Mayday

by Karen Harrington

  Nope.

  I couldn’t look at him. I was afraid my face would show my thoughts. Grandpa didn’t think my dad was going to show up anytime soon. I was starting to doubt it, too.

  Please, be on time! Be on time! Don’t make me look stupid!

  “Being on time is a virtue,” Grandpa said.

  My nerves rattled me and I started to sweat. Like it was my fault Dad was late. I wished Grandpa knew that I was allergic to being tardy. My teachers always said so.

  Dad showed up ten minutes later. Only twenty minutes late. I grabbed my jacket and hustled toward the front door, smiling. Smiling with so much relief that it pulled at my stitches and made my face feel tight.

  “He’s bringing you home, right?” Grandpa asked. I nodded yes, still smiling. “Well, call if anything changes. If you need help.”

  I wasn’t going to need help. My dad had said he’d be there and he was. I raced down the front walk, excited about the party, the new year. Everything.

  CHAPTER 10

  Well, I didn’t need to be so excited.

  “We invited a few friends and neighbors,” Dad said as he opened the front door to his house. There were black and gold balloons everywhere. Plates and cups on the coffee table and every other table in the place. The smell of pizza and grilled chicken. My mouth watered. My stomach growled.

  “Do you want something to eat?” he asked.

  I started to write something on my notepad about not eating solid foods, but I stopped because I’d just noticed his shirt. It was an Imagine Dragons T-shirt.

  I pointed to his shirt and wrote him a note: Did you go to the concert?

  “Oh, yeah, it was great,” he said, smiling. “We ended up with only two tickets. Next time you can go, okay?”

  Next thing I knew, my dad had his arm around my shoulders. Like I was a good friend. Like he was glad I was there.

  “Hey, everyone,” he shouted above the music. “This is my son! He survived that plane crash and is here in one piece. How about that?”

  His friends cheered.

  “He’s the big man now! He can fly,” he said, his arm still around me. His friends laughing.

  It didn’t feel right to be laughing about it.

  “Hey, I’m just messing with you, Wayne,” he said, patting me on the back.

  I faked a smile. How could he know what it felt like to be a plane-crash survivor? Not very many people did. We were a small but tight club.

  Then I waited to see if anyone would talk to me or point at my face. But the lights were low and the music was turned up high and everyone was in a party mood.

  “Go say hi to Carrot and Stephanie, why don’t ya?” Dad said.

  Stephanie was my Dad’s new wife. His new kid was named Garrett, but everyone called him Carrot. I checked my watch. Why was Carrot still awake? When I’d come to my dad’s house at night before, Carrot was always in bed.

  I wrote a note: Carrot’s awake?

  “Why not! It’s New Year’s Eve,” Dad said.

  Dad walked with me to Carrot’s room, his hand still around my shoulders. Only now, it didn’t feel friendly. It felt like a shove. He opened Carrot’s door. Carrot was on the floor on top of a rug that had little streets printed on it. He was running his cars up and down the streets.

  “Hey, hon, look who’s finally here,” Dad said.

  “Hi, Wayne,” Stephanie said. “Did you get something to eat?”

  I needed to write all-purpose notes about my limited ability to eat. I would do that later. For now, I wrote: Thanks.

  Carrot looked up at me, pointed at my head, and shouted for his mother. “Mama!” He ran and hid behind Stephanie.

  “It’s okay. It’s just Wayne. He’s here to play with you,” Stephanie said.

  “No, Mama!”

  “Don’t be such a crybaby, Carrot,” Dad said. “It’s fine.” My dad left the room and went back to the party.

  Carrot looked at me and squinted. He was still a little scared of my new face. Who could blame him?

  I waved to him.

  “Your face is messed up,” Carrot said. “What happened?”

  So my dad hadn’t told him about the accident? Figured.

  I scanned the room for a toy airplane. There had to be one there. Carrot’s room was a virtual toy store. Sure enough, I found a blue-and-white model prop plane, flew it, and let it fall onto the carpet.

  “Okay,” he said. “This is my favorite car.” He picked up a red Matchbox race car.

