad certainly shouldn’t be marrying the woman. Daniel could not imagine calling Linda “Mother.” He couldn’t imagine calling her anything except four-letter words, all of which he had practiced on Linda in the past.

  But this was a wedding. You couldn’t say things like that at weddings. And Linda’s family would be there; she had a huge family. Dad made them sound like the best family in the world, ignoring the fact that up until two years ago, Dad, Daniel, Tuck, and Mom had been the best family in the world. Daniel was going to have to be polite at this wedding, an unimaginable thing, but he had promised both his grandmothers.

  Politeness rots, thought Daniel.

  Daniel was rather hoping for a high set of stone stairs down which to throw Linda just prior to the wedding vows.

  He looked out the plane window. His brother, of course, had the window seat. If there was anything to see, Daniel could not see it. A whole country slipping by beneath him, and he didn’t even have a window seat.

  His brother, Tucker, was barely thirteen. Tuck was no use to anybody at any time and worse now. Tuck had no skills at all, no visible personality, no nothing going for him. Daniel didn’t even like Tuck.

  He used to like Tuck. Two years ago, when they were a family, Tuck had been a person. Now he was thirteen; divorce had made Tuck worse than bat urine. Daniel supposed some things could not be blamed on the divorce, such as war and inflation, but other than that, Daniel held his mother, father, and this Linda creep one hundred percent responsible.

  “Maybe you’re failing English because you didn’t read the assignments,” his father said a few weeks ago on the phone.

  “No,” said Daniel implacably, “it’s because I’m under such stress since my family collapsed. I’m going to two counselors now, Dad.” This was half true: he was going, but he wasn’t talking. They were nerdballs; Daniel could not imagine telling these people how to make ice cubes, let alone exposing his heart to them.

  His father heaved a huge sigh. Daniel loved that sigh. He figured enough of those sighs and his father would come home.

  But no; his father was marrying Linda.

  Linda would probably wear some floor-length white gown and have ten bridesmaids dressed in vegetable yellow, and a church full of smelly flowers, and all these relatives who would coo at the sight of Dad’s handsome sons. Daniel wished he were six, because a six-year-old could puke on demand, ruin everybody’s clothes, and get away with it, but a fifteen-year-old had to be pleasant.

  Pleasant. What a disgusting thought.

  It was enough to make him hope the plane crashed. That would delay the old wedding a few hours.

  Or better yet, somebody should die. Dad wouldn’t get married if his son had to be buried because of going to Dad’s wedding. That would ruin Dad’s life pretty well.

  Daniel decided it would be better for Tuck to die than him, because Tuck was virtually dead anyway, with that personality.

  Saturday: 5:17 P.M.

  Teddie sat very still. This was only her second plane flight. She was not worried about the plane staying in the air, but she was worried that when it came down, Mommy and Daddy might not be at the airport to meet her. Gramma and Poppy had insisted that Mommy and Daddy would be there. “But what if they’re not?” Teddie asked.

  “Then you stay with the airline hostess until they come.”

  “But what if that’s a year?”

  “It won’t be a year, Teddie. Ten minutes if they can’t find a parking space.”

  “But what if they never find a parking space?”

  “Then Daddy will keep driving in circles while Mommy runs in to get you.”

  “But what if Mommy gets hit by a car and nobody ever comes for me?”

  “That won’t happen,” said Gramma. “Now, stop worrying, Teddie. You’re a big girl. Big girls fly by themselves across the country all the time. You just look out the window and have a good trip.”

  “But what if I get hungry?”

  “Then the flight attendant will bring you a snack.”

  “But what if she can’t tell I’m hungry?”

  “Then you flag her down and ask her to bring you something.”

  “But I don’t have a flag.”

  Poppy said she could use her hand. Teddie didn’t want to stick her hand out in the aisle. She wanted it safely in her lap, around Bear. Bear was exceptionally soft; his stuffing could squash down into almost nothing if you really wanted to cram him into a small space, and if you didn’t, Bear would burst out in cuddly white softness and fill up your arms.

  “What if I have to make a phone call?” said Teddy.

  “We put a card in your pocket, honey, you know that. It has our phone number and Mommy and Daddy’s phone number.”

  “But what if I don’t have money for the phone?”

  “Then you ask the flight attendant to help you.”

  “But what if she’s busy?”

  “You don’t need money, anyway,” said Poppy. “That bottom number on the card, that’s the credit card number; you tell the telephone operator that number.”

  “It’s too big,” said Teddie. “What if I get the numbers wrong?”

  Gramma and Poppy came up with a quarter, which they taped to Teddie’s palm with two Mickey Mouse Band-Aids. The quarter was warm now, and she could feel its roundness against her palm. If she had to make a phone call she could do it without using all those numbers. Teddie was not fond of numbers. She wasn’t fond of letters, either.

  She had expected she would learn to read the first day of kindergarten, and she was depressed that she had been in kindergarten forever and ever and ever, and still she could not read. It seemed so unfair that in order to read books like grown-ups, you had to know all those letters.

