It was the last flight that tried to kill us. Just Mom and me.
After the funeral, Grandpa decided to rent a car and drive back to Texas to clear his head. The day went so fast that he forgot to carry Uncle Reed’s honor flag with him.
Mom read a magazine. I had a paperback of Steve Jobs’s biography. I tried to read the words on the pages, but they wouldn’t stick. I had to reread every paragraph. The flag was secure in my lap. It distracted me. I was so curious about its folds. It was so perfect. I wished we were driving with Grandpa. How far had he driven? I wondered. When would he get to Texas? I hadn’t even thought to ask him.
The brown-sweatered woman across the aisle from me in 14A tried to get me to talk about Christmas and did I like the quilt she was making. It was just blocks of red and green. I’d made more creative patterns in Minecraft. I think she said it was a tree skirt. I don’t know. My mind couldn’t settle on anything. I couldn’t even decide if I wanted a snack when the flight attendant offered me one.
“What a day, right?” Mom asked, her eyes all red and glassy.
I nodded. The flag case was on its way to Cedar Drive. I thought about telling her that, but I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to wait and see her happy smile as I handed her the case. Maybe it would happen on a spaghetti Tuesday.
“How’s your book?” she asked.
“Steve Jobs named his company Apple because it came before Atari in the phone book,” I said.
“I thought maybe he just liked apples,” she said.
I was going to say that it was true. Steve Jobs did like apples.
But then it sounded like a bomb went off. My ears rang.
At first, it was the plunging feeling when you drop from the highest point of a roller coaster. Only it was worse because I knew it wasn’t a ride. I didn’t know when the falling would stop. And I knew there was Texas ground below us.
Falling, with wind whistling and roaring past my head for a short eternity, only to bounce my head against the seat in front of me. I coughed, spit, and strained for a breath.
Mom, terrified. Me, helpless.
I looked toward the back of the plane.
Something in the back had broken free, leaving a giant hole in the fuselage.
I could see the open sky. I could feel the wind and the rain.
Inside the plane.
And a huge whistling and sucking sound. Objects flying toward the back.
Then there was the screaming. A lot of screaming. And not the roller-coaster kind of screaming. The woman in 14A had a scream to break glass.
Mom gripped the armrest of her seat with one hand. She reached for my hand, too.
“Say a prayer, sweetie,” she said to me. “Say something to God. Anything.”
I couldn’t think of a prayer. Grandpa’s voice thundered in my head.
Take care of your mother.
Through the screams, I heard some prayers I might have borrowed. Holy Mother, save us. Tell David I love him. I didn’t want to pray. I just waited for God to show up without even asking.
Maybe that was my prayer. I don’t know. Does it still count if you thought it but didn’t say it out loud?
Then the plane turned hard to the left. Luggage crashed down on us from the overhead bins to the right. A laptop flew toward me like a Frisbee. It slammed into my throat. It made me cough and choke.
The woman in 14A stopped screaming. I looked at her terrified face. The oxygen masks had just dropped down, and she struggled with hers.
Mom said, “Tell me something new, Wayne,” which she’s said to me a million times in my life.
So I turned to her and even though it hurt to speak, I said, “Did you know that the chameleon has a tongue that is one and a half times the length of its body?”
And I sort of screamed it because that’s what you have to do when your plane is going to crash. Paper and screaming and loud prayers and falling oxygen masks are spinning all around you, and your mother is squeezing your hand even harder now and it is turning white under her crazy-strong grip that she must have inherited from generations of Daltons. And it was the weirdest thing, saying a chameleon fact to her as we plummeted.
A flight attendant spoke over the intercom: “For safety reasons, remove your shoes, your glasses, and any pens or items in your pockets.”
I automatically put my hand to my head to remove my glasses. They weren’t there. I’d started wearing contacts since the fall social. For Sandy. You have pretty blue eyes, Wayne, she’d said. I’d said adios to my glasses the next day.
The captain spoke then. “We’ve experienced a technical difficulty and are preparing for an emergency landing.”
His voice was so calm. Too calm.
The beverage cart rolled down the aisle and crashed into the back. Sharp objects hurtled through the air. My face stung as random pieces of people’s lives cut into it.
