Page 13 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
My face heats. “They weren’tmake-believe games.” At least, they weren’t games for me. I would imagine myself as anything and everything: a poet, writing to their one true love; a princess, standing up to retrieve her crown at long last; an artist, grieving over their lost muse. Back when the future felt endless, expansive, and all the options delighted rather than terrified me. Back when I still wore my heart on my sleeve, instead of carefully concealed in ten layers of Bubble Wrap.
“You were so invested in it,” he goes on with the slightest smile. “You ran around the school trying to find someone to play your prince.”
I suppress a wince, but the decade-old humiliation blazes its way through me again. All the boys I’d asked had either laughed in my face or simply stared at me, like I was some wild thing in the woods they hoped would go away on its own if they didn’t make any sudden noises or movements. Of course they weren’t interested; I wasn’t pretty back then.
Cyrus was the only one who agreed to join in on my game, just to ruin it for me. He had made me a ring of thorns, a castle of clay, and stolen the school’s infamous cat, Evil Whiskers, to be our royal pet. The cat had scratched me even more than the ring, and I’d ended up crying in a corner.
It’s just one of the many unpleasant memories Cyrus has contributed to.
“There’s really no need to revisit that,” I say.
“Why not? Your games were super creative. I remember there was another one where we’d see who could find their way around with their eyes closed—”
“Well, I don’t remember anymore. That was ages ago.” I speak over him, desperate to change the subject. “Are you almost done with the cleaning?”
“Almost. Though I wouldn’t call anything hereclean.” He picks up his blanket with only his thumb and forefinger, like he thinks it might grow teeth and bite him. I really wish it would. “Do you know how often they wash these?”
“No. But I like to trust that they do,” I say.
“I wouldn’t trust strangers at all.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’ll have to trust the pilot not to get us killed en route to Shanghai,” I inform him.
It might just be my imagination, but his face seems to pale. Or maybe it’s because he’s still holding the blanket he’s so disgusted by.
“If you’re not planning to use it, give it to me,” I tell him, rubbing my bare arms. Time and temperature seem to become irrelevant the second you get on a plane: It could be a perfect summer morning outside, but they’ll turn off the lights at random and turn the air-conditioning up to full blast until it feels closer to winter. “It’s way too cold in here.”
I expect him to refuse, just to annoy me, or to chuck the blanket at my face. But he rolls his eyes and drapes it over my legs.
“Have fun covering yourself with bacteria,” he says, already slathering his fingers with copious amounts of hand sanitizer.
“Have fun freezing,” I return under my breath, just quiet enough for him to miss it.
The plane soon jerks into motion—slowly at first, then building speed, the engines humming, the strange flaps on the wings opening up. All the trays and windows go up, the seats adjusted. A baby starts giggling at the jolting movement, at the same time that another baby in the first row starts bawling.
I try and fail to get comfortable, tugging the blanket higher up my legs, only to become acutely, annoyingly aware of the cheap fabric against my skin. Howunwashedit feels, as though I can sense the presence of all the passengers who’ve come before me and wrapped this very same blanket around their bodies.
Covered in bacteria, Cyrus’s voice says in the back of my mind, even though the real Cyrus has stopped talking. He’s staring straight ahead, both hands gripping the thoroughly sanitized armrests.
Shut up, I command the voice.Get out of my head.
Never, Cyrus’s voice replies, with the same mocking laugh I remember so well from my childhood. Now anytime I do anything remotely embarrassing, that’s the only thing I hear, the only thing I can think about. I hate it.
Him.
I inhale as the plane takes off, my stomach swooping at the sudden loss of gravity, my muscles fighting for stability that isn’t there. Maybe, if I were my nine-year-old self, I could really pretend all this away. Pretend the plane is a ship, and the abrupt dips and tremors are just rushing currents, buoying us up, and the boy beside me is already gone.
Or I could play the other game. The one about closing my eyes for as long as possible and praying that, when I open them, I’ll magically end up in the right place.
I wake up to the world falling.
My eyes snap open, my hands instinctively gripping the armrests just as the cabin lights flicker on, illuminating the shaking scene: passengers rushing back to their seats, a businessman frowning down at his computer screen as it wobbles violently in an impressive attempt to continue working, others jolting out of their sleep the way I did seconds ago, eye masks sliding up, blankets slouching over onto the carpet. It feels as if a giant toddler’s fist has shot out from the clouds to shake the plane around like a rattle toy. I try to ignore the sour jump of nausea in my mouth as we swerve sharply to the left, then to the right again.
A serene male voice floats down from the speakers:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing some heavy turbulence … Please fasten your seat belts …”
A much less serene male voice sounds right beside my ear in a hoarse whisper:
