The Trouble with Flying

by Rachel Morgan

  Aiden: But you survived then, so you’ll survive now.

  Sarah: Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll die of fear.

  Aiden: Kind of a pathetic way to die, don’t you think? If you’re going to go toes up due simply to fear, at least wait until you’re face to face with a lion or a knife-wielding psychopath or a time travelling T. rex.

  Sarah: Thanks. You’re really helping.

  Aiden: Am I? It’s hard to tell whether you’re being sarcastic. :-/ <— confused face.

  Sarah: You’re helping so much that all my fears have magically transformed into happy little sunbirds that are flitting away into a rosy sunset.

  Aiden: Sarcasm. Got it.

  Sarah: I’m sorry! I’ve tried practising out loud, and it goes fine if all I think about is telling myself a story. But as soon as I imagine doing it in front of a crowd, I can’t seem to get the words out.

  Aiden: Focus on the people you know. Your parents or Sophie or anyone else you’ve invited. Look ONLY at them. Then you won’t feel like you’re talking to strangers.

  Sarah: Are you nuts? I haven’t TOLD anyone I’m doing this. It’s bad enough embarrassing myself in front of people I don’t know. Now you want me to do it in front of people I DO know?

  Aiden: You won’t be embarrassing yourself.

  Sarah: You don’t know that!

  Aiden: Take Sophie with you. Seriously. Tell her to sit in the front row and ONLY look at her. That’s my last piece of advice.

  Sarah: I wish I could take you.

  Whoa, what? I am being way too honest for my own good right now. It’s too late, though, because as advanced as cell phones are these days, they don’t yet seem to include a ‘Bring that message back right now’ button. So now it’s sitting there at the bottom of our conversation, and Aiden is taking his sweet time replying.

  No reply.

  No reply.

  WHY HASN’T HE REPLIED YET? I’ve probably scared him away forever. He’s probably figuring out a way to quickly end this conversation and—

  Aiden: I wish I could be there.

  Oh. My. Hat! It seems I may have been right about my fears transforming into happy little sunbirds, because all I can feel right now is a ridiculous sort of gleeful giddiness.

  Sarah: You do?

  Aiden: Of course. The only place I’ve wanted to be since I first met you is at your side.

  Aaand the sunbirds are doing crazy happy flapping all around my insides. It’s utterly insane, because Aiden and I might as well be a gazillion miles apart, and who knows when we’ll see each other again, but I can’t help the fact that he’s the first person I think of when I wake up and the last person I say goodnight to before I fall asleep, and the person I want to hear from every moment throughout the day, and I think I might be kinda crazy about him, AND HE LIKES ME BACK!

  Aiden: Sorry. My brain lost control of my fingers for a moment. I really wasn’t planning on making you feel uncomfortable when you have something way more important to focus on tonight. Just forget that last message!

  WHAT? Forget that last message? As if I could EVER erase those words from my brain. What could possibly be more important than this moment? If he thinks I’d rather be panicking about tomorrow night, he obviously has no clue how I feel about him. Which seems somewhat impossible considering we’ve fit about ten years worth of conversations into the ten days since I finished writing that book. Does he think I communicate this much with every guy I know?

  I reread his message, then type my response.

  Sarah: Why would I feel uncomfortable?

  Aiden: (Feeling super relieved we’re not having this awkward conversation face to face.) Well, you know, it’s always uncomfortable when a guy admits that he might sort of … have feelings for a girl when he knows she doesn’t feel the same way.

  My body attempts so many reactions to Aiden’s words at once that I think I short-circuit the emotion section of my brain, which leads to the calm response I type next instead of the Aaaaah!!??:-D!!??Eeeee:-)))) that might have come out otherwise.

  Sarah: How do you know I don’t feel the same way?

  Aiden: (:-/ Confused face again.) Um, well, you never replied to my letter, so that was the only logical conclusion.

  Sarah: What letter?

  Aiden: The letter at the end of the book.

  Sarah: What book?

  Aiden: The pink book. The book I almost left the airport with. The book you said you finished reading.

  “What the heck?” I mutter. I jump up and scan my bookshelf for the romance novel I borrowed from Julia and never finished reading after I arrived back in Durban. It was silly, frivolous stuff, after all, and I had far better books waiting on my to-read pile beside my bed. I snatch the book from between Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I Am Number Four and flip through the pages near the end. There’s the last page of the story, then the acknowledgements, then—WHAT IS THAT?

  On the blank space after the second page of acknowledgements, before the page about the author, hastily written words have been penned in black ink. HE WROTE IN THE BOOK! If he were anyone else, I’d probably want to smack him for violating the pages of a novel, but these are Aiden’s words, and if I didn’t want to read them so badly, I’d probably be kissing the page.

