The Last Flight

by Julie Clark

She settled in front of her laptop, pulling up the Singaporean bank log-in page, and entered her account information by memory. She was diligent about checking her balances, watching the number steadily increase over the past twelve years, going from five figures to six figures to a comfortable seven. The financial district in San Francisco was filled with handsome men who knew how to bend the law to suit their purposes, and it had been easy to find a tax attorney who was willing to set up a fake LLC, who knew which banks abroad would look the other way and not ask too many questions, and who could help her funnel her illegal income somewhere safe.

  At some point, she was going to have to stop. No one could do this forever. And when that time came, she’d buy a plane ticket to somewhere far away and simply disappear. She’d leave everything behind. The house. Her things. Her clothes. Dex and Fish. She’d shed this life like an old skin, emerging newer. Better. She’d done it before, and she would do it again.

  * * *

  When the pills were ready, she popped them from their molds and into separate bags. She wrapped the ones for Dex in blue paper, tied a ribbon around them, and drove to the park in North Berkeley where they were supposed to meet. She’d learned over the years how to be invisible. How to slip between the layers of the outside world, just a woman on a walk or meeting a friend in the park with a beautifully wrapped present. This wasn’t a hard job, if you were smart. And Eva had always been smarter than most.

  She found him sitting at a picnic table overlooking a small, dingy play area. Young kids were scattered across the equipment, each minded by a parent or nanny. Eva paused, still outside of Dex’s line of sight, and watched the kids. That might have been her, if her mother had been a different person. Maybe she would have brought Eva to a park like this to blow off steam after school or to kill a few hours on a weekend. Over the years, Eva had searched her memory for an image, any memory at all from the short time she lived with her birth family, but her first two years were blank.

  As a child, Eva had imagined them so many times and in so many ways, the images almost seemed like real memories. Her mother, with long blond hair, looking over her shoulder at Eva, laughing. Her grandparents, old and frail, worried about their wild daughter, scraping their pennies together to pay for another trip to rehab. A quiet family with a big problem. She tried to feel something for them, but she felt removed, like an unplugged lamp. There was no power behind it. No connection. No light.

  But mothers and daughters always caught Eva’s eye, snagging her attention like a sharp fingernail, scraping her in places that should have healed over long ago.

  She knew only two things about her mother: her name was Rachel Ann James, and she had been an addict. The information had arrived unexpectedly in a letter from Sister Bernadette in Eva’s sophomore year of college. The page had been filled with her precise cursive, so familiar it had lifted her up and carried her back in time to the girl she’d once been.

  It had felt like an intrusion, the answers to questions she’d long since given up asking, suddenly landing in her mailbox. Just when she was beginning to feel like she might be able to rise above who she’d always been.

  Eva had no idea where that letter was now. Tossed into a box or buried in a drawer. It was easier to pretend that part of her life had never existed, just a few short miles away in San Francisco, that she had instead emerged, fully formed, the day she started at Berkeley.

  * * *

  She tore her eyes away from the kids and walked the final few yards to where Dex sat.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, handing him the package of pills.

  He smiled and tucked it inside his coat. “You shouldn’t have.”

  She sat next to him on the bench, and together they watched the kids play—jumping from the slide, chasing each other around the swings—always lingering for a little while, just two friends enjoying the sunshine. Dex’s mantra so many years ago now their routine—You only look like a drug dealer if you behave like one.

  “I did my first solo deal at this park,” Eva said, pointing toward the parking lot. “When I got here, there were two police cars parked at the curb, the officers standing next to them, as if they were waiting for me.”

  Dex turned to face her. “What did you do?”

  Eva thought back to that day, how scared she’d been, how her pulse had raced and her breath shortened when she’d seen them, in full uniform, all guns and billy clubs and shiny badges. “I remembered what you told me, about how I had to walk with confidence, how I had to keep my eyes straight ahead and not hesitate.”

  Eva remembered passing the officers, meeting their eyes for a fleeting second and smiling through the fear, before walking toward the playground, where a third-year law student was supposed to meet her. “I imagined I was someone who worked in a windowless office, coming here to get a little sunshine and fresh air on my lunch break.”

  “The advantages of being a woman.”

  Eva didn’t feel like it was much of an advantage, but she knew what he meant. People who looked like her didn’t make or sell drugs. They were teachers or bank tellers. They were someone’s nanny or mother. She remembered the moment when she handed over the drugs and pocketed her first two hundred dollars, how awkward it was. She had no finesse, the entire transaction silent and stilted. She remembered walking away and thinking, It’s done. I’m a drug dealer. And feeling like the person she was only just starting to become had died.

  But she’d gotten over it. Embraced what her life had become. A part of her was set free—all those years of conforming to the expectations of others. She’d been told that life was a single track, carrying you forward. If you worked hard, good things happened. But she’d always known it was more like a pinball, careening and racing. The thrill was in the unexpected. In the freedom to create her own destiny. Her life had turned to shit, and yet she’d made something out of it. That was fucking something.

  Dex interrupted her thoughts. “I sometimes regret getting you into this. I thought I was helping, but…” He trailed off.

