The airport was only a few minutes away. The boom of the airplanes soaring over our neighborhood constantly reminded us of that. Josh and his friends were talking and laughing most of the way toward the airport, but I couldn’t hear much because of the wind blowing in my ears. We were driving down Highway 5, and I could hear the deafening sound of the planes coming in and taking off. I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was that it was supposed to be a rush, and I was psyched.
Josh pulled into a wooded area and I was barely able to make out the sign that said “Fort Snelling State Park.” I was glad to be slowing down. The jerkiness of the car was making me feel queasy.
“Hey, is this Fort Snelling?” I asked.
“Yeah, why?” asked Shep, who was sitting right next to me.
“We play our baseball games at Fort Snelling, but I don’t see any baseball diamonds.”
“The fields are on the other side of the highway. This is just the park area,” Josh told everyone.
“Oh,” I said quietly. I needed to get out of the car. Josh parked on the side of the road and everyone hopped out and walked toward a flat, open area of grass surrounded by trees. Behind us was a large, sloping hill that led into a deep valley. I thought it was best that I stay away from the edge. Above us were bright, orange poles with blinking lights on the top of them—beacons for the airplanes. They stretched all the way into the valley.
I could still hear airplanes roaring. Josh, Jordan, and Shep plopped themselves down on the grass and lay back, staring at the sky. I followed, walking slowly. The world was beginning to spin like a merry-go-round. I got down on the grass next to Josh and lay back like he had. It felt good. The grass was soft on my head, not quite like my pillow, but it was better than bouncing around in the Jeep.
“Ready for this?” Josh asked me.
“Yeah, but what exactly do we do?”
“Just wait.”
I heard the deep bellow of an airplane coming closer and closer. It sounded like Mustapha’s roar in The Lion King, but at the same time it carried a high, shrieking noise that reminded me of the bombs dropping in Seth’s video games. “Here we go,” said Josh. “Look straight up at the sky.” About five seconds later a gigantic passenger jet roared overhead close enough, it seemed, for me to reach up and touch it. It drowned out all the other noises—cars, Jordan and Shep screaming, and the ringing in my head. I saw signs around me vibrating from the atomic sound. I felt like Minneapolis was under attack, not Baghdad. The jet was so big that it seemed to cover up the sky. It swallowed up the moon and all the stars around it. I felt like the plane was going to land right on top of me, like I was its runway.
“Oh, my God!” I yelled. I heard the others laughing as the plane flew by.
“Cool, huh?” asked Josh.
“Unbelievable!” I said. “How many times does this happen?”
“You could probably lie here all night and they would just keep coming,” I heard Jordan say on the other side of Josh. They did keep coming and with each passing of a plane my anticipation grew and grew for the next one.
After the first couple of jets passed overhead nobody talked. We were in a trance, just waiting, and then feeling the wind and the jolt of the next plane. I started trying to predict how big the next one would be by the way it spoke to us as it approached. The planes disappeared over the horizon. I assumed they were landing on the other side of the airport terminal, but I never saw it. I pictured myself in a new episode of The Twilight Zone where airplanes would look like they were landing, but they would never hit the runway. They would just disappear into some other dimension or something.
As more and more planes dropped from the sky, I began to wonder about more than The Twilight Zone. Who was on the airplanes? Where were they coming from? Were the passengers from Minneapolis or Africa or Kansas? Were they coming to visit? Did they have family here they hadn’t seen in a long time? Could the pilots really see where they were going to land? Where would I go if I were on an airplane? I didn’t think I would be landing here. I wished my mom were on one of the planes, healthy, sitting in first class.
There was a break in the action for a few minutes, and it was silent. All four of us were relaxed and lounging, looking up at the sky. All I could hear were the passing cars in front of us on the highway. I wondered what Nicole might be dreaming about. Her cousin in Afghanistan? Dancing? Going to a movie with me?
Josh interrupted my thoughts with a question I didn’t think I’d ever forget. “So, does your mom really believe in this war?”
I honestly hadn’t thought about it a lot. I didn’t know the answer. Normally I would probably try to “BS” my way through that question, but I think the beers I drank had some honesty potion in them or something because I simply replied, “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t really know what any of my family thinks about the war except that things are a lot different around here without my mom.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be pretty tough.” Josh was cool. “You know, I’ve been trying to read up on it a little and watch the news. It’s crazy over there. I don’t even know what the hell we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve been there year after year, with basically no clear goal.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been reading some stuff too. None of it sounds good though.” I was trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. My head was starting to pound even harder. The obnoxious sound of the planes had started to take their toll. Jordan and Shep had gotten up and were standing over by the Jeep. Shep was smoking a cigarette.
“So many people have died, and for what?”
Even without the beers in me, I wouldn’t have been able to answer his question. I didn’t know why people were dying. I didn’t know why my mom was in the hospital. I had wondered about it many times, but even with my recent research, I hadn’t been able to find the answers. I was staring out into space, trying to listen, but watching the world spin instead.
Josh looked at me. “Oh, sorry man. I didn’t mean to bring that up. Your mom’s going to be fine. I just get pissed off about it the more I learn, especially when someone I know gets hurt.” I nodded slowly, carefully. “You all right, Tim?” he asked.
At that moment a plane went overhead and it looked like it was in a flat spin heading right toward me. I felt something creep up from my stomach, and then to my throat, so I ran to the bushes. As I let it go, I vowed never to drink again. I felt Josh’s hand on my back and heard him say, “We need to take you back.”