  Everybody else on the plane had read a plastic card in the pocket attached to the seat in front. Teddie pulled hers out and studied the pictures. There were ways to get out of the airplane by sliding down little chutes. Teddie frowned at the pictures. It looked as if she would have to let go of Bear to do that. Teddie resolved to take the regular way out. She wasn’t doing anything if she couldn’t do it with Bear.

  Saturday: 5:20 P.M.

  Darienne hated waiting.

  She had had to wait in line to check her luggage and wait in line to board the plane, and now she had to wait in the aisle of the plane while old ladies wondered dimly where seat 37B was (“Right there,” said Darienne sharply) and overweight middle-aged men stopped to wriggle out of too-small overcoats before sitting down.

  When, finally, she had gotten into her seat, she was next to some little girl clutching a teddy bear. Darienne could not believe it, but the girl’s name was Teddie and the bear’s name was Bear.

  A family strong in imagination, Darienne thought. Probably have a dog named Dog.

  Darienne had gotten the last available magazine, which turned out to be Sports Illustrated. Darienne despised sports. Anything involving sweat made her ill. Across the aisle from her, an obese woman in a poorly fitting corduroy suit that looked as if she had gotten it at a garage sale had Glamour. “Will you please switch magazines with me?” asked Darienne, taking the edge of the woman’s Glamour.

  “I haven’t even opened it yet,” the woman said. (As if reading Glamour was going to help her any.)

  Then the woman left her magazine unopened on her lap, just to be obnoxious.

  The plane, of course, had been late taking off.
/>   Darienne wanted to scream.

  She had a connection to make, and there was only an hour and ten minutes between flights. If they screwed up, and she missed her flight to London, she would commit several homicides. She hated people who did not have their act together.

  “Why is the plane late?” she asked the flight attendant. The woman was old; she should have retired twenty years ago. Betsey! said her name plate.

  “We’re stacked up,” Betsey! said, smiling widely as if being stacked up made Betsey! happy. “I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing we can do.”

  Darienne pointed out the necessity of taking off on time, explaining that she was going to London for the week, but the hostess concentrated on giving the little Teddie creep a special Flight Pin, and a special Flight Fun Kit, and a special Before Take Off snack.

  Teddie, thought Darienne. One of those unisex, all-purpose names for when you can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. An It.

  Teddie was such a dweeb, it actually enjoyed breaking through the plastic wrap to find out what colors the four enclosed crayons were. “Oh, red!” it exclaimed, as if red were the whole reason for being on the plane to start with. “Would you color with me?” it asked Darienne.

  I can’t stand this, Darienne thought. “Miss!” she called sharply.

  The flight attendant ignored her.

  Darienne grabbed the woman’s little military jacket and jerked on it. “Miss, I want to switch seats.”

  Betsey! said the plane was full.

  “I don’t like children,” Darienne said.

  Teddie wrapped its geeky arms around its geeky stuffed animal, a squishy thing of the sort that crowded second-rate gift shops.

  Betsey! said she was sure that in the course of the flight, the two of them would become friends. She said maybe Darienne could show Teddie how to trace her hand with the crayon and make a pretty picture for Teddie to give Mommy and Daddy when they met Teddie at the airport. Betsey! beamed at Teddie, glared at Darienne, and moved on.

  A baby several rows behind Darienne began whining: revving its little lung motors and changing gears into a high-pitched shriek. Darienne closed her eyes. Was the whole flight going to be like this? What had happened to the olden days, when only civilized people could afford to fly? Why couldn’t people with screaming babies take the bus?

  Darienne pulled out a paperback she had just bought in the airport book shop, the newest by her favorite author: a fat book she could trust to be packed with sex, scandal, and slime. Four pages along, she realized this was not the newest title; it was the oldest, reissued; she had read this stupid book years before. They had ripped her off, putting it on the shelf as if it were new.

  I’m stuck on a late plane next to a wimpy little kid. I’m surrounded by fat old people who won’t share their magazines, babies that scream, rude hostesses, and I’ve already read the book I brought on board.

  Darienne baked in her own hostility. The plane was an oven, cooking her; she was a custard, she would set, and become solid resentment.

  Saturday: 5:25 P.M.

  Carly hung onto the armrests as the plane took off, lifting safely into the sky. When the plane lurched, she knew they were going to crash. Prayer expanded in her brain like an egg broken in a skillet, and then the plane evened out.

  Nothing was wrong.

  Nobody else so much as twitched.

  She gave a silly little giggle, and her seat partner, a pleasant-looking businessman older than her parents, smiled understandingly without actually looking at her. He had a laptop computer on which he was busily working. Carly thought it was pretty clever that he could be friendly without using syllables or eye contact.

  It would be nice, thought Carly, if there were an incredibly handsome young man on this plane. The boy would develop a crush on her and be so in love that by the end of the flight he would come home with her, stay with her forever, meet her family, woo her. She loved that word “woo.” So nineteenth century. So courteous.

  Carly studied the passengers. Babies, kids, families, business people, and a few of those weirdos you saw only when traveling: people with impossible clothes, crazy eyes, or peculiarly shaped bodies.

  No cute guys.

  What else was new?

