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Leather seats that smelled like…money. Tinted windows. Mahogany trim. Mary Sue Ellen inside holding a plate filled with—
“Are those cookies?” Sage said as she reached out trying to grab them.
“Ouch!”
“Wait for everyone baby girl” Mary Sue said, setting the plate down, and returning to her romance novel while keeping her other hand ready to keep Sage away. She was wearing a simple plain dress. It was strange for Sage to see her in anything other than her diner uniform and apron.
“Yes mama,” Sage said, rubbing her hand but scooting closer to the cookies anyway while Mary Sue looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Sage just smiled.
Behind her she heard Isabelle say, “Annie! Come on girl! We’re late.”
“Sorry!! The babysitter was running behind and Tommy was—“
Annie Townsend, sliding in the seat, a little breathless, her blonde ponytail crooked from running stopped talking. She looked around and said, simply, “Oh Lord.”
“Right?” Sage said.
“It has a bar,” Annie said.
“I know!! A bar!!”
“Sage! SAGE!! There’s a television.”
“Annie…look this button makes the thing by the driver go up and then down, and then up and then—”
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Isabelle said, settling in next to an amused Mary Sue. She had the ease of someone who had ridden in hundreds of Escalade Limos and found them all normal. She pulled out her phone. “Hmm..okay…We’ll be at the high school in ten minutes…you guys don’t get motion sickness do you?”
Sage turned, her mouth full of cookies. “Wad? Moeshun sic?”
Isabelle stared and then laughed.
“Never mind…and stop hogging those!”
“Izzy?”
“Hmm?” Isabelle said as she did something on her phone.
“Umm…There is a helicopter on the track field.”
Annie looked through the window as the limo stopped in the high school parking lot. The sunny clear day was warmer than usual but still cold enough for the snow to lay thick on the sidewalks.
Annie whispered, “Umm guys. Why is there a helicopter…on my high school’s track field?”
It was big and black and glossy and it sat in the pale morning light between the fifty-yard lines like it was just a normal day, and the pilot — an older woman in aviator sunglasses who gave them a two-finger salute as they got out of the limo— was leaning against the landing skid drinking coffee like this was the most normal Tuesday of her life.
“Come on girls” Isabelle said as she started dragging Sage toward the large aircraft.
Sage stopped walking and stared as she said, in a voice that had completely abandoned all pretense of cool. “Stop.”
“We’re not stopping,” Isabelle said, still walking and pulling.
“STOP.” Sage grabbed her arm. “Isabelle. Isabelle. Why are we going on a helicopter?”
“You know….stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Yes”