“Yeah,” I said, still cringing and gagging.
When we got back to Chris’s, Josh walked me up to the house and opened the door for me. Jordan and Shep stayed in the car. I felt very weak. After throwing up, things weren’t spinning as much, which was nice, but I wanted to lie down.
The house was quiet. It looked like everyone had left. Thank God. It was bad enough that Josh and his friends had to deal with me, but I didn’t want the entire South High School student body to know I was a moron.
Josh took me into the kitchen first. He handed me a glass of water and said, “Here. Drink this.” It took a few minutes, but I finally got it all down. Then we walked very carefully up the stairs to Chris’s room. Before opening the door Josh asked, “You gonna be all right?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I had been getting really good at telling lies that day, so I figured, what’s one more? I didn’t feel all right. I felt like one of those airplanes had landed right on my head.
“Okay, then I’m gonna take off, I think.”
“Okay. Thanks, Josh.”
“No problem. I’m sure I’ll see you soon, Tim.” Josh skipped down the stairs and flew out the front door.
I opened up the door to Chris’s bedroom and poked my head in. It was pitch black. Chris was asleep in his bed and Seth was curled up on the floor with a sleeping bag. Neither of them woke up as I walked in. The alarm clock next to Chris’s bed said 1:43. I was surprised they were both so sound asleep and not still playing video games. I couldn’t see anything except the outline of Seth’s head, so I was careful not to step on it. I didn’t know where to sleep, so I plopped myself down in the middle of the floor, grabbed one of Chris’s sweatshirts from his computer chair, put it under my head, and crashed.
The next morning I struggled to push my eyes open. The sun peered through the blinds, slapping me in the face. It hurt my head and eyes. I looked, but there was nobody there. I struggled to my feet, grabbed my overnight bag, and scoured for a clean t-shirt.
After changing, I walked down the stairs with my bag over my shoulder. Chris was lying on the couch (with his shirt off, of course) watching TV. “God, what happened to you last night?” he asked.
“Uh, well, we went out by the airport to watch the planes, and it’s all a little fuzzy after that.”
“Don’t drink much, huh?” He tried to sound like he knew what it was like to be drunk, like he did it all the time or something.
“No, and I don’t want to again for a very long time. Where’s Seth?”
“He took off about an hour ago. I think he had to go to church with his parents.”
Something clicked in my brain. A memory. My dad told me he wanted us to go to church at 10:00. I had completely forgotten. I looked at the clock—10:20. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“I was supposed to be home to go to church at 10:00 too.”
“Well, looks like you missed that one. You’re screwed.”
“I gotta go.” I stormed out the front door and sprinted as fast as I could toward home with my bag on my shoulder. I went over every possible excuse in my head. Sorry Dad, Seth was supposed to wake me up and he didn’t … Sorry Dad, Seth’s mom took us to breakfast and it took longer than we thought … Sorry Dad, Seth’s dad needed my help to move some stuff in the garage. Sorry Dad, I wasn’t even at Seth’s last night. Instead, we went to a high school party and I got drunk, so I overslept because I was hung over. Yeah. I was screwed.
I was completely out of breath when I reached my back door. Apparently Little League baseball wasn’t giving me the proper cardio workouts I needed. I took a deep breath and then opened the door and walked into the kitchen.
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. He looked like Michael Myers in Halloween, without the mask of course. He had this blank stare, looking into nothing. I looked up at the clock. 10:38. I had made pretty good time from Chris’s, but it wasn’t going to matter. Dad looked pissed.
“Sorry Dad. I just overslept. Sorry.” That’s the best I could come up with.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat on the opposite side of the table from him after laying my bag on the floor. “Where have you been?” he asked with the devil’s eyes.
He caught me by surprise. “What do you mean? I spent the night at Seth’s.” The lies just kept coming. “I just overslept. I didn’t mean to.”
“I’m going to ask you this one more time. Where have you been all night?”
I could see I was in more trouble than I thought. He obviously knew I wasn’t telling the truth. I was silent for a minute. I could feel my dad’s stare penetrating me, as I looked straight down at the table. There was no point in lying anymore. Finally I spoke. “I was at Chris Caulfield’s house. I spent the night over there.” I didn’t use the word “we” because I didn’t want to get Seth in trouble too.
“Was Seth with you?”
“Yeah.” So much for not implicating Seth.
“What were you doing there?”
“Nothing. We just hung out and played video games and stuff.” Again, lying.
“I specifically told you yesterday to be home so that we could all go to church at 10:00. So when you didn’t show up I called the Michaelsens and Seth’s mom thought Seth was staying at our house. How do you think that made me feel? You lied right to my face. Were Chris’s parents home? Why did you go over there?”
The questions kept coming and I was having a hard time keeping up. “No, his parents weren’t there. We thought it would be fun to hang out there and I knew you wouldn’t let me if you knew his parents were gone. I’m sorry, Dad.” I didn’t mention anything about the party.
“Well, Tim, sorry isn’t going to cut it. You’re in some serious trouble.” I was still staring at the table. I didn’t have the guts to look him in the eye. “Go up to your room. We’ll talk about how we’re going to handle this later.”
I picked up my bag and scooted upstairs as fast as I could. That was why I didn’t lie to my parents. It always came back to haunt me.