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What did you do, Frankie? I thought as he silently dragged me across the tarmac. As the black town car drove away, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared, I had this helpless feeling that I’d just jumped into the deep end with an anchor tied to my neck, but drowning was a mercy I would not get to experience.
I whipped my head around, overcome by the loud whooshing—what was that anyway? I’d only been to an airport once, to wish my best friend from high school goodbye before she moved across the country. That friendship didn’t end up lasting.
None of them did, but Jenny’s was the longest. It was hard for people to get to know me. I was the sick girl, the girl who barely went to school because she was too tired but who looked perfectly healthy. In junior high, I was diagnosed with a pretty obscure disease, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and could barely get out of bed. I felt horrible, but I looked okay. I remembered it was right before the school play. I had been so excited, had been practicing singing to try to get the lead.
That kind of got fucked.
Instead of getting the lead, I became a ghost. Dad had his own demons, so he wasn’t much help to me. It was lucky I’d made an impression on the history teacher, Mr. Darkwood. He noticed my absences and got the school involved. Still, they couldn’t do all that much. In the end, I just taught myself most of my classes. I got better in high school and could go to school again, but still missed big chunks of time until senior year.
By then it was too late.
For most kids, I was either not on their radar or just plain weird. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a rumor started that I had AIDS, so I had that going for me.
Why was I even thinking of that? That wasn’t important now. What was important was the very real, very big plane we were approaching. I tugged on the hold on my elbow, struggling against my captor, small bits of asphalt skidded beneath my feet. He was unfazed, dragging me until we reached the steps to the plane. A man dressed in a pilot’s uniform stood next to the stairs, not paying me or my struggle any mind. He nodded respectfully to the man holding me hostage.
“Boss,” the pilot said. Without a word, my captor bypassed the pilot and tugged me up the stairs. He kept his tight, painful grip on me the entire time. As we ascended the plane’s steps, the gravity of the situation fell on me. When I’d crossed the last step and entered the plane, I had an impulse to tear my arm off and run away.
A plane.
I’d never been on a plane before. The farthest I’d ever traveled was Maine, but did it really count if you were too young to remember? I’d always thought when I went on a plane for the first time it was going to take me someplace marvelous. I had pictures up in my room of all the places I wanted to go and live. There was Paris, of course, but also Tibet and Shanghai. I wanted to go to Reykjavik too, and Sydney. Alaska. Rio de Janeiro. Auckland. Tokyo. London. Wales. Scotland. I wanted to see the edge of the world, and then I wanted to find where it kept its heart.
I had so many pictures they filled up my entire wall like wallpaper.
A plane could take me anywhere…could definitely take me some place beyond New York City. I could be dropped off in the middle of the Sahara, or thrown into the ocean and lost like Amelia Earhart. My breath stuck in my throat as I stared out at the blustery day, looking over the small airport. I wondered where the rest of the planes were going. I wondered if one of them was going to Paris. The sun was dropping now, painting the snow in oranges and yellows. It would only be a few minutes until the moon stole the sun away completely. This had officially been the longest shortest day of my life.
My captor gave a harsh tug on my elbow, pulling me away from the door. He shoved me down into a chair and stalked to the other side of the plane. Still stunned, it was all I could to do to grip the sides of the chair. The seat felt buttery smooth. I glanced down, watching my fingers run across the stitching as if in a trance.
Maybe he’d throw me out in Tokyo. If I died there, it kind of counted.
“Buckle up,” the man who’d taken me said lazily, drawing me from my thoughts. It wasn’t actually laziness in his voice, though, it was…boredom, as if what he’d done that day was no more interesting than taking out the trash.
I glanced around, taking everything in. Lights illumined the ceiling, but I couldn’t tell from where; it looked like they merely glowed from within. It was eerie, beautiful. We sat in quilted white leather seats and the floors were patterned. Were they marble or wood? I reached a hand down to touch, but the plane took off, jolting me back.
“I told you to buckle up,” he said. My eyes flashed to where he sat serenely. He wasn’t buckled, I noticed sourly. He was sitting at a table, looking at a laptop. They have internet up here?
I gripped the armrest, trying to hide my anxiety. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of flying, but it was my first time. I didn’t know what to expect beyond movies and books. It seemed like we were zooming down the tarmac forever, and then suddenly we took off. I looked out the window just as the plane lifted then quickly looked away with a big exhale.
I was flying.
“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking,” a voice came over the speakers. “I’d like to welcome you onboard. We can expect a fairly smooth flight this evening.” I leaned back to listen to the captain when, “Champagne?” was asked right into my ear.
I jumped at the very feminine-sounding voice. Clearly unfazed by my outburst, a woman in a tight skirt and too-tight blouse leaned over me, green glass bottle in her hand and smile on her face. Where the fuck had she come from? My own face contorted in an amalgam of indignation and bewilderment, and she held her pose for another minute before pulling the bottle back, smile never wavering.
Truth be told, I’d never had champagne before. If we’re getting real honest here, I’d never really had much to drink at all. Part of me really wanted to take the champagne, to indulge, and give myself over to the fantasy that the man I’d given myself to was the kind who would open me up to the world. I wanted to believe that he was the kind of man who would bring my pictures to life, not give me bruises.
But that was just fantasy.
“You treat your prisoners nicely,” I mused, watching with incredulous awe as she walked to the opposite side of the plane and offered my captor a drink.
“You’re not a prisoner,” the man said. He took a glass, eyes still trained on his computer. For a brief, fleeting second I had hope. Then he said, “You’re nothing.” And that balloon popped just as quickly as it inflated. I could practically hear the high-pitched squee it was making as it flew around in my mind before landing all rubbery, dead, and deflated.
“Oh gee, thanks.” I turned to the window, placing a finger on the glass. Night had fallen fast and stealthily. My finger melted the condensation, painting lines in black where I revealed the darkness. “You didn’t let me say goodbye.” I said it as a whisper, meant only to be heard by me. Drawing another line down the window, I separated the condensation with the heat from my finger.
“Maybe you should have considered that before trading your life,” he replied. I scoffed, removing my hand from the window. “You should know I’m giving you until New York, Frankie,” he said. I flinched at his voice. There was nothing overtly terrible about it, nothing like when Papa yelled after drinking too much. It was something hidden in the calmness, like a monster beneath still waters, that disturbed me. “As a courtesy.”
My eyes darted briefly to his. “What the fuck does that mean?” He ceased his typing, fingers curling up into a clench. I rolled my lips, making them tight against my face as if I could shut myself up, but I knew it was a lost cause. Since getting sick, I’d developed a defense mechanism: sarcasm. I couldn’t control the needles and the frequent hospital visits. I couldn’t control the fact that I had no friends and had to spend all day every day in my room feeling like death, but I could control my perspective. So my perspective became a skewed, acerbic, dripping and dark thing. I became the type of person who would crack jokes at a funeral.
It really helped me make friends.
