“If we don’t happen to see you in the next couple of days, we really enjoyed meeting you and having you here with us,” I said.
Alanna took my hand. “This isn’t good-bye. We’ll definitely meet up again . . . Just on a different continent.”
I tried to look like I believed her. “We will.”
“And you’ll be there for the wedding,” she said, as if trying to make it come true by sheer determination.
“You’ll look beautiful on your big day,” I said before we unlocked the door and went in.
“They’re such a nice couple. I can’t wait to see them again,” I heard Alanna say before the door closed.
FIFTEEN
IT WAS THURSDAY. I shot up from bed.
I got up too quickly and held my head, waiting for the rush to pass.
Aaron had told us he would knock on our door at four, just to make sure we were up in time for our flight. He hadn’t knocked yet . . . Or at least I didn’t think he did.
I gently shook Henley awake. “It’s time to get up. Aaron hasn’t knocked yet, has he?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” Henley stretched both arms above his head.
Just then a knock sounded on our door.
“Well, that’s it,” I said. Louder, I said, “Thanks!” so Aaron could hear.
Henley sat up. “So we’re really doing this?”
“Yes, today’s airport day.”
I got up out of bed and started my morning routine, beginning with washing my face. Henley got dressed in the meantime.
“So your first airport and your first flight,” I said, as we switched locations.
“There’s a first for everything.” Henley’s voice carried from the bathroom. “Any tips?”
“Not really . . . just make sure not to get in anyone’s way.”
“Sounds like a tip for life in general.”
We had time for a quick bite, so I began spreading peanut butter on two slices of bread.
“Nothing like a home-cooked meal,” Henley said, coming out of the bathroom.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll eat both slices.”
Henley took one of the pieces of bread before I could finish spreading the peanut butter on the other. He wolfed it down just as I took my first bite.
“Hungry?”
“With this food? Always.”
“This makes airplane food look good,” I said.
“Airplanes have food?”
After finishing my slice of bread and running my fingers over the corners of my mouth to make sure I hadn’t smeared peanut butter over my face, I grabbed the backpack. We had packed everything into it the night before. We’d even wrapped the clock in clothing to ensure it didn’t get bumped around.
Henley already had the door open.
Down at the lobby, Aaron smiled as we walked in. He pulled out two brown paper bags from behind the desk. “I took the liberty of fixing you a small lunch. Sandwiches. No meat, since I didn’t know if you were vegetarians. Hope that’s all right. No one’s gluten-free, are you?”
“That’s wonderful! Thank you.” I took the bags and tucked them into the backpack, on top of everything so the sandwiches wouldn’t be crushed.
“I believe everything’s settled?” Henley checked.
“Yes, it is. Would you like me to find you a cab?”
“That would be great.”
Aaron headed out, and we sat down on the two chairs on either side of the door.
“It’s strange that I’m nervous, isn’t it?” Henley said. “Who gets nervous with something that apparently everyone does nowadays?”
“It’s a new experience. It’s only normal to get a little jittery right before.”
“The airport, I’m fine with,” he said. “It’s the hurtling through the air thousands of feet above ground that I’m not too keen on.”
That made sense. I remembered I had tried not to think about that on my first flight.
A few minutes later Aaron popped his head through the door. “The cab’s here.”
We grabbed the backpack and followed him out. I loved how roomy the black cabs were on the inside—nothing like New York yellow cabs.
“Thank you, Aaron!” I said as I slid in after Henley.
“Have a safe flight!”
I sat across from Henley. I liked that you could do that with these taxis. I placed the backpack between our feet.
“Heathrow, please.”
We pulled away from the curb, and I waved at Aaron. He stood on the front step of the hostel building and waved back until he was out of sight.
Henley and I spent the taxi ride to the airport staring out of the window. The London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace—we saw all the touristy sights we hadn’t found time to see while we were actually here.
I should’ve been used to it by then, but it was still so strange to look out and see regular people going about their lives without a single visible worry, while I was hiding a secret from the world and trying to stay alive. It made everything look so trivial.
We drove away from all the people and got on a road that looked like a freeway. I watched the cars go by. Soon I started seeing signs for the airport.
“What terminal are we heading to?” our cabdriver asked.
“Terminal three.”
“And what airline?”
I checked the tickets we had printed out in the library just in case. “Virgin Atlantic.”
Twenty minutes later, I felt the car slowing down.
We pulled up next to the sign that said Terminal Three in bright yellow.
“Here we are,” the cabdriver said.
“Thank you,” I said, handing the taxi driver our Visa gift card.
Henley and I watched the driver fumble with it before he swiped it slowly through his credit card machine. We held our breaths.
Beep.
It didn’t sound like a negative beep, if there was such a thing. The driver didn’t look peeved—in fact, his expression really hadn’t changed. The card had worked before, but every time it went through I was surprised.
The driver handed us back the card. “Thank you very much.”
Henley and I climbed out of the back seat of the cab and onto the bustling pavement in front of the airport terminal.
“My goodness, it seems as if everyone’s here,” Henley said.
“Wait till you see the inside,” I said, dragging him through the doors.
Henley wanted to stop and watch the automatic doors, but I didn’t let him. We had work to do.
