Don't Fail Me Now

by Una LaMarche

  “Relax, everything’s going to be fine,” Tim says. He means the plane. As for everything else, that’s a big ellipsis with no end in sight. But I feel ready to take it one day at a time. We land in Baltimore at ten P.M., which means first it’s back home for a reunion with Mom and then back to school tomorrow to beg for makeup tests and extra-credit projects so I can finish out the semester without my grades tanking. After that it’s time to run for the border to ask Yvonne for my job back. I’ll need all the income I can get, since we’re now without a reliable mode of transportation—although Mr. Harper did mention he has an old Volvo from the mid-’80s rusting in his spare garage and that if Tim and I can get it running, I can have it. I told him it’s a deal, except I want to do it with Leah as my co-mechanic. Just the old two-long-lost-sister-princesses-fixing-a-car story, you know how it goes.

  The Harpers seem great so far. They bought us dinner at the airport and listened to (an abridged version of) our story and managed to be warm and open even when they were clearly pissed. They weren’t mad at any one of us individually, just understandably freaked out by the whole thing. Tim’s not allowed to drive without an escort until he graduates, and Tim and Leah are both grounded until their parents can devise what they called “a more original punishment.” But Tim and Leah didn’t even seem upset. When they all got reunited in front of the JetBlue ticket desk, everyone cried a little bit, even Cass. Tim says he didn’t, but I know what I saw.

  Up front, the flight attendant demonstrates how to use a seat cushion as a flotation device, and Cass taps me from across the aisle.

  “There’s a whole empty row behind us,” she says. “I say we stockpile them to make a raft.” I nod, and we discreetly fist-bump. That’s Devereaux thinking right there. That’s why we pull through.

  As the plane taxis away from the airport, all I can see is a lot of concrete and some far-off trees listing in the wind, as small as dandelion heads from here.

  “Not much of a view,” Tim says, seeing me stare. “But every airport looks the same, anyway.” Strip malls, airports, hotels—all trying to make me feel like I could be anywhere. Walking down the hallways at school, trying not to stand out, like I could be anyone. It worked for a while, but I don’t want that anymore. I want a place to belong. I finally want to land.

  “Excuse me, sweetie,” an older, kinder-faced flight attendant says, stopping in front of our row and grinning forcibly at Denny. “I’m gonna have to ask you to lock your tray table for me.”

  “But I have to finish my assignment,” Denny protests, and I do a double take. My brother has never once passed up an excuse to avoid homework. One of us usually has to sit with him and physically force him to focus.

  “Well, aren’t we the model student?” she says. “Don’t worry, you can pick up right where you left off once we’re in the air.” Denny begrudgingly slides his paper and pen into his lap as Tim helps him get the tray table folded.

  “What are you doing?” I ask once she moves on to her next victim.

  Denny holds up his airplane drawing and flips it over. On the back, he’s sketched out a copy of the family tree from the handout he showed me at the police station. Me, Cass, and Denny are the roots that anchor the tree, with our parents dangling perilously over our heads. I wonder if whoever designed the worksheet knows that it’s supposed to be the other way around.

  “Why didn’t you just use the one your teacher gave you?” I ask.

  “There weren’t enough branches,” Denny says matter-of-factly. “I had to fix it.” He points to a new line emerging from Buck’s branch, shooting over to Karen and then to Jeff, with lines for Tim and Leah curling down like improbable grape vines grafted onto a maple.

  “That’s perfect, meatball,” I say.

  “Mrs. M will probably give me a check-minus, though,” he frowns. “She doesn’t like it when we don’t follow directions.”

  “You know what?” I say, reaching across Tim’s lap to tussle Denny’s hair. “Who cares what she thinks?”

  “Yeah,” he grins. As I sit back upright, Tim catches my hand and holds on tight.

  “Listen,” he says to both of us. “Any minute now, we’re going to start to move really, really fast, and the plane will start to rattle, but that’s just because the pilot has to pick up as much speed as he can to give us momentum for takeoff. It’s normal.”