  Eva picked a splinter from the table and held it between her fingers, studying the wood before dropping it to the ground. “I’m happy,” she said. “I have no complaints.”

  And it was mostly true. She looked at Dex, the one who had stepped into the wreckage of her life and pulled her out. It had been Wade Roberts’s idea to make drugs in the chemistry lab her junior year of college. But Eva had been the one with the skills. The one who said yes when she should have said no.

  She tried hard not to think of that day in the dean’s office, of the way Wade had slipped past everything and landed back in his charmed life, throwing touchdowns and luring girls too stupid to know better into doing things they shouldn’t.

  After they’d escorted her from the building, after she’d packed her bags and turned in her dorm key, panic had swept through her, deep and immobilizing. She had no one to turn to, nowhere to go. And then Dex appeared, sliding up next to her as she stood on the sidewalk outside her dorm, the same way she’d slipped alongside Brett that morning.

  At the time, she only knew Dex as someone who hung around Wade and his friends, dark hair and startling gray eyes. He wasn’t a student, and Eva could never figure out how he fit in. Like her, he rarely spoke, but he watched everything.

  “I heard about what happened,” he’d said. “I’m sorry.”

  She looked away, ashamed at how naive she’d been. How easily Wade had manipulated her. And how he’d gotten off and she’d gotten expelled.

  Dex looked over her shoulder at some unseen object and spoke. “Look, it’s a shitty situation. But I think I can help you.”

  She shoved her hands into her pockets against the cool fall night. “I doubt that.”

  “You have a skill that I think can benefit both of us.”

  She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “The drugs you m
ade were great. I know a guy who can set you up with the equipment and the supplies to keep making them. His chemist is leaving the business, and he needs someone immediately. It’s a great opportunity, if you want it. Totally safe. You make the drugs, he’ll let you keep half to sell yourself. You can make more than five thousand dollars a week.” Dex laughed, a bitter sound puffing into the air around them. “A school like this always has a need for uppers. Little pills that will get these kids through the next test, the next class, whatever.” He gestured toward a group of students passing them on their way to the next bar or party, already drunk, laughing and in love with themselves. “They’re not like you or me. They take Daddy’s money, or the donor’s money, and think nothing can touch them.”

  He looked into Eva’s eyes, and she felt a flicker of hope. Dex was throwing her a lifeline, and she’d be stupid not to take it. “How?” she asked.

  “I have a place near here,” he said, “with a spare room you can crash in for a while. I help you, you help me.”

  “How would I be helping you?”

  “You’re exactly the kind of person my boss is looking for. Smart, and off everyone’s radar.”

  Eva wanted to say no, but she was broke. She had no place to live. No skills with which to get a job. She imagined herself slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder and heading down to Telegraph Avenue, positioning herself among the other panhandlers, begging for money. Or returning to St. Joseph’s, the weight of Sister Bernadette’s disappointment, Sister Catherine’s curt nod, as if she’d always known Eva would turn out like her mother.

  Eva had always been a survivor. But it was easy to be fearless when you’d already lost everything. “Tell me what I have to do.”

  * * *

  Dex’s voice pulled her back to the present. “A bunch of us are going into the city tonight to hear this new band, Arena, play. Come with us.”

  Eva shot him a sideways glance. “Pass.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll buy you Diet Cokes all night long. You need to get out more.”

  She studied the way his stubble was beginning to turn gray near his jawline. The way the ends of his hair curled up near his collar. She sometimes had to remind herself that Dex was her handler, not her friend. This was his attempt to keep an eye on her, not give her a fun night out. “I get out plenty,” she said.

  “Really?” he pressed. “When? With who?”

  “Whom,” she corrected.

  Dex gave a soft chuckle. “Don’t distract me with a grammar lesson, Professor.” He nudged her arm. “You need a social life. You’ve been doing this long enough to know that you don’t have to hide from the world. You’re allowed to have friends.”

  Eva watched a mother sitting under a tree with her son, reading a book. “I’d spend all my time trying to hide things from them. Trust me. This is easier.”

  But it was also what she preferred. She never had to explain anything, or answer the get-to-know-you questions that people always asked. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to college? What do you do now?

  “Is it easier, though?” Dex didn’t look convinced. “What’s that saying about work?”

  “I never met a dollar I didn’t like?”

  Dex grinned. “No, the one about all work and no play.”

  “All work and no play makes Eva a rich girl,” she finished. When he didn’t laugh, she said, “Thanks for worrying about me. But really, I’m fine.” She pulled her coat tighter. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting that new client in a half hour, and then I’m working a shift at the restaurant.”

  For years, Eva had worked two shifts a week at DuPree’s, an upscale steak and seafood restaurant in downtown Berkeley. The tips were great, and it allowed Eva to pay taxes, which kept her off the IRS’s radar.

  “I don’t know why you bother with the charade,” Dex said. “You don’t need the money.”

  “The devil is in the details.” Eva rose from the bench. “Have fun tonight. Don’t do any drugs.”