  The plane tilted. She had a momentary view of dwindling parking lots and housetops, and then there was only sky, which was blue and thin.

  Carly had the obligatory worries about plane crashes. She considered the odds (one in two million; she’d looked it up.)

  Plane-crash worry was unique. You couldn’t do anything. It wasn’t like the past, about which Carly had said to herself a million times, If I’d done this, if I’d said this, if I’d been a better person, if, if, if …

  No, if the plane crashed, it was Their Fault. Carly didn’t have to say, Listen, I’m sorry, I know I should have done ten hundred things differently.

  Carly much preferred problems that were somebody else’s fault. That way she could shake her head and sigh, the way she did for acid rain and inner-city warfare, but she didn’t actually have to see where she’d gone wrong and wonder if she’d ever go right again.

  I’m going home, Carly’s heart sang, very country and western, with twangs and tunes, I’m going home, to say I’m sorry.

  You haven’t said you’re sorry yet, she reminded herself. They might not care how sorry you are. They might not even meet the plane.

  She shivered slightly. She imagined the airport. Would Shirl be there? Would Mom and Dad? Would they hold out their arms? When she said I’m sorry, would they whisper, It doesn’t matter, we love you?

  Or would she stand in the terminal, surrounded by chairs bolted to the floor, while travelers broke around her like tide over a sandbar, and be alone? Would she have to take a bus to the house? What if they didn’t let her in? What if—

  I have only one thing to offer, thought Carly. I really am sorry. I have to believe that that matters to them.

  Actually, she did have something else to offer.

  She had knit her twin a sweater: cable stitches; quite complex. It looked pretty darn good. Carly had enjoyed knitting it. Of course she had started the sweater for herself, just as she had started everything for herself last year; last year Carly had not cared about a single person on earth except herself. She had chosen a heathery wool—rich, rusty purple. She and her twin were fair and looked ill in pastels but fragile and beautiful in dark, intense colors. Shirl would love the color, but Shirl might still be so mad that she’d never wear it, or would trash it, or give it away.

  Not much of a peace offering. Considering what Carly had done.

  Carly had not packed the sweater in her luggage but wrapped it in sparkly tissue and tucked it into a clear plastic bag. It lay under the seat in front. She smiled down at the shiny package.

  The timelessness of flight droned around her; the rituals of ordering a soda, putting down the little white tray on which to set her soda, watching the safety demonstration video, scanning the flight magazine in the pouch—all this was correct. It was right and just that she should have these few hours aloft; literally above her problems and the people she had to face.

  She was amazed at her contentment. The year of vicious rebellion seemed as distant as the miles they covered.

  When the flight attendant brought the meal, Carly beamed at her. Betsey! said the name tag. Carly loved that exclamation point. Betsey! looked like the kind of woman who turned everything into an exclamation point. I’d like to be like that, thought Carly. Maybe I could do this when I grow up.

  Carly laughed at herself. She was a little behind on the growing-up scale. A little behind on the educational scale, too.

  But I’ll catch up, thought Carly. She liked the way Betsey! had cut her hair, too: a thick, buoyant cut that looked somehow fluffy and long and yet was really quite short and easy to care for. Carly touched her own shoulder-length hair and thought, Yes. I’m going to cut it. Layers. I’m going to look suburban again, and flight attendant-ish, an
d have it all together.

  How pretty the tray was, with its little dessert sparkling cinnamon on top, its carrots bright orange, and its gravy rich brown. “Lovely,” Carly told Betsey! although usually she did not care for airline food.

  Carly laughed at herself and then tucked her smile back in, to be a rational, sober copy of the rest of the passengers.

  What more beautiful words exist, thought Carly Foyle, than going home?

  Three

  SATURDAY: 5:30 P.M.

  Laura and Ty had been in the last EMT training class. All one hundred and ninety hours of training had been fascinating. All necessary. Failure to pass the state test was rare, not because the test was simple, but because if you were motivated to start and to stay, you were motivated to learn the techniques and get them right.

  Mr. Farquhar was the chief instructor. He was patient and funny and always made you feel special for making the effort at all. “Remember, kids,” he would say, “we’ve got a town full of rich people, estate people, summer people, and they expect to be rescued. They never expect to do the rescuing. We don’t get volunteers from that quarter.”

  There were certainly no rich people in the training sessions, nor had Laura come across any on the crew. It was as blue collar as changing tires or bagging groceries.

  She had wondered why. A lot of the wealthy townspeople were very community oriented; always serving on this board or that, sponsoring this fund-raiser or that. Mr. Farquhar summed it up with a shrug of his eyebrows. “They don’t like to get their hands dirty,” he said, “and this is a dirty job. People vomit on you and bleed on you. Their houses or their bodies smell bad. You’ll step in car oil and broken glass.”

  Laura had fallen mildly in love with Patrick, who assisted his father in the instruction. Everybody had to take turns being victim and being rescuer. Laura wanted to be Patrick’s victim, but of course somebody else got Patrick. Laura ended up, time after time, with Ty Maronn.

  Just because you both wanted to be ambulance volunteers didn’t mean you had anything else in common.