by Holly Hood
“You know, you really should watch what you say, because certain things that come out of your mouth shouldn’t be,” I said, getting out of the truck.
“How is that offending you?” he said, amused by my sensitivity.
“Because think about it, Evan,” I said, heading toward the airport doors.
“Okay, I’m thinking, and I don’t get it,” he said, both bags strung over his shoulder.
“Never mind. I don’t see them yet. Let’s just sit down,” I said, feeling weird and moody.
“You’re not looking too happy,” he said, sitting next to me.
“Nerves,” I said, short and sweet, looking at the tons of people walking by us.
“It’s all in your head. Cheer up and have fun or this will be the last time I send you anywhere. And I know you don’t think it bothers me you’re leaving, but I will miss you,” he said, poking my arm, trying to get some sort of smile from me.
It wasn’t working.
I had this overwhelming fear this wasn’t right. That something was wrong. Like I shouldn’t be going anywhere without Evan there with me. I looked at Evan feeling more nervous; he didn’t seem to catch on.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I finally said.
“What are you talking about?” he questioned, looking through the crowd for my dad and Gray.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said, ready to pass out.
“Eve, relax!” he exclaimed.
“I don’t know, it’s just all feeling odd,” I said. I couldn’t shake the feeling.
“It’s probably odd because you don’t have the whole family with you. It’s a big deal. You’re going back to a place you last went to with your whole family, and you’re coming back there with only part of them,” he assured me.
My dad and Gray seem to appear out of the huge mess of people, they both looked rather amped. My dad had on a tropical shirt looking rather cheesy, like I already figured he would look. He shook Evan’s hand, patting him on the back, then embraced me.
“Are we ready to do this?” he asked me with a big smile.
Gray and Evan said their hello and Evan sighed before he lifted me off the ground in one of the tightest hugs I had felt from him yet. He kissed my cheek repeatedly, and then put me down.
“I love you,” he said, touching my chin.
I was taken aback because that wasn’t something either one of us had said before. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be letting you go right now,” he said with a smile.
“I love you too,” I said, waving goodbye to him.
Chapter 36
Silence is simple
“Have you ever cliff dived?” my brother asked me from across the aisle.
I was sitting next to no one, Gray and my dad together. The airplane was filled up besides the seat next to me. I was starting believe that was where my mother would have been.
“No, I never tried it before,” I said, pulling my sunglasses down so I could catch some sleep.
I looked out my window rather quickly, we weren’t off the ground yet but I still hated looking out those tiny windows.
“We should definitely try it, and scuba diving,” Gray said all excited.
I nodded, smiling as they went on chatting it up about how great the trip was going to be. All thanks to Evan, I thought. I missed him already, and I missed him even more now that he said he loved me. I knew he cared, but he was finally ready to use those words and that meant a great deal. I felt I loved him for some time, was just afraid to say it too soon. I sighed, thinking about his face and his crooked grin, his amazing eyes. His laidback nature, it was funny how fast you could miss someone.
I decided to use the airplane phone to call Ari; I knew she had a way to make me feel better. The plane rumbled as we lifted off the ground, I wasn’t even sure if I could be on the phone in flight, but I had to talk to her.
I dialed Ari turning away from Gray and my dad.
“Hello?” Ari asked, her voice sounding a little confused.
“It’s me, hey,” I said, feeling better already.
“Eve?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said again.
“Where are you?” she asked.
I was starting to get annoyed. “I’m on the plane heading to Jamaica, remember? We told you I was going with Gray and my dad?”
“I totally forgot. Eve?”
I looked at the phone thinking it was not working. “I’m here. What?”
“I’m just totally confused right now. I don’t understand at all,” she said, her voice getting lower and lower until I couldn’t make out much of what she saying.
Maybe it was reception, I thought.
“Ari, what do you mean confused?” I asked her. There was a long silence.
“I…don’t…you….what…happens… Eve…Please….sometimes…never….”
Bits and pieces came through the phone. I tried to make sense of it, but got nothing. The phone was dead; clearly, we were not in the right spot to be using phones anymore.
“No phones, Eve,” my dad said, putting a pillow behind his head.
I barely looked at him, nodding, setting the phone back. My heart was racing, trying to decipher what Ari meant. I couldn’t figure out why she said she was confused. This wasn’t making me feel any better, like I had planned it.
I laid back and finally dozed off.
When I awakened, things were the same, Gray and my dad were asleep, and everything was quiet.
