by Sloane Tanen
“I told you I couldn’t fly a seaplane.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I couldn’t see a goddamn thing is what happened,” he said. “The water was choppy as hell. It was like trying to get a parade float off the sand.”
“Sshhhhh!” we all hushed him.
“Seaplanes?” he scoffed. “What a ridiculous idea.”
“Where’s the plane?” I asked.
“Which half?”
“Oh my God.”
“So Ned’s gonna know you messed with it?” Cisco asked.
Joe started hysterically laughing.
“Most likely,” he said, spitting something akin to tobacco out of his mouth.
“What happened?”
“Well, I managed to lift her up and level out, but then her nose hit the water hard and we doubled over.”
“And then?”
“Then the left wing snapped off.”
We gasped.
“And then,” Joe continued calmly, searching for the details like it was a joke he had heard years before but couldn’t remember how to word the punch line, “I managed to jump out before the fuselage rocketed back to the beach and flipped over.” He did a little hand gesture to mimic the rolling over of the plane.
“It was dramatic. I wish somebody had been there to see it. It could be worse. At least the cabin is docked, right? I mean, she’s actually right back where I started out from…only upside down now, with her pontoons in the air.”
“And wingless,” I added.
“And wingless,” he confirmed.
“So that plan of yours isn’t going to work after all, Francesca,” he said with satisfaction.
“What are you wearing?” Milan finally asked.
“A poncho from the first-aid kit. And here,” he said, throwing a bag filled with what looked like dog biscuits on the ground.
“What is it?”
“Dehydrated food. Jerky.”
“Oooh, jerky,” Chaz said clamoring for the bag.
“What happens when Ned sees his ruined plane?” Eve asked.
“He’ll be mad as hell,” Joe said.
“I just thought of something,” I said.
“Great,” Chaz said, tearing off a piece of beef jerky with his teeth. “Another nifty idea from Nancy Drew.”
“Maybe when you crashed Ned’s plane,” I continued, ignoring Chaz, “the black box sent a signal?”
“I don’t think sea planes have black boxes,” Joe answered.
“But it might have had one,” I said, ever the newly hatched optimist.
“Maybe. But the range is limited. Somebody would have to be looking for the plane to pick up on a signal. Nobody is looking for Ned’s plane.”
It was quiet for a minute.
“How do black boxes work?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Joe answered.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Chaz asked him scornfully.
“I mean, I don’t know,” Joe said. “I don’t know exactly how they work. Black boxes.”
“You don’t know how they work?” Chaz snapped again. “Maybe I’ll be a pilot and a novelist. Neither job seems to require a particularly large area of expertise.”
“Add acting to that list,” Milan laughed.
“Touché,” Chaz said, giving Milan a high five.
“Speak for yourself,” Eve jumped in. “The kind of acting we do,” she said, looking at Joe and Cisco, “isn’t easy. It takes years of training. Studying. Method.”
“Weren’t you like five years old when you made your first movie?” Milan asked.
“Three.”
“Right. And weren’t you a model before you became a Possum?” Milan asked Cisco jeeringly.
“Yeah, but I took classes.”
“Ooooh, classes,” Chaz mocked.
“Let’s not get at one another’s throats again, OK?” Joe interrupted.
“My only point,” Chaz continued, “is that none of us can do anything really useful. At least Francesca can cook. And I guess Milan can slaughter poultry.”
It was quiet for a few minutes before Eve cleared her throat to speak.
“This experience has been humbling. It’s almost like none of us exist without an audience.”
“Or people to boss around,” Milan added.
“Or deceive,” Jonah added thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” Cisco mused. “Or have sex with.”
“Hey!” Milan piped in.
“I mean, you know, having lots of people available to have sex with, no matter how I behaved,” he stammered. “Not that I want that now,” he added, looking at Milan lovingly. “I just got used to not having to work too hard for anything. You know, just showing up has always been enough.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt the psychological healing process,” I said, “but back to the box. Let’s go see if we can find it in the plane. Maybe we can do something with it?”