  “Mmm hmmm.” I press my spine hard against my seatback and take a deep breath. I know he’s just trying to help, but I wish Tim hadn’t told me that. I had almost forgotten about the whole leaving-the-ground thing. And while I’m familiar with the physics of flight, lift and thrust and drag and all that, it’s one thing to study it on a page in a textbook and another to actually be sitting in a four-hundred-ton machine about to wage a war with gravity. When there’s such a strong force pulling you down, it’s hard to imagine there could be an even greater one lifting you up. But it happens to millions of people every single day, so why not now? Why not me?

  “Flight attendants, please be seated for takeoff.”

  I look over at Cass, but she’s engrossed in conversation with her new best friend, Leah. It’s just as well. I don’t want to make her nervous. I sit still and try to ignore the adrenaline flooding my veins, telling every bone in my body to get up and bolt.

  “Are you okay?” Tim massages my hand with his thumb.

  “Define ‘okay.’”

  “Alive?”

  “For now.” I concentrate on taking slow lungsful of air, in through my nose and out through my mouth. I’ve heard that keeps your heart rate in check, but judging from my skyrocketing pulse, it’s not working yet.

  “Remember, once we get in the air, it’ll feel like we’re not moving,” he says.

  As the plane picks up speed, the overheard bins start to sway. “Uh-huh,” I say skeptically.

  “This is the worst part. It’ll be over in a minute. You’ll see.”

  “This. Is. Awesome,” Denny says, pressing his face against the window.

  Suddenly we really accelerate, and I feel like I’m sucked back against my seat, helpless and lightheaded.

  “I can’t do this,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  “I thought you could do anything,” Tim says.

  “I lied!” I say, almost laughing I’m so terrified. Everything’s shaking violently now—the seats, the trays, the wings, my faith. We must be going a hundred and fifty miles an hour, hurtling through space toward an uncertain landing. I feel like I’m going to faint.

  “Hey, I almost forgot, I owe you something,” Tim says. He leans over and takes my face in his hands and kisses me, long and deep, just as we lift off the ground, the g-force of the earth pulling us back as we fight, against all odds, to rise up.

  “Michelle?” He pulls back. “Michelle, open your eyes. It’s over.”

  Just do it, I tell myself. Don’t be scared. Just let go.

  “You can see the whole world from up here,” Cass marvels.

  “You’re missing it!” Denny cries.

  “Just breathe,” Tim says.

  And then my ears pop. The static breaks. I open my eyes.

  I’m on my way.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my wonderful editor, Jessica Almon, whose patience, humor, and creativity saved me many times throughout the writing process—and whose glasses I covet to a degree that is possibly not healthy. The entire staff at Razorbill, most especially Ben Schrank and Casey McIntyre, also earn my undying gratitude. Your enthusiasm, support, and incredible warmth mean the world to me, and unless you tell me to stop I will continue to profess my love awkwardly every time I see you in person. Anthony Elder designed a cover that surpassed my wildest dreams, so every time you look at the front of this book, you should give him an air high five.

  As always, I am indebted to my crack
erjack agent (and favorite coffee date) Brettne Bloom, who is my champion by every definition of the word, and who gently encourages me to occasionally pause my Broad City marathons to write words down on paper.

  Additional thanks go out to everyone who made the writing of this book less lonesome and/or scary: to the Hungry Ghost Coffee Bar and Café on Flatbush and 6th Avenue, whose delicious lattes and baked goods fueled many a writing session, and whose music never sucked; to the village of sitters—Willow Westwood, Phoebe Smith, Cailin Smith, my parents, and my sister Zoe—who took care of my child while I ran off to become the cliché that is the tortured writer pounding the aforementioned lattes in the aforementioned coffee shop; to PO1 Charles Horwitz of the Montgomery County Police Department and Ilana Harwayne-Gidansky, MD, who kindly offered their professional expertise regarding police procedure and hypoglycemia, respectively (if anything is factually inaccurate, it’s due to the creative license I took with their sage and patient counsel); and to my dear friends and family, who inexplicably continue to love, encourage, and feed me regardless of how disheveled and/or cranky I appear in their presence while on a deadline.

  Finally, as ever, I am grateful to my husband, Jeff, for his love and support—especially his fortitude in the face of the emotional hurricane that is being married to a perfectionistic writer—and to my son, Sam, who is quite simply the best person I know. In the immortal words of ’90s Canadian heartthrob Bryan Adams, everything I do, I do it for you.

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