Flight attendants were shouting, “Brace! Brace! Brace!”
We held tight to the seat backs in front of us.
Thoughts swirled about chameleon tongues and the fact that it was a really inconvenient time to die since I finally felt comfortable around Sandy Showalter. Will she cry when I’m gone? What will it feel like when this roller-coaster ride stops? When we land emergently? I thought of our dog, Mr. Darcy. I thought he’d be sad if we didn’t come back. He slept by my bed every night.
Turbulence shook the plane. It felt like we’d hit a speed bump and come crashing down onto something hard and solid.
The wind fought with everything. Mom’s long brown hair was flying around her face. Papers and books and foam cups and nameless things trailed up and exited the plane. And the flag, too. It had lifted up from my lap, and I grabbed for it by the corner. But that made a corner come untucked. It was tug-of-war. Me versus the wind. The wind was winning.
Mom unbuckled her seat belt to reach after it.
“Mom! No!” I let go of the flag’s corner, grabbed her by the waist, pinned her back to her seat.
But the flag got away. It unfurled and sailed up into the fuselage like a patriotic kite before disappearing out the hungry hole.
“Oh, no. Reed!” Mom shouted.
My book fluttered into the wind next. The book took flight like a bird made of pages. And then 14A’s red-and-green tree skirt. It went out, too.
The wind had taken everything from us.
It all looked terrifying and beautiful.
All the lights inside the plane blinked once and went out. It was dark as the inside of a pocket.
I think I shouted “Steve!” toward my book.
The flight attendant kept yelling, “Remember to place the oxygen masks on your face and then continue to breathe normally.”
The plane seemed to level out then. I wondered, was the pilot wrestling with it to stay horizontal? His voice came over the intercom. “Prepare for impact. Prepare for impact!”
How do you prepare for impact? How?
I held my breath. I held on to the seat. Fear was bouncing off everyone.
And then…
Screams.
Crash.
Impact.
Bounce.
Slide.
Slide.
Slide.
Silence.
Smoke.
So much smoke.
Fuel.
Screams.
Heat.
Flickering light.
And then everything came to a dark and silent stop. No one said or did anything. We waited to see if we were alive. We waited for everything to make sense. There was one random thought that rose to the top of my brain. Some fact from Uncle Reed. IED explosions. Accidents. What had he said?
The first ninety seconds after an accident are crucial. It’s all about ninety seconds. Don’t panic.
So while everyone around me began to move, scream, moan, and panic, I tried to survive.
“Mom!” I screamed over the chaos and smoke. The sharp smell of fuel crept up my neck. I figured we had used up about thirty of the ninety survival seconds. I screamed again and realized no sound was coming from my mouth. No sound at all. Just a hot stab of pain as if a knife were pushing into my throat.
So I grabbed her by the arm, and it made her scream in pain. I pulled her along anyway. I felt my way down the aisle. Other passengers did, too. We’d landed sideways, so walking was difficult. Still, I pulled us toward the gaping hole where rain and moonlight flooded the fuselage. The hole was big and square, like a whole panel of the plane had been cut away. There was a jagged ledge and we stood on it and looked down at the blackness. It was hard to judge how far it was to the ground. Then I heard the terrible sound. The sound of running water. Only it wasn’t water. It was jet fuel. So I looked at Mom and I could tell we had the exact same idea. There was no time to stop and calculate or consider the fall. We just had to do it. We held hands and leapt into the darkness. We landed on soft, muddy earth. She screamed.
“Wayne, are you okay? I think I twisted my ankle,” Mom said. “I don’t know if I can walk.”
Maybe sixty of the ninety seconds had passed by then.
I could see orange flames crawling over the plane. My body was stuck in the rain-soaked ground. More passengers landed on the ground near us. I clawed at the damp dirt and tried to pry myself from the muck. Mad because I shouted for help to the few other passengers zombie-walking and crawling across the smoky field. They didn’t notice me. Panic rose up through me again. What if the plane went up in a fireball?
Don’t panic.
The red lights of emergency vehicles sprayed across the field. I knew we needed to move away from the trickling sound. The smell of jet fuel. Toward those lights. But we were stuck and running out of seconds.