  After a while, I heard fireworks go off. Carrot looked scared. A loud BOOM. And then POP, POP, POP. Carrot’s eyes were wide. He looked at Stephanie with a question on his face. Should I cry or not?

  “Oh, what is he doing now?” Stephanie got off the floor and left the room. Carrot and I followed her.

  In the living room, Dad was sitting on the old futon, setting off tiny fireworks across the coffee table. Yep. In the living room, across the coffee table. His friends were laughing and slapping him on the back. The next one to go off had a rapid-fire bang. It shot up three or four times and blackened the ceiling.

  I coughed on the smoke and went dizzy. The ground fell out from underneath me. My chest hurt.

  Don’t panic.

  “You look green, Wayne,” Dad said. “Hey, here, set this off.”

  He forced one into my hand. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I shook my head.

  “Come on and have some fun, Wayne!” He set off a sparkler, and it might have been pretty except that the smell of it choked me. I stumbled back onto the futon.

  I couldn’t breathe. My throat tightened. I coughed again. I suddenly thought, I shouldn’t be here. Nobody should be here. I grabbed Carrot and lit out through the front door. The smell of burning chemicals followed me. I gulped down the fresh outside air and bolted down the block. When I got to the streetlamp, I realized I still had Carrot in my arms.

  What am I doing?

  Carrot had that look on his face like he might cry any second.

  I walked back down the street with Carrot. I patted him on the back.

  It’s okay, Carrot.

  Man, I wanted to talk to him, to say everything was okay and not to be scared. His face was red. I knew he was probably as confused as I was.

  Down the street, another neighbor set off a load of fireworks. The stench of sulfur and smoke hung in the air. They went off again and again. It sounded like gunfire. So I carried Carrot to my dad’s front yard. There was Stephanie, hand on her hip, giving me a funny look.

  “What are you doing, Wayne?” she asked. “That’s not very responsible, you know?”

  She took Carrot from me and went back inside. I stood there like a stump. Like a stupid, hollowed-out block of wood.

  I couldn’t go back inside. Loud pops and crackles were still going off. The music seemed to be louder. Someone popped a balloon. My heart raced. The earth felt like it was moving too fast underneath my feet. I thought I might throw up. And there it was. The exact same panic I had that day he did what he did back when I was eight.

  I raced away from the neighborhood. I didn’t plan to. I ran, and once I was moving, I couldn’t stop. The sounds and the smoke and the dizzy feeling in my head forced me to the ground a couple of times. I tripped, scuffing my palms on the pavement. I guessed at where I was going. Was it two left turns out of his subdivision? Is that where it intersected with Crossland Road, one of the main streets between my house and Dad’s? My phone was in my pocket. I could text Mom. Grandpa would have to come get me. There would be that look in his eyes. That I told you so look.

  I ran faster.

  My jacket was back at my dad’s house. The cold night air chilled me to the bone. I tried to warm up by stepping up my pace. Then, relief! I finally sighted Crossland Road. There were plenty of cars racing down the road, people shouting Happy New Year! or Woo-woo! It was after midnight. The year had turned. Everyone in the world was happy. Everyone.

  The inside of my body began to warm up. My ankle wa
s tender and sore, but I wasn’t going back. No way. Not inside that house where he was trying to catch everything on fire. Even I knew that.

  I kept running, streetlight to streetlight. Then the water tower. The water tower that watched over Cedar Drive with its steady red light. Nerd alert: A guy has never been so happy to see a water tower.

  True story.

  It was my compass. And it made me swallow the panic.

  The sky had turned dark blue and clear, or maybe it had been that way all along and I just couldn’t see it through the smoke or didn’t notice it because I was dizzy. But now that I knew the way home, I focused on it. I made out the Big Dipper. I saw two planes crossing over, too. Full of passengers celebrating New Year’s Eve in the sky. People looking across the aisle, wishing a stranger a happy new year. It all made me think of 14A. So I quit thinking about it.

  I turned onto Dogwood Street and then made a left onto Cedar Drive, where it was pretty quiet. I could hear my own breathing. Could hear my feet hit the pavement at a steady pace. I ran right in the middle of the road because, why not? Who would know?

  I found the key to our house in the secret place Mom hides it. But I saw the blue light from the TV, which meant Grandpa was still up. It was too cold to wait it out, so I put the key in the lock.

  The house was just the way I like a house—with no stupid people shooting off explosives inside it. Thankfully, Grandpa was in the big chair, snoring.

  I ran to my room, closed the door quietly, and fell back onto my bed. I took deep, painful breaths through my raggedy throat. I tried to get my heart to slow down. Get my head on straight. Let my face thaw out and stop stinging. Make my ankle stop throbbing. It was like all my aches and injuries had been running five feet behind me and had suddenly caught up. I was in bad shape. I couldn’t risk going to the kitchen for ice.

  Why couldn’t you just call Grandpa to pick you up, you dummy? Your ankle wouldn’t hurt. Your throat wouldn’t be on fire. Why didn’t you just call?

  But I knew why. I didn’t call because we’d both have to admit that my dad could be a jerk. And yeah, he had done a really jerky thing tonight. But it’s one thing to call your own parent a jerk. You don’t want anyone else to do it. You’d rather feel sore all over and hope someone whose name rhymes with mad worries about how you got home.

  True story.

  CHAPTER 11

  I woke up the next morning to the sound of my phone buzzing. Maybe it was the Flee wondering where I was.

  Hola, Señor Kovok. Happy New Year.

  Hola, Señorita Sandy. Cómo estás?

  Muy bien! Look on your porch!

  Nope. No messages from my dad.

  Sandy had sent a big basket of muffins to our house, along with a Happy New Year card. Even though muffin consumption was going to be far beyond my abilities for a while, I loved that Sandy had thought of me. So I decided I would find a way to make the muffins useful. I put the basket on our kitchen counter and went out into the backyard with a single muffin. Blueberry.

  I lay down on the hard, cold New Year’s grass and used the muffin as a head support. It failed. It failed epically, but I didn’t care.

  I lay there and scouted for planes flying overhead. I’d fallen asleep the night before thinking about all the 14As who crossed my airspace every single day. All those strangers above the earth. All of them, like me and Mom, who just wanted to get home safe.

  It was a fast-moving sky filled with thin clouds. I waited and watched for a plane to fly over. I put my hand up to the sky and positioned it underneath the belly of the first plane I spotted and held it there. I carried it for the time it took to cross my personal airspace. Twenty-eight seconds.

  Be safe, plane.

  Do you know what Orville Wright once said about the physics of flight? He said that “the airplane stays up because it doesn’t have time to fall.”

  Because it doesn’t have time to fall. Is that a good reason to fly? A way to make a person feel safe? Maybe.

  Do you know that more people die each year from shaking a vending machine than from shark attacks?

  True story.

  People are afraid of sharks. But have you ever heard of a vending machine phobia? Not me. Maybe there should be a show called Deadliest Snacks.

  Someone with a loud, Tim LeMoot, the Texas Boot, ALL-CAPS voice could shout, YOUR NEXT CANDY BAR COULD BE YOUR LAST!

  Some people are afraid to fly, too, but it doesn’t stop thousands of people from traveling.

  Every day in the United States, more than twenty-seven thousand commercial flights take off.

  I looked it up.

  That means that thousands of people were floating seven miles above the earth right as I was lying down, all relying on Orville Wright’s theory that planes don’t have time to fall.

  All those planes.

  And maybe even a hidden crocodile. There was a good chance that at least one out of six thousand flights carried a dork who’d smuggled a live animal on board.

  I carried a second plane. Twenty-nine seconds.

  I pictured the woman in 14A. Smiling, showing me her red-and-green quilted tree skirt. I still wished I’d talked to her on our flight.

  So I made up other people inside the fuselage. Families. A woman reading a paperback. A guy playing a video game. Oh, and there’s a flight attendant handing out snacks, and she looks just like my math teacher, Mrs. Wiggington. Mrs. W always smiled as she handed out math worksheets.

  Be safe, Mrs. W.