  As she walked away, Eva glanced again at the playground. A small girl was standing at the top of the slide, frozen, fear plastered across her face. As tears began to fall, her cry grew into a loud wail that sent her mother running to help her. Eva watched the woman lift the little girl from the slide and carry her back to the bench where she’d been sitting, kissing the top of her daughter’s head as she walked.

  The girl’s cries echoed in Eva’s mind long after she closed her car door and drove away.

  Claire

  Wednesday, February 23

  I wake early and let my body and mind adjust to my new surroundings. My first full day of freedom. My head feels foggy, desperate for caffeine. But when I rummage around in Eva’s kitchen, I can’t find a coffee maker or coffee of any kind, and Diet Coke is not going to cut it. My stomach gurgles, reminding me I also need more than just crackers to eat, so I go upstairs to use the bathroom and grab Eva’s purse, again tucking my hair under the NYU baseball cap.

  Back downstairs, I stand in front of the mirror that hangs on the living room wall, my reflection staring back at me, blotched from a restless night of sleep. I’m still too much myself, recognizable to anyone who might be looking for me. But no one is looking. The thought slices through me, a brilliant flash of opportunity, impossible to ignore.

  The street is dark and silent, the sound of my steps bouncing against the dark houses and echoing back to me, until I hit the edge of campus. On the corner is a coffee shop, lights on, a young woman moving behind the counter, making coffee and setting pastries into the display case. I watch her from the safety of the shadowed sidewalk, weighing my need for caffeine and food against the risk of someone recognizing my face from the news.

  But my stomach growls again, pushing me through the doors. Eclectic music swirls around the space, something Eastern and meditative. The smell of roasted coffee travels straight through me, and I inhale, savoring it.

  “Morning,” the barista says. Her long dreadlocks are held back with a colorful scarf, and her smile is bright. “What can I get you?”

  “Large drip coffee, room for cream, and a ham and cheese croissant if you have one. To go please.”

  “You got it.”

  As she begins making my drink, I look around. Outlets dot the walls, and I imagine the place later in the morning, crowded with students studying and professors grading. As the barista finishes up my order, my eyes are drawn toward a stack of newspapers. San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune. The headlines are hard to avoid.

  “The Fate of Flight 477” reads the Tribune.

  “Crash of Flight 477 Leaves No Survivors and a Lot of Heartache” reads the Chronicle. Luckily, the editors have decided to go with action shots of the wreckage and not human-interest stories that would surely put my face on the front page. I hesitate for a split second, before sliding them both on the counter along with a twenty-dollar bill.

  The barista sets my drink and a bag with my croissant next to them and hands me my change. “Sad, isn’t it?”

  I nod, unable to meet her eyes from under the brim of my cap, and shove the change in my pocket. Tucking the papers beneath my arm, I push out onto the dark street again.

  I cross the empty road and follow a sidewalk that leads me into the center of campus. Beautiful redwoods tower over me, the sidewalk dotted with lamps still illuminated, casting pools of light beneath them. I follow a path through a thick stand of trees and emerge onto a wide expanse of grass leading down toward an enormous stone building. I settle on a bench and sip my coffee, letting it heat me from inside out. The place is deserted, though in a few hours it will probably be crowded with students, making their way across campus to morning classes or study halls. I open the bag and take a bite of my croissant, my mouth aching from the rich flavors. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I’ve had anything substantive to eat, and it’s been years
since I’ve had anything as heavy as a ham and cheese croissant. I finish it quickly, then crumple the bag in my fist.

  The birds in the trees around me begin to wake up, soft at first, but growing louder as light creeps over the hills to the east. Behind me, a street cleaner makes its way up the empty road, while overhead, a plane flies, its lights blinking. I think about the people on board, no different than the ones on Flight 477, who got on a plane thinking they’d get off at their destination, a little tired, a little wrinkled, but no different than taking the subway from point A to point B, trusting they’ll arrive where they’re supposed to.

  The plane passes behind the trees, and I study the buildings that surround me and think about my own years at Vassar. My mother had been so proud of me, the first of our family to go to college. Violet had sobbed when I left, holding on to me so tight my mother had to pry her arms from around my waist.

  I’d been ten when Violet was born, the product of a short and volatile relationship with a man who left town shortly after my mother told him she was pregnant. I was relieved, and I think my mother was too. She had a talent for finding unsuitable men whose only skill was their unreliability, like my own father, who disappeared when I was four. I got the better end of the deal, she’d always say. My mother never seemed to think we needed anyone but the three of us. But I always wished she had found someone to share the burden, to make us feel more like the families I read about in books and saw on TV. I knew she was lonely and often worried about money, exhausted from working two jobs and doing everything on her own.

  And so I tried to make things easier for her. I was a hands-on sister from day one, feeding Violet, changing her diapers, carrying her for hours when she fussed. I watched her while our mother worked, taught her how to play Monopoly and how to tie her shoes. Leaving home was the hardest thing I ever did, but I needed to see who I might be, apart from a dutiful daughter and devoted sister. My high school years had been rough, and I was eager to reinvent myself as someone new, to build the life for myself I’d always dreamed of. I feel the weight now, the cost of wandering too far away from home. Of wanting too much.