“Like decorate it?” Milan laughed.
“It’s better than sitting here all night,” Chaz said. “Let’s go. Maybe there’s more jerky…”
Flight of the Living Dead
It must have been six o’clock in the morning. The sun had just come up. Of course, we hadn’t found the black box. We did flip the plane right side up. It was hard work. Then we took turns eyeballing the interior, hoping the black box would appear on one of the little passenger seats like a mint on a hotel pillow. We didn’t even know where to look. Chaz was right. We were a useless bunch. It was a stupid idea.
Everyone but me was asleep. Joe was in the copilot’s seat with his mouth half open and a pool of saliva dripping out the side of his mouth. Milan was splayed out on the floor of the plane, while Eve was curled up in a ball in one of the passenger seats. Chaz was just outside the plane, buried in a foot of sand to ward off the cool night air. Only his arm and mosquito-bitten, domed head were poking out. Jonah was next to me, banked up against a pontoon and fast asleep on his belly. I looked at his delicate features with tenderness. His beautiful almond eyes were caked with pus. We all had some ferocious strain of pink eye to compliment the head lice. I felt itchy. I felt filthy. I felt hopeless. I felt like we were never going home.
I began to panic. The plane was ruined. What if Ned’s radio died and we were stuck here forever? What if nobody ever came for us? What if everyone just forgot we ever existed? God knows, the filthy, stinking, bug-ridden group next to me didn’t look like celebrities. I didn’t even know what the word meant anymore. We could have been any random group of survivors of a plane crash. Modern-day victims of a Herculaneum or Pompeii, nameless faces, frozen in time, buried in sand…waiting to be rediscovered and discussed in two thousand years. Maybe the island would become a tourist site where the curious could come trade theories on who we were and what we were doing here before buying a coffee and a postcard at the gift shop. I shivered, trying to shake off the vision. I almost jumped out of my skin when Jonah spoke. It was like the living dead.
“Did you hear that?” he mumbled, not moving.
“Hear what?” I asked, straining to hear anything but my racing heart beating in my skull.
“It sounded like a horn or something.”
I stood up and pried open my sticky eyelids to greet the vision ahead. It was real. I saw a huge ship in the distance. It was heading straight for us.
“Holy shit!” I screamed. “Wake up!”
Jonah sat up and wiped the sand out of his hair.
“Holy shit.”
Chaz was working his way out of the sand as Eve, Milan, and Joe wormed their way out the little plane door single file.
“What do we do?” Eve asked, waving her little, frantic hands over her head. “What if they don’t see us?”
“They’re heading straight this way,” Joe announced, looking serenely ahead like he was acting the part of a seasoned old sea captain. The rest of us started waving like lunatics. The ship sounded its horn in response.
“It sees us
!” Cisco yelled. “I think it’s coming for us!”
All of a sudden, we heard the blades of a helicopter. As the ship turned slightly south, I saw the miraculous. There must have been six boats and three helicopters seeming to appear out of thin air. We stared in disbelief as our five-day silence was punctured by the sounds of massive machinery.
“Francesca must have been right about the black box,” Joe smiled. Milan grabbed me by the waist and started twirling me around in circles.
As the helicopters got closer, we were able to see that the first one was the South African Red Cross, followed by a STAR chopper (not the magazine but the Specialized Trauma Air Rescue), AmbuStat, something called SAfm, Afrikaans, and, incredibly, one with a BBC logo. The last helicopter slowed overhead as individual paparazzi hung from the landing gear with cameras like little spiders hanging from a web.
“Look, it’s a helicopter just for Star magazine!” Milan sang.
“And the BBC!” Chaz yelled as he pointed above.
They were passing over us now, circling in search of a place to land. The boats were still a good mile off.
