When Colin finally emerges from the trees, the boys forget their hunger for a minute. Spellbound by his long, lanky strides, they watch him cross the shore. When Colin sits down, Aayu holds out a hand covered in shards of candy cane.
“For you,” he says.
“Thank you, Aayu,” Colin says. “But that’s for you. And so’s this.” He places a Hershey’s Kiss in Aayu’s hand. The kid’s eyes go wide. Colin distributes two more to the other boys, their excitement palpable. I know we should probably talk about what happened, but I can’t bring myself to ruin the moment.
“And one for you,” he says. He places a silver Kiss in my palm. “I had them in my pocket. Forgot all about them.”
“You walk around with Kisses in your pocket?”
The joke seems to startle him a bit. “Not sure I’m ready to answer that,” he says, and smiles.
Liam makes the bold move of climbing into Colin’s lap. Aayu’s lower lip trembles, so Colin pulls him up there, too. Meanwhile, Tim presents the transceiver in all its hopeless glory.
“I cleaned out all the sludge to make room for new batteries,” he says.
“Looks brand-new.” Colin gives it a full inspection. “Better than new, probably.” He searches my face for a moment. “What is it?”
Tim’s grin is triumphant. “A radio!”
“Hmm.” Colin is still looking at me. “What kind of radio?”
“Very short range,” I say. “For, uh, snow emergencies. For skiers.”
“Ah,” he says, grasping the unsayable word. Avalanche. He turns the transceiver over in his palm, his gaze hinging on the empty battery compartment. Yet another setback, although I try not to think about it this way.
“It’s a great find.” Colin hands it back to Tim, who glows with pride.
“I want to be an engineer someday.” Someday sounds like thumb-day. He puts his tongue behind his front teeth and tries again.
“You can do anything, Tim,” Colin says. “And you will.”
•
The afternoon brings fatigue and fierce appetites. The boys doze on a patch of pine needles, while Colin fortifies the lean-to for the tenth time. The fire burns in fits and snaps, the smoke curling skyward. Still no wind.
“The weather’s good,” I say.
He peers up at the sky. “Pretty good.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Well, weather has a way of changing.”
I keep my voice down just in case the boys are listening. “What are you saying?”
He steps back from the lean-to and sits beside me in front of the fire. As he talks, he focuses on the pair of bungee cords in his hands. “I checked the weather report before we left.”
“For Boston?”
“For everywhere.” Then, like he’s embarrassed to admit this: “It’s one of my hobbies.”
“Well, that’s . . . nice.” It’s the most personal thing he’s shared since we crashed. Which is ironic, in a way, because weather is the talk of strangers.
“It’s a little nerdy.”
“I mean, sure. A little.”
His smile loosens the tangle of nerves in my stomach. “Anyway, I’m guessing we’re somewhere between Denver and Salt Lake City. The flight path is always more or less the same from San Fran to Boston.”
“So . . . near Vail, maybe?”
“Maybe,” he says.
“What did the report say?”
He looks up at the sky. “Snow later today.”
“Snow?” The word creeps past my lips.
“A foot in Salt Lake.” He pauses. “Probably more up here.”
I crane my neck and search the skies for what feels like the thousandth time. The occasional plane cruising some twenty thousand feet above us doesn’t reassure me at all; it just makes me feel smaller, like a tiny speck on a woodsy-green canvas. Even with the NTSB’s technology and black boxes and GPS, searching the Rockies for survivors before a big storm hits puts other people at risk—especially if the powers that be assume no one made it out alive.
Colin abandons the cords and kneels in front of me. “They’ll find us, Avery.”
His eyes tell such grievous truths, which weigh on me more than anything—more than the altitude, or the weather, or the fact that three boys are depending on us. Because once someone decides we’re dead, it’s all for nothing. We won’t make it out of here.
Liam wakes up and rubs his eyes. Dazed, he looks around and bursts into tears. Aayu quickly follows. So much for a peaceful nap time. Soon they’ll be asking me for food, which I don’t have. Or their mothers, who are dead. Or a warm bed, which they may never know again.
“Avery,” Colin pleads.
I get up before he can say something that will make me feel worse. Because that’s my problem with him—his lies are obviously lies, and his false reassurances make me feel childlike and fragile. His truths, on the other hand, are too raw for me to handle. The compromise leaves us in a silent stalemate, a comfort zone with a population of one.
The boys receive Colin with hugs, but they look to me for food. All I have to offer is salty peanuts and some waterlogged cookies. Liam wolfs them down, but Aayu takes his time inspecting every morsel he puts in his mouth. Tim eats with the cautious satisfaction of a picky eater. I can picture him at his kitchen table at home, eating Kraft mac ’n’ cheese while his well-to-do parents dine on asparagus and lamb. But he doesn’t complain. When I hand him a tiny packet of nuts, he thanks me politely.
Colin selects a bag of chips, then proceeds to offer all of its contents to the boys. I snatch it away from him. “Colin, you need to eat.”
“I will when you do.”
Tim has deposited two cookies on each of my knees. Both vanilla Oreos, which to me is an insult to standard Oreos everywhere, but they’re still making my mouth water. Even so, it doesn’t seem right. I can go a week without food if I have to. The boys can’t.
“I’m not hungry.”
Colin lifts an eyebrow.
“I had a huge dinner last night.”
“In the airport?”
“Yeah.”
“While you were sprinting to the gate, or before?”
The flush in my face settles somewhere along the span of my collarbone. “I can wait a while longer,” I say. “Really.”
“Eat those cookies, at least.”