“Excuse me?” I said loudly to gain the flight attendants attention.
The attendant looked at me with a big smile, her red hair pulled tightly in a side bun.
“Yeah?”
“Can I use the phone?” I asked.
She nodded. I grabbed the phone in a flash, dialing Evan this time.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Evan!” I said, almost in tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I just still feel really strange. I called Ari and I couldn’t really hear what she said, but she freaked me out even more. She told me she was confused,” I told him, looking at my Dad as he slept.
“Uh, I don’t know. If you heard bits and pieces, maybe it was nothing. You know how Ari is. You shouldn’t be on the phone, just relax. And remember,” he said.
“Remember what?”
“Remember that you are everything to me, and I meant what I said, I love you,” he said, sighing into the phone.
“I know you do, it’s not that. It’s just, I feel so weird.” I twirled a piece of hair around my finger in angst.
“I want you to know. I hope you do,” he said, sounding a bit off.
“Evan, why do you sound so sad? Were you lying to me when you said me leaving was no big deal?” I asked. Now I was the one trying to make him laugh.
“Stop it. I said don’t talk like that. I got to go. I love you.” He hung up the phone in a flash.
Now things were feeling even weirder.
I took a deep breath trying to will myself to believe that your thoughts weren’t always right. But I truly believed intuition at that very moment. Everyone else on the plane seemed to be content and fine, sleeping or reading. Some of them were watching the movie.
I knew enough to know that when you saw chaos of any sort, that usually meant trouble. And seeing the flight attendants whiz by to the cabin was not a good sign. I stared at the ceiling trying to not freak out and scream for my dad and Brother.
Just as I had a grip on my breathing, the plane shook violently for a quick instant, and then everything was still. This caused everyone to awaken and become aware of what was going on around him or her. Sheer panic slowly crept into the plane. My dad looked around to see what the deal was. He looked at me with a look of calm.
“I think we’re okay,” he said from his seat.
Gray looked a little less sure of the situation, looking a little pale. He didn’t speak, just closed his eyes, peering at us every minute or so. My
stomach was sick. I was the one person on the plane that truly knew what this all meant. It wasn’t an error or just one of those crazy things you speak of later when you’re on the ground.
“Attention everyone. The captain would like for all of us to stay calm and remain seated. Seatbelts on,” the flight attendant said.
Her hands were clutched to her stomach, which showed how bad she was feeling, even if her face wasn’t saying so.
My dad rushed to my side, Gray moving to my dad’s seat to get as close to us as he could. We all looked at each other with the same look on our faces. I think it was obvious what we were thinking in that moment.
“Let’s not panic,” my dad said low.
“I’m trying not to. It’s hard,” I said, staring at my dad, his face calming me down.
“There is no way that God would take us all no,” he said to himself, trying to calm down.
I listened to him babble on and on. He was certain that no matter what, life was all about God. He would save us because it was too cruel to leave my mother with all this to bear. I thought about this myself and thought, why would God care about just one person? And why would anyone think something like that right before they could die? I didn’t think it worked like that at all. It was like a roll call.
Gray closed his eyes, once again stating how he couldn’t be leaving now because he hadn’t even seen Lyric.
Although this was quite sad, it was yet another thing that never mattered when it was time to die.
“I love you both,” my dad said, sitting back in a state of disbelief.
Gray was silent.
“I love you guys, too. Let’s just hope for the best,” I said as the plane shook again.
Screams erupted in the plane. I closed my eyes, thinking about life and how I had learned so much over the summer. I learned that it didn’t matter how hard you screamed, it didn’t change the outcome. I learned that the unbelievable was real and that what everyone feared, which was death, was right under our noses, as Evan put it.
Seeing what death was like, I knew that there was no hope if it was my time to go. And I wasn’t sure if Evan would let me know this. It all made sense that he would send me away when it was time. If he sent me away, then that meant he didn’t have to endure it. Any one of the people on the plane could have been the man who was there to take my life.
My one true question after getting to know Evan was, did he love me enough to save me from my death? That I didn’t know. I liked to believe he loved me that much, enough to go against everything he was.
I thought maybe I was being stupid and it was nothing more than a crafty web he wove to get inside to take me out. Maybe he never loved me at all. And then this didn’t make much sense either, because he had told me he did for the first time when he was letting me go. But maybe it was exactly that, maybe he was letting me go.
