“Yes, well, that’s if you’re in love.”
“Right. So, not us.”
“No,” Oliver agrees with a grin. “Not us. An hour’s an hour. And we’re doing this all wrong.”
“How do you figure?”
“I know your feelings on matrimony, but we haven’t even covered the really important stuff yet, like your favorite color or your favorite food.”
“Blue and Mexican.”
He nods appraisingly. “That’s respectable. For me, green and curry.”
“Curry?” She makes a face. “Really?”
“Hey,” he says. “No judging. What else?”
The lights in the cabin are dimmed for takeoff as the engine revs up below them, and Hadley closes her eyes, just for a moment. “What else what?”
“Favorite animal?”
“I don’t know,” she says, opening her eyes again. “Dogs?”
Oliver shakes his head. “Too boring. Try again.”
“Elephants, then.”
“Really?”
Hadley nods.
“How come?”
“As a kid, I couldn’t sleep without this ratty stuffed elephant,” she explains, not sure what made her think of it now. Maybe it’s that she’ll soon be seeing her dad again, or maybe it’s just the plane keying up beneath her, prompting a childish wish for her old security blanket.
“I’m not sure that counts.”
“Clearly you never met Elephant.”
He laughs. “Did you come up with that name all by yourself?”
“Damn right,” she says, smiling at the thought. He’d had glassy black eyes and soft floppy ears and braided strings for a tail, and he always managed to make everything better. From having to eat vegetables or wear itchy tights to stubbing her toe or being stuck in bed with a sore throat, Elephant was the antidote to it all. Over time, he’d lost one eye and most of his tail; he’d been cried on and sneezed on and sat on, but still, whenever Hadley was upset about something, Dad would simply rest a hand on top of her head and steer her upstairs.
“Time to consult the elephant,” he’d announce, and somehow, it always worked. It’s really only now that it occurs to her that Dad probably deserved more of the credit than the little elephant.
Oliver is looking at her with amusement. “I’m still not convinced it counts.”
“Fine,” Hadley says. “What’s your favorite animal?”
“The American eagle.”
She laughs. “I don’t believe you.”
“Me?” he asks, bringing a hand to his heart. “Is it wrong to love an animal that also happens to be a symbol of freedom?”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“Maybe a little,” he says with a grin. “But is it working?”
“What, me getting closer to muzzling you?”
“No,” he says quietly. “Me distracting you.”
“From what?”
“Your claustrophobia.”
She smiles at him gratefully. “A little,” she says. “Though it’s not as bad until we get up in the air.”
“How come?” he asks. “Plenty of wide open spaces up there.”
“But no escape route.”
“Ah,” he says. “So you’re looking for an escape route.”
Hadley nods. “Always.”
“Figures,” he says, sighing dramatically. “I get that from girls a lot.”
She lets out a short laugh, then closes her eyes again when the plane begins to pick up speed, barreling down the runway with a rush of noise. They’re tipped back in their seats as momentum gives way to gravity, the plane tilting backward until—with a final bounce of the wheels—they’re set aloft like a giant metal bird.
Hadley wraps a hand around the armrest as they climb higher into the night sky, the lights below fading into pixelated grids. Her ears begin to pop as the pressure builds, and she presses her forehead against the window, dreading the moment when they’ll push through the low-hanging bank of clouds and the ground will disappear beneath them, when they’ll be surrounded by nothing but the vast and endless sky.
Out the window, the outlines of parking lots and housing developments are growing distant as everything starts to blend together. Hadley watches the world shift and blur into new shapes, the streetlamps with their yellow-orange glow, the long ribbons of highway. She sits up straighter, her forehead cool against the Plexiglas as she strains to keep sight of it all. What she fears isn’t flying so much as being set adrift. But for now, they’re still low enough to see the lit windows of the buildings below. For now, Oliver is beside her, keeping the clouds at bay.
5
10:36 PM Eastern Standard Time
3:36 AM Greenwich Mean Time
They’ve been in the air only a few minutes when Oliver seems to decide it’s safe to speak to her again. At the sound of his voice near her ear, Hadley feels something inside of her loosening, and she unclenches her hands one finger at a time.
“Once,” he says, “I was flying to California on the Fourth of July.”
She turns her head, just slightly.
“It was a clear night, and you could see all the little fireworks displays along the way, these tiny flares going off below, one town after another.”
Hadley leans to the window again, her heart pounding as she stares at the emptiness below, the sheer nothingness of it all. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine fireworks instead.
“If you didn’t know what they were, it probably would’ve looked terrifying, but from up above they were sort of pretty, just really silent and small. It was hard to imagine they were the same huge explosions you see from the ground.” He pauses for a moment. “I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective.”
She twists toward him again, searching his face. “Is that supposed to help?” she asks, though not unkindly. She’s simply trying to find the lesson in the story.
“No, not really,” he says with a sheepish grin. “I was just trying to distract you again.”
She smiles. “Thanks. Got anything else?”
“Loads,” he says. “I could talk your ear off.”
“For seven hours?”
“I’m up for the challenge,” he tells her.
The plane has leveled out now, and when she starts to feel dizzy, Hadley tries to focus on the seat in front of her, which is occupied by a man with large ears and thinning hair at the crown of his head; not so much that he could be called bald, exactly, but just enough to give a suggestion of the baldness to come. It’s like reading a map of the future, and she wonders if there are such telltale signs on everyone, hidden clues to the people they’ll one day become. Had anyone guessed, for example, that the lady on the aisle would eventually cease to look at the world through brilliant blue eyes, and instead see everything from behind a filmy haze? Or that the man sitting kitty-corner to them would have to hold one hand with the other to keep it still?