  I closed my eyes. The clouds had thinned out. Sun hit my backyard. My face was warm. Maybe today would be a good day, I thought. Maybe it would be the day Liz Delaney found the flag. And the empty space on the wall could be filled. Everything put in place. I let my mind go there, float. Mom with a smile, less one eyebrow. Grandpa informing me that I’d been useful because I’d thought to contact Ms. Delaney.

  My mind unfolded. Relaxed. Went off on a trip to a warm place where there were no fireworks or sore ankles.

  It was a great fantasy.

  I would have let my mind stay gone all day.

  But a long, tall, square-shouldered, aviator-sunglasses-wearing shadow eclipsed the sun. I looked up and squinted.

  “Wayne, have you parted company with your senses? You realize you are lying on your dog’s latrine.”

  I rolled over, stood up, and brushed dry grass from my jeans. Grandpa was consuming one of my muffins. My one gift from the girl of my dreams.

  “I didn’t hear your father’s car drive up last night,” he said, hands on his hips.

  I shrugged. You can’t hear what’s not there.

  “Your mother needs your help washing her hair. Can you do it?”

  I helped Mom wash her hair in the kitchen sink.

  “Are you excited about going to the new school next week?”

  I nodded yes. I’d never lied to Mom with a gesture before.

  “Nice of Sandy to send those muffins,” Mom said. She seemed better than the previous day. Maybe she thought the new year was going to be, well, new.

  “Want to watch a movie later?”

  Do I get to pick?

  “Sure,” she said. No sad smile. “Oh, your dad called and said he was going to drop off your jacket. Guess you left it there?”

  I shrugged.

  “Wayne? Honey, do you ever want to talk to anyone about the crash? A counselor? If you do, let me know. We could do it together, okay?” She touched my face.

  No, even if I could actually talk, I didn’t want to talk to a counselor. I just needed the flag to be found, Grandpa to move back to his house, my face and neck to heal, my dad to stop messing with me, and Mom to keep smiling and make spaghetti every Tuesday. That was all. I no longer even cared if we ever got a dishwasher. I didn’t mind washing dishes.

  I knew what I wanted. So what was there to talk about?

  I smiled at her because I knew that was what she wanted, and then I went out the front door.

  My skateboard was leaning again
st the brick. I flung it on the sidewalk and took off. I wasn’t going to be home when the Flee showed up. No way.

  I skateboarded way past our block. Past Elm and Dogwood and Oak Streets. Deep into the new neighborhood called the Estates. It was set right against our forest of streets. For me, the best thing about the Estates wasn’t the new houses. It was the new streets. Smooth, even, and acorn-free. Perfect for skateboarding. I skated all the way to the park, where eighty-year-old trees shaded the playground equipment in summertime. I climbed up into the plastic spaceship that had been bright red when we moved there but was now faded to pale pink. I’d only intended to sit there with my thoughts for a short time and look at planes and think about what I might text to Sandy. But a mom and her two kids came to the park. They played on the swings and laughed. I didn’t want to scare them with my face the way I’d scared Carrot. And since I had no voice to explain to the mother that I wasn’t a murdery stalker, I stayed up in that spaceship until dark.

  DATA

  Flight 56 debris found 15 miles east of crash site.

  Question: How large is total debris field?

  Tasks: Obtain map of East Texas. Monitor collection of all debris.

  CHAPTER 12

  My whole life, I’d been pretty good at avoiding mirrors. But since I became a plane-crash survivor, I learned that people were like mirrors. And they were harder to avoid.

  I’d covered the bathroom mirror with a towel. Grandpa took it down. I covered it with six sheets of paper. He crumpled those up.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked.

  I pointed to my face. I thought my meaning was obvious.

  “Don’t be so dramatic. So you have some cuts. Big deal,” he said.

  My stitches were those self-absorbing ones. They had completely disappeared the week before. You would think this was an improvement in how I looked, but no, it wasn’t. Now I had a pink L-shaped scar down my face. The doctor told Mom I had to wear these bright white butterfly-shaped bandages across the scar to keep from tearing the skin. There were three of them on my face, from my eyebrow to my jawline. And the bruises on my chin and cheek? They had morphed from purple into a yellow-green color.