This is where we land and I’m home, right? This is where my bed is, yes? My books? My other coat? My other lab coat?
I wake up to the gentle whooshing of the rotor and we are still naked ice-cube babies in the sky. When I look forward, I picture the windscreen and the control panel, which Gustav is using every so often, pressing buttons and moving levers. But I can’t really see anything. It’s Saturday.
Ten minutes ago, I thought I hallucinated the whole helicopter. I could see the red. I could see the propellers above our head.
But now, nothing.
Just the three of us floating through the air in impossible positions. Patricia is still rolled up like an injured pill bug. Gustav is sitting upright with nothing on except his headset. He’s still shivering.
I say, “I just had a dream about four coffins. You weren’t in any of them.”
“That’s nice,” Gustav says. He actually means it. I think he’s relieved to not be in my coffin dream.
I go quiet.
I look back at my scar. It stays quiet.
“I have to tell you something,” Gustav says.
I nod.
“It’s something important,” he says.
“Okay.”
“I have two letters from the bush man. I got them about five months ago.”
“And?”
Gustav looks flustered. “And you know how I got them.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So,” I say. “So what?”
“You know what I did?”
“I think so.”
“I kissed him,” he says.
“What letters did he give you?”
“Does it matter?” Gustav asks.
“Yes.”
“A blue B and a black G. Both carved from wood.”
“I wonder what we could spell with all of our letters,” I say.
“Are you listening?” Gustav yells. “Are you listening to anything?”
“I don’t care who you’ve kissed before me. I only care who you kiss after.”
“But he’s a guy. What if? I mean, what if?”
“I love you,” I say. “I really don’t care if you love me back.”
“I do love you back. I’ve loved you since ninth grade in the cafeteria when you pulled out your dissection kit to eat lunch.”
I look down at my scar, which is still not speaking.
I stay quiet for five minutes. I know it’s five minutes because I count. Have you ever counted five minutes? It’s long when you count it. There have been 375,840 five-minutes since ninth grade in the cafeteria when I ate my faux chicken nuggets with my scalpel and my forceps.
“It was a pickup truck,” I say.
“It ran a stop sign and Pop didn’t see it,” I say.
“I only saw it when I looked over to tell her that my Twenty Questions answer started with a W,” I say. “I saw it coming straight for us.”
“What was her name?” Patricia asks from her pill bug position in the back.
“Yeah,” Gustav says.
“Her name?” I ask.
I look back at the scar.