  Sarah,

  I stood in front of you, and there were a thousand things I wanted to say, but I couldn’t figure out how to say any of them without COMPLETELY shocking you. How do you tell a person you only just met that you think they might be the one to show you that happily ever afters aren’t a myth after all? So I walked away. And then I started to panic: The universe (or God, as you’d probably say) gave me a second chance by putting you next to me, and I might be throwing it away by not being brave enough to tell you how I feel. And then I realised I STILL HAVE YOUR BOOK! And now I’m writing in it, and of all the words swirling about my head and my heart, the only thing I have time to write is … I want to see you again. I don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want this to be it. And maybe you think I’m crazy, and you’re glad you never have to speak to me again, so that’s why it’s all up to you now. If this comes out as insane to you, then you can ignore it. You need never see me again. But if not—if you feel the same way I do—tell me. Answer me. I want to see you again.

  You said your life is messed up at the moment. Well so is mine. Isn’t everyone’s? No one is perfect. And if we keep waiting for that moment when everything in our lives is neatly in place, we may end up missing what’s standing in front of us right now.

  Aiden

  ARHarrison@me.com

  The sunbirds have burst into flame. My whole body is hot and my hands are shaking and I’m not sure I’m even breathing anymore and I can’t believe this letter has been here the WHOLE TIME! Ever since Aiden ran back into the airport, put it into my hands, and kissed me. Of course I felt the same way! I still do!

  I grab my phone from the bed, and it slips from my sweaty fingers. I deposit my butt on the floor and try again, holding it in both hands this time. Looks like I missed several messages while I was searching for and reading the letter.

  Aiden: ???

  Aiden: I swear I can hear crickets chirping.

  Aiden: ????????

  Aiden: Okay, seriously. You have to say something now.

  My fingers fumble over the screen as I try to type a reply as quickly as I can.

  Sarah: I never finished reading the book. I didn’t know you wrote a letter.

  Aiden: Well … this is awkward.

  Sarah: But if I had, this is how I would have responded: I want to see you again. I don’t want to say goodbye either. I don’t want this to be it. I don’t think you’re crazy or insane, and I want to be the one to show you that happily ever afters DO exist.

  There’s a pause that lasts about a million seconds. Then—

  Aiden: I want to kiss you.

  I fall back on the carpet before my ridiculous giddiness can knock me out.

  Aiden: I want to be right
next to you.

  Sarah: WHY ARE YOU SO FAR AWAY?!

  Aiden: It won’t be forever.

  Sarah: Really?

  Aiden: We’ll figure something out.

  Sarah: I’ll never be able to fall asleep tonight.

  Aiden: Me neither. I’ll be wishing you were next to me.

  Sarah: :-)

  Aiden: :-)

  Aiden made me put my phone away at 11 pm my time so I could get a decent sleep and be fresh for today, but I was so excited it took me at least two hours to fall asleep. Then I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep because I kept thinking about him. At least it kept me from thinking about the reading tonight, which, now that it’s only two hours away, is beginning to take over my thoughts again.

  After a cold shower to try and combat the effects of the heat and humidity—unsuccessful, as always—I get back to my bedroom and see something sitting on my pillow. I pad across the carpet to get a closer look. It’s a blue zoo biscuit with a dolphin on it, sitting on top of a piece of paper with the words ‘I know you’ll be amazing tonight!’ printed on it.

  A wide grin is stamped on my face as I pick up the biscuit and the note. I make sure my towel is wrapped securely around me before I walk to Sophie’s room. She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed doing her homework. At least, I assume it’s homework. “Do you know anything about this?” I ask, displaying the biscuit for her to see. She looks up, plastering an innocent expression on her face.

  “A biscuit? Why would I know anything about a biscuit?”

  That grin is back on my face. “You’re a terrible liar,” I tell her.

  “I know.”

  “Will you be ready to leave in forty minutes?”

  “Yip.”

  “And you told Mom and Dad I’m taking you there to see an art exhibition?”

  “Yes. There actually is an art exhibition happening there, so it wasn’t even a lie.”

  “Which is obviously why they believed you,” I say with a wink.

  I hurry back to my room to get ready and try to think about the zoo biscuit and Aiden instead of the audience I’ll soon be standing in front of.

  ***

  Tonight’s event, titled A Twist in the Tale, is taking place in the main gallery of the artSPACE. The gallery lights are slightly dimmed, and fairy lights are strung around the room. Ivy twists around the pillars. Paintings interpreting the theme are displayed on the walls, and the poems and short stories being read tonight will all incorporate something relating to the Twist in the Tale theme. Chairs are set out between the pillars, but most people are walking around admiring the art.

  I wander around the room with Sophie, trying to pay attention to what she’s telling me about the artworks rather than throwing up on them. First there’s a painting by an artist who seems to have taken the theme quite literally. It’s of a cat with a curly pink tale that looks like it belongs to a pig. Next is something a little more intriguing. All that’s visible in the frame of the picture is a man’s foot hovering above a glass running shoe. A woman’s hands are holding the shoe, and it looks like the man’s foot is about to try the shoe on. So this is … Cinderella in reverse. Interesting.