Ari was confused on why I was there because she knew something more probably. And she had put faith in him as well to not kill me. It all made sense. What didn’t make sense was, if it was Gray or my dad, why he would put me through all this? So I knew it had to be me, and therefore, I was ready.
It was a rather well crafted plan if you thought about it. He filled my head with thoughts of peace and safety. He had me make up for all the regrets in my life, and then he sent me away with the ones I cared about the most. What could be more perfect than that?
I knew what was better than that. Anyone in my shoes knew what was better than this. The only thing I could do was hope all I was thinking was wrong. I was going to do the only thing I knew how and that was to put all my trust into Evan’s heart.
“Please Evan, find it in you to save us. I can’t lose anyone else,” I whispered repeatedly as the plane shook harder and harder.
“Please, Evan. If you love me, do this just once. Help us out, just once,” I said, gripping the seat as the plane jerked everyone around.
The screams were so loud it was deafening.
“Please!” I yelled as loud as everyone else did. “Do this for me! You said it yourself, you love me!” I screamed.
Chaos was running wild, death had arrived. I didn’t care to look at anyone or try to help, there was no helping. I gripped tight to my dad’s hand.
“I love you kid!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“I love you too!” I screamed back. “I love you Gray!” I yelled even louder.
I faintly heard Gray’s voice.
If, after life was over, you were asked one question about it what life lesson would you give?
My life lesson was simple. Believe with your heart, Fear is real, and no one ever is going to make it out by the skin of their teeth. Death may be scary, but there was one thing that death gave us, and that was blindness to not see it coming until it was too late. And now I believed in everything that I was told I was wrong to believe.
Read on for an excerpt from
Polar
b
y Holly Hood
Now Available on Amazon Kindle
Polar
Isn’t it funny? That was a saying that was heard a great deal, and it’s always a casual statement. It is almost amusing. Well, life is amusing, and sooner or later, you sit back and say that exact phrase.
Opening my eyes, I thought, isn’t it funny that after all I went through with Evan, he killed me like every other person he had before, as if I was no different? It was if I hadn’t even mattered to him at all. That was funny.
It was funny because, after all this time, I thought I was a person who wasn’t stupid enough to fall for someone’s lies and deceit, and I was. I was no different from anyone who I tried so hard to not be like.
“I don’t think so at all,” Marcus said.
I focused in on him, realizing that where I was, I would see him always now. So, even if I was dead, I guess I could say I had him to help me move on. Then I realized that he had spoken, and raised an eyebrow, looking at him.
“You don’t think what?” I said, feeling grumpy.
Dead was not a good look. I didn’t like dead. I was unfamiliar with it and I just plain didn’t feel like doing it now. But I figured I would amuse Marcus and play
along with his words.
“I don’t think you’re like everyone else, and you need to quit beating yourself up about it. I know you have it in you to look at everything for what it really is, so quit feeling so sorry for yourself,” he said. He looked pleased to be hurling his sarcasm at me.
“Now is not the time. I know you like to be cute and funny, but Marcus, it’s not working right now,” I said.
“I’m sorry, but what I want to say is, I know that you have it in you to do what’s right. So could you please pull it together for me and make this happen?”
“Make what happen?” I said, getting annoyed with riddles.
“Eve, just do what’s right. That’s what I always admired about you. You always do what’s right, not what is wanted. I think you got that from me,” He said, smiling at me.
I smiled at him, feeling peaceful. “Okay, Marcus. If that is going to make you happy, then I will,” I said, trying to get him to drop it.
Marcus seemed to disappear. I was a little confused on this seeing once you’re dead what was the need for all the eerie behavior anymore? It wasn’t as if I could be scared to death or something.
I looked at the ceiling, trying to feel… something. There was nothing to feel. I closed my eyes trying to drift to sleep, or whatever you would call it now.
Suddenly I was blinded by a bright light. Very funny, I thought, adjusting my vision again.
I was looking at the ceiling. This was a little odd because I had looked at it before I closed my eyes, but it hadn’t been so bright before.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” a Hispanic nurse said in a thick Spanish accent. Her long hair practically dangled in my face. Even in a ponytail it was super long.
I tried to focus but, everything was so blurry, it was hard to make sense of what was g
oing on. She seemed to poke and prod me, moving all over the room.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, my voice coming out hoarse.
“You woke up. Stay still,” she said, taking my wrist to check my pulse.
“I what?” I asked, touching my head with my free hand. I felt woozy and weak.
“You woke up,” she repeated, looking a little agitated with my confusion.
