The musicians stepped back so that a stagehand could reach through them and grab Cherish. He managed to get the arm holding the microphone, but she followed it with her mouth.
“Bradley King is missing!” she shouted into the mic. “He’s miss—” the rest of the words were lost as one crew member ripped the microphone ripped away and two more of them restrained Cherish so she couldn’t run again. The crew member with the mic handed it back to Ama, and the booing of the crowd grew louder as security escorted Cherish off stage and out the back of the structure.
“Geez. Someone find Brad,” Ama joked into the microphone. The crowd laughed. Ama said something to her other band members, and they counted out a beat and started the song over.
Cassidy followed Ama and the rest of the band around like an abandoned puppy anytime they moved as a group. She didn’t want to lose them for even the slightest moment and give them the chance to forget her. Luckily, at the afterparty for the artists that night, Ama told everyone that there was something sketchy happening on the island and Cassidy was flying home with them. The drunker she got, the more she said it, and she even told Cassidy a couple times.
Aside from once again being the only sober person at a party where she hardly knew anyone, Cassidy had a hard time loosening up because all the texts and calls to Apricot went unanswered. Originally, she planned to get someone to go back to the villa with her to collect her things and to speak with Apricot in person, but Cherish’s announcement rattled her so deeply that she feared being alone.
If Brad King, international superstar, could disappear, then what would happen to her?
All of her things could be replaced, and once she got back home and explained to everyone what was happening, they would come back for Apricot.
If she’s still here,she thought, but quickly shut that down.
Once she was finally seated on the plane between Ama and Drew at just after three in the morning, she allowed herself to relax. Not even her fear of planes was enough to tamp down her excitement to leave the island.
The cabin lights dimmed and Ama laid her head on Cassidy’s shoulder. The sour smell of lemon drops on her breath roiled Cassidy’s stomach. She turned away from her friend and watched the lights of the island outside the window. The runway was short, and the takeoff felt more sudden than usual, but Cassidy reminded herself that the flight in was turbulent and strange as well. It was just over an hour back to Florida, an hour in which she could put the whole island behind her.
Still, the turbulence was more than she remembered. The seatbelt light dinged, as if anyone ever had a chance to take them off. She gripped both armrests tight and closed her eyes.
It’s just an hour,she repeated to herself.Just an hour to get home.
The whole plane suddenly dropped, and Cassidy’s stomach rose, weightless, in the momentary freefall. An involuntary squeak slipped out of her mouth and all around her screams rose up as the drop tore even the most seasoned passengers from their naps.
Ama grabbed Cassidy’s hand on the arm rest and gave it a hard squeeze, but Cassidy couldn’t look at her. Only now did she realize that she’d never experienced a truly bumpy flight before, and she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes and face the turbulence as the whole plane continued to shake.
Overhead, the intercom dinged lightly.
“Folks, we appear to be experiencing some … mechanical …” the voice trailed off. Barely a moment passed before they dropped again and everyone on board, now wide awake, cried “oh!” in unison. Cassidy’s heart pounded in her throat as the plane’s engines growled and they dropped again. She let out a sob and released the armrest to grab Ama’s hand back. On her right, Drew forced his shaking fingers between hers, and she didn’t try to stop him. Ama hyperventilated in the seat to her left, taking huge gasping breaths without exhaling. All around her, people screamed things that sounded like curses and prayers. The sour smell of vomit rose from behind Cassidy. Crackled sounds from the cockpit still came from the speakers above.
The plane dropped again, and any light leaking through Cassidy’s eyes went out as the cabin lost power. The smells and sounds around her in the dark as the plane fell and rose reminded Cassidy of riding Magic Mountain back home, except she’d never heard screams like this in the amusement park. Passengers shrieked high-pitched wails held for as long as their lungs allowed. Even when the she found herself the passenger of an airplane with an engine fire on that trip to Milan, the trip that made her life flash before her eyes and made her realize she was wasting it by being drunk all the time, Cassidy hadn’t experienced terror like this. When the plane dropped and the screams came unconsciously from people who knew the plane might not recover from the fall, Cassidy realized this is what the fear of dying looked like.
Something light hit Cassidy in the face. She panicked and released her grip on Ama and Drew to swat at it and found her fingers wrapped in her oxygen mask. In a rush, she untangled the tubes from the elastic and placed the cup over her nose and mouth. Stale air that smelt of industrial polymers filled her nostrils.
The plane jerked up, pinning Cassidy in her seat as it struggled to regain altitude. She screamed again, matching the overworked engines. Outside Drew’s open window, the ocean blended into the ink-black sky and gave no sign of which direction they were flying or how many miles they still had between them and the surface of the water.
The engines revved, then stuttered. The plane again lost altitude, and Cassidy’s body rose up from her seat as the whole craft seemed to point straight down like the final plunge at the end of a roller coaster.
Tears spilled around Cassidy’s mask as she screamed. Drew braced himself with their shared armrest. Cassidy, still in that horrible freefall, rounded her body to hold Ama’s fingers in a death grip with both hands. Ama did the same, and although they screamed into each other’s faces, Cassidy could barely hear any sounds over the wind rushing through the useless engines. She felt like they fell forever, like there couldn’t possibly be that many miles or feet or inches between them and the ocean, but she knew there were fewer and fewer with each passing second. She prayed for a miracle, but tensed her body in anticipation of disaster.
The plane jolted her sideways, forcing her to let go of Ama. It sounded like the front of the plane exploded as metal crunched. After that, everything happened in slow motion, and in the second after her neck broke and sensation disappeared from her body and the whole dark world silenced in her ears, Cassidy felt regret.
I should have stayed on the island.
Lifestartedwithabang. A blue flash rising above the ocean that divided time into before and after. Space also changed, like us. We were there in the before, but in the after we became something different—aware. We could feel the trees and the rocks, could reach out with the branches, and knew when the ocean pulled any single grain of sand away or brought it back. As the flowers turned to follow the light in the sky, we turned and twisted and reached with our new awareness.
Humans are not like the flying creatures or the ocean things. Humans do not live on the currents of wind and water. No, they create the currents of fire and scarred earth. They take more than there is to offer and leave barren wastes where they go. They are responsible for the bitter air, the putrid ocean. And they are responsible for us, and the thing we became after.
It is easy to move branches or to cast shade when the light falls beyond the sea. Trapsare easy to use on single prey. The lone humans that came across the ocean seeking to eat the flying and swimming creatures did not expect traps, for they thought themselves the hunters and not the hunted. With each new catch we took into ourselves, we became stronger, and smarter. We learned their words and their ways, like boats and search parties and the folly of the individuals that strive to be greater than any single grain of sand among them.
We learned what humans desire and fear. We learned that they do not speak with words on the currents of the air—why would they? No, they speak on currents of lightning.
Send a message in a bottle. Call them to us.
We took entire crews. First the ones that took from the ocean, then the ones who took from our forest to build their caves. Their memories are so much easier to touch than their forms. It is easier to reach into the rip of time than to manipulate space. But changing time, changing their memories, means nothing if there is no one to forget.
We called more to us this time, setting a trap in their minds now. You are special. You are different. You are more important than the other crawling creatures among you, so beautiful not in your difference but in your uniformity.