“They can’t land here,” Joe called out over the noise, shielding his eyes from the sandstorm the choppers were causing. “Run to the landing strip!” We were covering our eyes and ears as we headed up the beach, crouching down low like they do on TV.
“Is that guy wearing a People vest?” Eve asked, stopping in place as she strained to make out the logo on one of the newsmen.
“Yeah!” I screamed, grabbing her hand to pull her along. “C’mon.”
“And EW!” Milan hollered gleefully, running toward the cameras like a child to her mother.
Eve’s hand slipped through my fingers. Suddenly she was running in the opposite direction.
“Eve!” I shouted after her. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
She was running as fast as she could, which wasn’t all that fast in the sand.
I yelled to Cisco, who was directly in front of me, and pointed to Eve, who was running the other way.
“What’s she doing?” he asked.
I nodded, and he headed after her.
Just then the sound of a loudspeaker cut through the cacophony of horns and swirling blades.
“Jonah Baron, your Lord and Savior has not abandoned you.”
Jonah stopped short as a man from the Christian Examiner dangled overhead with a microphone. “God bless you, Jonah Baron. God loves you, Jonah Baron.”
Through the screen of sand I made out Jonah’s terrified face. All of a sudden he was running in the same direction as Eve. Joe turned around after him.
“Don’t, Jonah! Don’t!” I heard Joe screaming.
The helicopters hovered in confusion as Milan and Chaz ran to meet the press and as the others ran for cover. I stood in the middle, blinded by sand, confused, excited, not knowing where to go. I decided to follow Milan. (When in doubt, go with Milan.) She was guiding the People helicopter to the runway in a state of delirious ecstasy. Chaz was skipping behind her, waving his hands in the air. The boats had come in, and a fleet of officials, medics, journalists, and photographers were coming up behind us. I knew they were there to help, but I felt hunted and terrified as they screamed for us.
By the time we got to the landing strip, the Red Cross helicopter had just landed. Ned was standing there, a hundred yards away, his face twisted in a fit of rage.
For a few minutes, after the last helicopter landed, it was quiet. Milan and Chaz stood holding hands. I was standing a few feet behind them, frozen in fear.
Suddenly, I felt Joe’s hand on my shoulder. I flinched.
“It’s OK, Francesca,” he said, pushing me forward. “It’s OK.”
I felt a sort of release as I turned around and saw he was with Eve, Cisco, and Jonah. They looked serene. Cisco put his arm around Jonah.
“Are you ready?” he asked Jonah kindly.
Jonah nodded and stood tall.
“This is so cool,” Milan cooed, squeezing my shoulder.
“How bad do I look?” Eve whispered to me, girlishly tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. I leaned over and wiped a strip of crust off her eyelid.
“Not bad at all,” I lied. She smiled.
There was an eerie silence as the strangers stared at us like holy miracles. They searched our faces. “Is it really them?” we could almost hear them collectively thinking. They looked shocked and disbelieving. People were crying. Nobody thought we were still alive.
We waited for the circus to begin, but it was another moment until one lone figure came forward from the first helicopter. It was a girl, and she started running toward us.
“Francesca!” she cried. “Francesca!”
It was Jordan!
“She’s hot,” I heard Cisco say as I ran hard to meet her, and we locked in an embrace.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Your texts,” she cried. “They all came through the day before yesterday. Like two hundred pages at once. We thought you were dead, Francesca,” she sobbed. “I thought it was a joke, but it was your words. I knew it was you.”
“I don’t understand,” I cried, burying my head in her neck to hide my face from the photographers who had begun to surround us.
“We took my phone to the police, and they thought it was a prank!” she explained. “My mom finally convinced them it wasn’t a joke, and they traced the texts to Ned Harrison’s computer. Ned Harrison!”
“So when Ned charged my phone, the texts automatically sent to your phone?” I was stunned.
She nodded tearfully.
“All of them?” I asked in disbelief.