  But SO not interesting enough to distract me from my panic. I pull Sophie into a corner and grip her shoulders tightly. “I can’t do this. We need to leave. I’ll send a message to the organiser and say I got sick or something. It’s not exactly a lie, because I’m pretty sure I’m about to be sick all over—”

  “You can do this, Sarah, and you’re going to be amazing, just like the Zoo Biscuit said.”

  “His name is Aiden,” I remind her. We went over this several times in the car.

  “Well, he’ll always be Zoo Biscuit to me.”

  “I can’t do this!” I almost shriek at her.

  “Hey, calm down.” She looks around to see if anyone noticed my temporary loss of sanity. “Remember that you’re only going to be talking to me. And I’ve already heard your story at home, so I probably won’t even be listening, which means you’ll really only be talking to yourself. Easy, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Let’s just stay until it’s your turn in the programme. Then if you really can’t get up there, we’ll just run out of here.”

  We find two seats in the front row that haven’t yet been claimed, and I attempt some deep breathing while everyone else, who seems at least five hundred times calmer than I am, examines the art before slowly finding themselves a place to sit. Sophie shows me the programme for the evening, and I find my name second from the end. WHY? Now I have to sit through every other item before I’m allowed to run away. I’m never going to last that long.

  A lady walks to the front of the room. Once the audience is quiet, she thanks everyone for coming and talks briefly about something I try hard to focus on but fail to hear. Then she introduces the first person on the programme, a poet. As he stands and walks to the front, Sophie—my sweet little sister—reaches for my hand. Perhaps it’s less about her being sweet and comforting, though, and more about her planning to yank me back into my seat if I attempt a getaway before it’s my turn.

  It’s painful listening to everyone who goes before me, mainly because they’re so darn good. Some of them are practically performing their poetry, never mind simply reading it. Their words are punctuated with dramatic pauses, hand gesticulations, and scary facial expressions.

  No way am I doing something like that.

  We move closer and closer to my name, and I feel more and more like passing out. When the lady introduces me, Sophie squeezes my hand. “You can do this,” she whispers. “Your story rocks. Nobody is gonna see that ending coming.”

  I stand up, and instead of running out of here, my shaky legs carry me to the front. I stare at the papers in my hands. They’re a little crumpled by now, and the edges are covered in damp marks from my sweating fingers, but the words are all still there. My words. My story. And Sophie’s right. It does rock. I look up at her, refusing to let my eyes wander to the rest of the audience. She gives me an encouraging smile and a thumbs up.

  Spread your wings and fly, that little voice says.

  I look back down at the page. I clear my throat, swallow, and begin.

  My first instinct is to race through the words as fast as I can, but, with extreme difficulty, I force myself to go slowly and keep breathing. I was taught at school that it’s good to look up at the audience every few moments when reading something, so I glance at Sophie every time I remember to breathe. Other than that, I focus on the story itself. I remember how excited I was when I came up with that twist at the end. I remember Sophie’s gasp when I first read it to her. I remember the poets and their dramatic pauses, and I force myself to hesitate a moment before delivering that final sentence.

  Then I lower my pages. I look up and allow myself to see the roomful of people for the first time. Every person’s attention is on me, their hands still and their eyes wide.

  Silence.

  “Thank you,” I murmur, then hurry back to my seat as the room erupts with applause. It sounds like the same kind of applause they gave to everyone else, but Sophie grips my arm and squeals in my ear.

  “That was amazing. They all loved it.”

  I’m floating on a cloud of relief and exhilaration, and I don’t hear a single word the last person says. I tune back in just as the organiser lady thanks everyone once again and invites us all to enjoy the snacks, drinks and artwork.

  I stand up and throw my arms around Sophie. “Thank you for coming with me. Thank you for making me do it.”

  She laughs. “Well, I was under strict instructions not to let you run away,” she says into my ear.

  “Instructions? Instructions from …” My words trail off as my gaze falls on someone behind her. Someone familiar. Someone tall with an adorable grin and a dimple in his left cheek. Someone who can’t possibly be standing there for real. “What … how did he …” I pull away from Sophie, who turns to see what I’m lookin
g at.

  “Ah. That must be Zoo Biscuit.”

  My brain can’t quite process the fact that Aiden is standing in this room—in this country!—but my legs know what to do. I run and fling my arms around him. He stumbles backwards into a section of wall between two artworks, but he’s laughing in my ear, so I don’t think he minds that I just about attacked him.

  “You rocked that story,” he says to me.

  “Who cares about the story?” I pull back slightly, but keep my arms looped around his neck. He’s HERE and he’s HOLDING ME and I’m floating WAY beyond cloud nine right now. More like cloud gazillion and nine. “What are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t really think I’d miss this, did you?”

  “But … you live so far away. And you hate flying.”

  His blue-green eyes sparkle as he smiles. “I never went home.”

  “What?” I shake my head in confusion. “But you said you were leaving.”

  He nods. “I did say that. And I did leave. But not for home. I’ve been in Joburg staying with a friend of mine. We studied together until about a year ago when he moved here. After Kelly and I ended things, I told him I was looking for a new direction with my studies. When he heard I was visiting South Africa, he suggested I stay a bit longer and check out the options here.”