So, when Rose doesn’t fight back after I blatantly rip into her lack of work ethic, I feel like I’ve scratched the itch to piss her off, allowing me to focus back on my work. An hour into the flight, halfway to Georgia, I find my rhythm.
I’ve finally managed to sink into my work, highlighting notes that my father correctly assumed I’d find interesting, when Rose gets up from her seat to use the bathroom. It’s in the back of the plane so she has to walk past me. My fingers hesitate over the keys. I hold my breath until the door closes, and reread the last sentence three times before I register a single word. This is fucking ridiculous.
I close the laptop. She comes out a moment later, and I turn in my seat.
She leans back against the table as if she’d been expecting it, arms crossed, giving me her profile.
“Were you waiting for a tip? I’ve got a twenty, but you’ll have to work for it.” I gesture toward her. “Tits out, at least.”
Clearly biting back the words she wants to say, she grits out slowly, “I just wanted to say—about the get-rich-quick-scheme or whatever she told you—” She stops and looks away, chewing on her lip.
I hold up my hand. “I don’t care.”
But then she looks down, and something in her face stops me. Her brow creases, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“I know you don’t care. But whatever Pearl told you—”
The plane shudders, cutting Rose off mid-sentence. Whiskey spills over the rim of my glass.
I blot the table with a napkin. The plane steadies. Rose gets to her feet, and when it shudders again, I catch her sharp intake of breath.
But then a rocky, thunderous sound fills the cabin again, shaking the entire plane. My hands slap down on my laptop before it slides off the table. My whiskey glass drops and rolls toward the front of the plane. Rose stumbles, and her head catches the edge of the table on her way down. I immediately leap up when Henry’s voice crackles over the intercom, “Please fasten your seatbelts and remain seated.”
“Too fucking late,” I growl to no one. Rose has her hand pressed to her head. When she pulls it away, her fingers are red. My mind narrows, quiet and focused.
Hillary is moving fast up and down the aisle—bins latched, bottles cleared—before dropping into the jump seat in the galley and buckling herself in.
I ignore her and focus on Rose, but the plane keeps shaking and dipping. I get an arm around her and guide her down into my seat, pull both ends of the belt across her lap and click them together. Then I climb past her into the window seat and buckle in.
The oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. Everything shakes, and it’s so loud I can’t think straight. My teeth rattle. I try to check on Rose, but the right wing of the plane lifts, and we tilt sideways, and I’m thrown against the window. The plane lurches, and she lets out a scream.
My fingers clutch my knees, and I take slow, measured breaths. There’s no need to panic, this type of thing happens all the time.
A sharp drop creates a weightless feeling in my gut, and then, despite my efforts, my heart starts racing.
“What the fuck is going on?” I shout toward Hillary. She wears a tight grimace, a panicked look on her face telling me she has no clue what’s happening.
The turbulence goes on for what feels like an hour, all the sensations compressed into what is likely only seconds.
“Everyone stay calm, stay seated. We are experiencing a mechanical malfunction.” A tense moment passes, then Henry’s voice crackles again. “Critical engine failure. We’re going to brace for an unsmooth landing. There’s an airstrip about four miles ahead. We should make it.”
Crackle. Then, “Brace for impact.”
I can’t believe this. I can’t fucking believe this. I’m going to die in an aircraft withher. Hillary yells, barely audible over the noise in the cabin, “Brace for impact! Seatbelts tight!”
Rose’s silence is disturbing. I stare at her frozen form, like she’s my anchor. Knuckle-gripping the seat, dark eyes wide, fixed on the ground in front of her. The color drains from herolive skin, rosy lips pale. I wish she’d scream again. It was better when she screamed.
The window shade is drawn open, and I make the mistake of looking outside. The ground hurtles toward us, too fast. Henry said we were landing on an airstrip, but there are no towers—only farmland. Grazing cows in the pasture, oblivious to our descent, rows of crops, and, as we lower closer to the ground, a massive red barn in the distance.
Rumbling from beneath the plane, like a car backfiring, whips my attention back inside. I grasp my seatbelt tight, taking deep breaths. There’s a sharp, vertical jolt. The plane tips again, and the pilot corrects, which sets us off course. We land against the hard dirt drive with a heavy slam. I brace my arms against the table.
Rose’s small frame jerks violently with each bounce. She makes no noise—none that I can hear—and we’re tossed around like the plane is on a fucking trampoline, my laptop flinging up into the air, my whiskey glass flying across the cabin. My head snaps against the seat as we land hard, gravity claiming us back. The careening pressure in my head as the plane attempts to slow, screeching over the makeshift landing strip, builds until my eardrums feel ready to pop.
The next few moments are loud and chaotic. My teeth chatter as the plane roughly evens out.
And then… it slows.
We veered off course but thankfully the brakes and steering work, and while we’ve likely ripped up some of this poor farmer’s land, we make it back onto the dirt drive.