“Did you really make out with Cisco Parker?” she whispered as I saw my mom, Emily, and my dad come running toward us. My family.
I burst into tears.
“Well, did you?” she asked, laughing through her tears. I looked over Jordan’s shoulder and saw Cisco smiling at me as the paparazzi and news crews descended around them.
Epilogue
It Does Have Its Perks
There’s nothing like being presumed dead to make your family realize you’re the greatest thing to come along since YouTube. Emily can’t get enough of me since meeting Cisco Parker, and my mother was so grateful I was alive she seems to have had a complete personality makeover. “Worrying is like praying for something bad to happen,” is her latest saying. Now there’s an aphorism I can get behind. Maybe I should thank her new boyfriend, Larry, but I think it has more to do with my surviving five days in Africa with Milan Amberson.
As for my dad, well, it turns out, other than Jordan, he remains the only person I can really talk to. As I see it, if he can forgive my fictional lapse into patricide, I can forgive his falling in love with somebody named Chandra. She’s not my favorite person, but she makes a kick-ass cannoli, and it’s near impossible to hate the mother of a fat baby boy named Archie…with bright red hair!
Ned was right about one thing. I am a kind of celebrity now. I mean, I’m no Beyoncé, but once my phone diaries were released to the general public, I couldn’t even buy a bag of Skittles without being recognized. Going back to high school was out of the question. Thank God.
My mom and dad actually agreed on something for a change and allowed me to take the GED and accept the job offer at Seventeen magazine in New York. Courtney Gallagher thought I’d be an asset to the magazine, and, without tooting my own horn, she was right. I’ll be starting night classes at Columbia next fall, but in the meantime, I’m writing a monthly column and I’m in charge of all the celebrity bookings. Let’s just say I came to the job with a lot of connections, and, at the tender age of eighteen, I’m the youngest member on staff. I’ve even got an assistant. Toot, toot!
The thing is, correct as Ned may have been about my notoriety, he was wrong about my friends on the island blowing me off after our rescue. None of them did. Not even Chaz, who is now the manager for the biggest gay pop sensation since Elton John. Jonah’s al
bum, Coming Back from Coming Out, sold over twenty million copies worldwide, placing it just between Britney Spears’s Oops!...I Did It Again and The Best of Bob Marley. Not bad for a guy who was worried about his career. And Joe, who wisely managed to kill Hoggalicious Two from being released, was on hand when Jonah accepted his Grammy for Best Single, Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin, a duet he recorded with Milan Amberson. I guess she knew what she was talking about after all. Sometimes, it is all in the mix.
Eve went home to live with her parents in La Jolla for a year. She’s decided not to act anymore…at least for now. She wrote a script about a young intern who discovers his sense of self after a scandalous affair with an older female senator. The buzz has been great, and there’s talk that Cisco may play the lead.
As for Ned, well, things didn’t turn out well for him. His island, with the help of the Hollywood Historical Society (and backed by some people you know), will be the location for a new reality TV show about a boot camp for aspiring teen actors. For the price of a small luxury vehicle, spoiled hopefuls from all over the world are flown to Camp Hollywood Savage to reenact our experience for three days (no phones, prepared food, or bottled water) before beginning a rigorous four-week training with a crop of seasoned agents, acting coaches, and other industry insiders. A percentage of all proceeds go to The C. Parker Foundation, a program that builds schools for young women to raise literacy in Africa.
About the Author
Sloane Tanen is the author of eight books, including the bestselling Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens, Going for the Bronze, Hatched: The Pig Push from Pregnancy to Motherhood; the children’s titles Where is Coco Going, Coco All Year Round, C is for Coco, Coco Counts; and the young adult picture book Appetite for Detention. Sloane is a painter whose work has been exhibited in a number of shows and can be found in private and corporate collections. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and holds graduate degrees in literary theory from NYU and in art history from Columbia University. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and two sons.