Liam’s been ogling them with hungry eyes, but even he backs off at the sound of Colin’s stern tone.
“Only if you have a chip.”
“Deal.”
I start with the cookie on my left knee. It’s dry and crisp and delicious. Maybe I’m coming around on the vanilla Oreo thing.
Colin eats a soggy chip. The bag must have punctured in the water, and the contents look more like chip soup than a tasty snack.
He pops another one into his mouth. “Mmm. Delicious.”
Aayu laughs. Liam holds out his hand. “Can I have one?”
Before long, Colin has given away the rest of his chip soup. He spins a fantasy for the boys—of feasts and cozy kitchens and McDonald’s. Once he starts talking about Happy Meals, it’s all over. The boys can’t get enough. I don’t know how he does this—how he gives these children hope without making empty promises. When he glances my way, I can’t bring myself to participate. McDonald’s seems impossible. A suburban dream.
I peek into the plastic bag. There are nine more snack packs, which should get us through dinner. Beyond that, I don’t have a plan—because we weren’t supposed to be here beyond that. I refuse to think about what nightfall will bring.
“Do you know any stories?” Tim asks. Colin shrugs, but something tells me he’s full of stories. His eyes are shining as he flicks his gaze over to me.
“I bet Avery has a whole stockpile of stories,” he says.
“I don’t really—”
“Tell us!” Liam exclaims. Tim watches me with wide summer-green eyes, flush with expectation. Well, he’s about to be disappointed. I don’t exactly come from a creative line.
“Maybe Colin knows a few . . .”
But they’re all tugging on my shirt. Aayu looks at me with such intensity it seems as though he might cry if I don’t come up with something soon.
“Um, okay,” I stammer. Colin folds his hands and leans forward, like a kid at story hour. Liam and Aayu snuggle up next to him. Tim sits Indian style, as he probably does in his kindergarten classroom when his teacher gathers everyone up for nap time. Or maybe that’s preschool. “Well, there was once a mermaid . . .”
“A mermaid?” Tim looks skeptical.
“Yes.” I clear my throat. “A mermaid, and her name was Ariel.”
Tim frowns. “I’ve heard this one before.”
“Scratch that. Her name was Ophelia.”
“Okay . . .” Still skeptical.
The story begins with Ophelia, the tentative mer-girl from Mermaidia who becomes a famous mermaid. I’m not sure where it all comes from, or how her simple tale morphs into something magical. Maybe it isn’t magical at all. Maybe it’s silly. But seeing the captive faces of Aayu and Liam and Tim is enough to justify all the nonsensical twists and gaping plot holes. They don’t care. They don’t even notice.
Of course, Ophelia isn’t entirely fiction. She’s largely autobiographical—a shy girl (mermaid) born to a big family and high-stress, demanding parents. The youngest of four siblings, all boys except her. Two went on to professional baseball careers (Aqua-Ball, in this story); another works in Hollywood (Holly-Sea). But Ophelia was different. Ophelia lived in their shadows and tried to make their dreams her own, but it didn’t work. She liked to swim and read books. She cowered on the edge of the sofa at parties. She didn’t drink till college.
Colin doesn’t know the real Ophelia—the Ophelia who moved to California (the Pacific Ocean) to escape the mountain of expectations back home (the Atlantic). But once she got there, she became someone else, someone she didn’t recognize. Someone her brothers (except Edward, the youngest) would have liked and probably hit on if they weren’t related. Someone her dad would have bragged about to his golfing buddies (golf is the same in Mermaidia). She wasn’t sure how this transformation took place—just that it had. And now, removed from all those old expectations and faced with a set of entirely new ones, she realized that she kind of missed the older, less popular version of herself.
“So how does the story end?” Tim asks.
“I don’t know.” I look up to find Colin studying me with dark, discerning eyes. “To be continued.”
His silence heightens the tension in a moment that lingers longer than it should. The boys don’t notice, of course, but I do.
“Well,” I say, slapping my knees to signal the end of story time. Liam jumps. Aayu is already dozing. Colin scoops him up and tucks him into a nest of blankets and coats. It’s only midafternoon, but the poor kid looks like he could sleep for days. He’s not the only one.
Liam settles in next to him, and soon he’s asleep, too. With the younger boys sleeping, Colin and I are granted a rare moment of peace.
“I liked your story,” he says. “I always had a thing for mermaids.”
He acknowledges the joke with a smile, but I know what he really means. He hands me a waterlogged notebook, its pages dried to a near crisp.
“What’s this?”
“For the sequel.”
I flip through the first few pages. Blank, inviting. Tragic, too, when I think about whose thoughts and dreams were intended for it.
“Here.” He places a pen in my palm—the tip chewed off, the ink green.
“I’m not a writer,” I say.
“The boys won’t care.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is for them,” he says, and I wonder what he means. Ophelia’s story? Or the story I told to forty new faces on the first day of swim practice? I always believed people injected slight variations into their own biographies—until I met Colin. His has been constant.
“Someday, they’ll want to know what happened out here,” he says. “We need to give them that.”
“I’m not sure I can do this.” The crash, those screams, that woman and her baby . . .
“You can,” he says. “I’ll help you.”
And so, with Colin’s gentle encouragement, I start where our lives intersected on Flight 149. Rows 12, 13, 14, and 15. It aches to remember, but I can do it because Colin remembers, too. The fear. The skittering of pine and stars and nothingness. The horror of leaving so many behind. This isn’t my story. It’s his, too. Ours.
I write until the fire burns out, whipped into submission by a howling wind.
Clouds are moving in.