Page 84 of The Dysasters

“Please, God! Please!”

Those last cries weren’t meant for her, but Foster felt them bore into her chest and hatch sixty-eight reasons to succeed. That’s what she’d seen on the screen as they entered the Jetway. Sixty-eight seats taken. Sixty-eight souls aboard, including her own.

The plane dropped again, and Foster squeezed Tate’s arms to keep from falling. This was when her life was supposed to flash before her eyes, but Foster didn’t see her end. She saw sixty-seven others. But she could change that. She was powerful. And no one had to die today.

Taking a deep breath, she slid her hands up Tate’s shoulders and clasped her fingers around the back of his neck. She blinked the tears from her eyes and forced herself not to cry again as the plane shook and bounced like it was nothing but a toy and they were just made-up people in a child’s playtime.

“Hey,” she whispered, lifting herself on her tiptoes to press her forehead against Tate’s. Her stomach clenched and the muscles in her legs tightened as she struggled to hold herself steady. “How do you feel about saving some people?”

Tate’s hands combed through her hair before resting on her lower back. “I think it’s what we were born to do.”

Shrieks and sobs tumbled through the cabin, bouncing off the walls, deepening the pit in Foster’s stomach.

“We have to be calm,” Tate whispered, pulling her closer until his breath seeped between her lips. “Be calm.”

Foster swallowed the scream clawing at the back of her throat and closed her eyes, focusing on Tate’s pulse steadily, calmly beating against her palms. It set the slow, sleepy pace of the melody as Foster began humming the first few lines of the strong, soulful lyrics.

Foster felt Tate’s forehead lift with a smile as he sang aloud where she’d left off, his baritone vibrating against her hands.

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, ooooooh,”

Foster took a deep breath, the burbles of panic settling as she swallowed.

“And I’m feelin’ good.”

“Foster, look!” Foster’s eyelids snapped open.

Her breath caught in her throat as she followed Tate’s gaze around them, beneath them at the shimmering air currents. But these weren’t the panicked, wavy bursts coming from the mouths of the passengers, these were the currentsoutsideof the rapidly descending aircraft.

“We can see them through the plane.”

Clutching on to Tate’s seat, Foster knelt down, extending her hand toward one of the twisted, spiked, plum-colored currents. Pain slapped her fingers and she recoiled, blood welling from small cuts on her fingertips. “They’re mad. Rageful, even.”

Tate’s knuckles whitened as he flattened his hands against the overhead compartments and used them as braces as the plane jerkily barreled toward the earth. “Together! And no stopping this time. Foster, wecando this.”

Foster held his gaze, those blue eyes anchoring her as they sang together.

“Yeah, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, ooooooh…

And I’m feelin’ good.”

Thunder crashed around them, echoing the boom of trombones Foster heard so clearly in her mind as wind whistled around the plane in time with the molasses drawl of the violins. Hesitantly, Foster reached toward the purple currents beneath her. They bristled and she snapped her hand back before they struck out.

As they continued to sing, Foster poured every bit of herself into the jazzy lyrics.

Her story wouldn’t end like this.

Music surged through the plane and pulsed past its aluminum shell to settle the softening spikes of air, lightening from violet to amethyst to lavender. It was magickal, and, for a split second, Foster wished everyone could see the true beauty of her element.

The nose of the plane started to tip back up, up, up until they were level. Foster released her grip on the seat and flexed her aching, stiff fingers.

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me”

She reached her arms out by her sides. The shimmering, periwinkle currents rippled around her like a school of fish, each nestling against her palm in silent thanks before twirling around the tips of her fingers and joining the vast openness surrounding them. Foster’s hair swirled around her, and Tate spun her into his arms as the music swelled.

“And I’m feelin’… good.”

From behind her, seat belts clicked open, shifting Foster’s focus from the elation in Tate’s blue eyes to the shaking flight attendant closing in on them.