Chapter One
The cabin lights flicker on and I blink awake, neck stiff and mouth tacky. An overhead bin rattles. Turbulence. I yawn and one of my earbuds slips out just as we drop through an air pocket, the airplane settling with a jolt. Scattered gasps and snatches of panicked conversation rise in the cabin.
The intercom crackles. “Folks, we’re about twenty miles outside of Newark. As you might have noticed, the weather has intensified, so it’s going to be a bumpy descent.”
My seatmate, Harper, shifts impatiently. “Cue the hysteria.”
I laugh because it’s true. Infrequent flyers always get twitchy when pilots start tossing around words like turbulence, bumpy, or weather. Across from us, a woman with dark eyes and thin lips tightens her seat belt to the point of obvious discomfort. I imagine painting this scene. I’d focus on her face, blurring out the rest. The mix of fear and energy in her eyes tells the story.
The woman catches me staring and gives a pointed glance at the loose seat belt across my hips. I ignore her and lean closer to the window to see better. Unlike Seat Belt Sally, I’m not worried about a little choppy air. Unless the plane is plummeting to earth on fire, there’s no point in getting worked up.
We can bounce all the way down as far as I’m concerned. I just need to get home to my mom.
Without meaning to, I picture my aunt’s hand in mine, thin and waxy and bruised with old IV sites. This is not the memory I’d choose. Aunt Phoebe and I had great memories. Making homemade fudge. Trying on scarves. Playing together with her paints and color wheels. All these beautiful pieces of my aunt are smudged and watery, but those days from a year ago, the last ones we spent together—they come at me in high definition.
The smell of disinfectant and medicine. The squeak of my shoes on the hospital floor. My mother’s soft, hiccupping sobs. If I let myself think about it too much, it’s like I’m still there.
But it’s worse for Mom. Phoebe was my aunt, but she was my mother’s twin. It’s like losing one of my lungs, she once told me. I don’t think I’ll ever breathe right again.
A clatter brings me back to the present. In the front of the plane cabin, the flight attendants make their way down the aisle, collecting trash and securing seat-back tables. A passenger is arguing with them. I can’t hear what he’s asking, but the flight attendant is firm. No, you can’t access the overheads. Sir, I can’t allow that, it’s unsafe.
I zip my own bag shut as the attendants move on, pleasant and professional even as the cabin bumps and creaks. Beside me, Harper applies lipstick. With the way this plane is jiggling, I don’t know how she’s not shoving it up her nose, but she coats it on with utter precision. It’s like a magic trick.
I shift in my ratty jeans, feeling sloppy beside her crisp white shirt and wool pencil skirt. Harper’s been talking about her college, so she can’t be much older than me, but she’s sophisticated in a way I doubt I’ll ever be.
The plane drops again, enough to make my stomach flip. The wings catch air with a thunk. My teeth clack together, and a flight attendant stumbles in the aisle. Someone begins to cry. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I guess they weren’t kidding about it being bumpy.
The intercom warbles again. “Flight attendants, please take your seats.”
Harper tucks her long dark hair behind her ear. “Great, now I’m stuck holding my cup.”
The plane thumps and shimmies its way down through the clouds. It’s a hard go. My teeth clack together. Bags bounce up against the undersides of seats. I spend enough time in the air to know it’s probably fine, but I still check the window. Just get down out of the clouds already.
In front of me, that woman is still crying, but I don’t blame her now. Almost everyone looks nervous. Well, everyone except Harper.
“How long is your layover?” she asks, tucking her lipstick into its cap without spilling a drop of whatever’s left of her Diet Coke.
“Forty-five minutes,” I say as the plane dips right and then rises. “Tight.”
“It won’t matter in this mess. We’ll all be delayed.” Then she grins. “So, did you think any more about our conversation?”
Normally, I avoid chitchat on airplanes at all costs, but before we even took off, Harper pointed out my silver cuff bracelet, a gift from my dad two Christmases ago. She recognized the jewelry maker by sight, which brought us to the conversation of metalworking, then modern art, and then painting. There’s no stopping me when I get started on all that.
“I dozed off somewhere over Oklahoma, I think,” I say.
She laughs. “Hopefully this blizzard will convince you a transfer to CalArts is a good idea.”
“Transfer?”
“Yes. Look, even if you didn’t have the grades for it before, you said you’re pulling a 4.0 now. And you’re talented. I’ve seen your work.”
“Well, on my phone.”
“I’ve seen enough. You have a focus in your paintings that’s uncommon.”
Focus is what Phoebe saw in my work, too. She said I knew how to use color to draw a viewer’s eye to the heart of each painting. That’s how she convinced me to take the money she offered and to transfer permanently to my super selective and pricey art school that is across the country from Mom. I’d gotten accepted as a junior, but I came home early when Phoebe got sick, and I had no intention of going back. Especially with the hefty tuition hike that would affect my senior year.
Phoebe wasn’t having that. One of the last conversations we had was her trying to convince me to make the move permanent. She’d pressed a check into my hand and held my wrist tight in her thin fingers. Told me she wanted me to go back, and more than that, she wanted me to go senior year, too.
Your work has heart, Mira. You have to follow that. It matters.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I wasn’t about to argue with my dying aunt.
“Anyway,” Harper says, bringing my attention back to the present. “No one is going to care that you’re at a community college once they see your work.”
Community college?
I think over our earlier conversation. I showed her photos of my most recent student exhibit. And I admitted I was a little disappointed in my painting instructor. I’m not sure why she thought I was in community college, but a transfer to any college isn’t possible. Because I’m still in high school.
I think about clarifying things, but why bother? If a random stranger on a plane wants to see me as a college freshman instead of a sick-to-death-of-high-school senior, who cares?
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“You should,” she says. “You can text me if you want me to talk to my friend Jude.”