“My God . . .” Henley openly gawked at the number of people inside, all walking fast, rolling their suitcases behind them. “So many people . . .”
I steered Henley into the line. He played with the retractable rope set up next to us to help keep the crowd in an orderly line.
“Next, please!”
There were seven people working the nine or so ticketing desks. They were calling people from the line rather efficiently, and we found ourselves moving forward a few steps in the line every couple minutes.
“So . . . what are we in line for, again?” Henley stopped playing with the retractable rope and faced me.
“This is the ticketing section,” I whispered, having no other name to call it. “This is where we check in. We’ll ask if the flight’s on time, since that’s what most people do . . .”
Henley took this information seriously. I could tell he was trying to remember every twenty-first-century fact I told him.
“Next in line!”
“That’s us,” I said.
I pulled Henley up to the desk of a woman wearing a blue blazer. She was waving at us to come . . . or maybe it was to hurry up.
“How can I help you today?” She smiled. She had a smear of her pink lipstick on her top tooth.
Oddly, that reminded me of the first woman who had ever checked me in at an airport. I had bought a last-minute ticket to Madrid from her that connected in Heathrow. That was the beginning of me being stuc
k in England for a few centuries.
“We would like to check in, please,” I said.
Henley dug through the backpack. His hand emerged with the paperwork we had printed out in the library.
“Do you need these?” he said.
“Yes, I do.” I took the papers and handed them to the woman.
“Oh, good. You already printed out your tickets. How smart of you two. You know, it’s always faster that way. Any bags to check?” She asked what sounded like a rote question, even though she could see we only had the backpack on us.
“No.”
“Just carrying on that backpack then?”
“Yes.”
She gave us a paper tag on an elastic band to tie onto the backpack.
“Has the flight information changed?” I had seen people asking this at the desk. “Is the flight still on time?”
“As of right now, nothing’s changed. Gate Twenty-Three and the flight is still at eight fifteen.” The woman smiled again, and I saw that a little more lipstick had gotten on her teeth.
“Perfect,” I said.
“Is there anything else I could help you both with today?”
I wondered if I should mention the lipstick on her teeth? Better not. It’s not my place.
“No, not at all.”
“Security is right over to your left.” The woman pointed. “Have a pleasant flight!”
Henley and I walked in the direction she had pointed and soon joined the mob of people waiting in line for security.
“Do exactly as the airport security officers ask you, and you’ll be fine,” I whispered.
“Airport security?”
“The people in uniform here,” I said.
A baby wailed as his mother tried to juggle him and the laptop she was putting onto a tray.
“Why does this take so long?” Henley asked.
I pointed to a plastic sign with pictures of everything prohibited in airports and on flights. “People have to take out their electronics, throw away their water, and take off their shoes.”
“All for security’s sake?”
“To make sure none of us are carrying explosives.”
Henley was watching the man in front of us intently.
“Shoes,” he whispered to himself, as the man in front took off his shoes. “Into the bins.”
The man placed his leather loafers into one of the gray bins he had pulled out.
“Boarding pass,” Henley said softly.
The man retrieved his boarding pass from his briefcase, which was already on the conveyor belt.
“Passport.”
The man put his boarding pass in the pages of his passport.
“Machine.”
A British Airport Security agent signaled the man forward. The man walked into the full-body scan and put his arms up while the scanner spun around him.
Henley looked serious. “Is that for the explosives too?”
“I guess.”
It was our turn now.
Henley was taking off his shoes before I had to tell him. Off to a good start.
I put the backpack on the conveyor belt. For the first time, I was glad for its obnoxious neon-green color; there was no way anyone in their right mind would mistake it for theirs.
I took off my shoes and placed them next to Henley’s in the bin.
Henley already had the boarding passes and our passports in his hand. He handed one set to me, and I checked to make sure it was mine.
The BAS agent on the other side of the body scanner motioned.
“Do you want me to go first?” I asked Henley quickly.
He nodded.
I walked in and made a show of purposefully matching my feet to the colored footprints taped onto the floor of the machine. I hoped Henley caught that. I raised both arms and froze for the scanner to whirl around me.
“You’re good,” the officer called.
He glanced at my boarding pass and waved me on.
I stood by the conveyor belt and started to collect our stuff, but I was too distracted by watching Henley walk into the machine.
He put his feet on the colored footprints. Good. He raised his arms and didn’t move. Very good. Henley stayed in that position a second longer than he needed to after the scanner was done.
“You’re free to go, sir,” the officer called.
Henley walked past him and flashed his boarding pass as he had seen me do.
He joined me by the conveyor belt and took his shoes.
“Why don’t we sit on that bench there to get these on?” I pointed over to the corner by the elevator.
Henley padded after me in bare feet.
“How did I do?” he asked before sitting down.
I sat down beside him, putting on my shoes. “Wonderfully. It couldn’t have gone better.”
“Really?” He slipped into his shoes. “Maybe this isn’t too bad after all.” Henley stood up. “I’m ready for the next step.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his eagerness.
I checked our boarding passes. “We’re Gate Twenty-Three. I’m pretty sure that’s right down here, and we still have a good hour.” I started walking.
On our way to the gate, we stopped by a machine to change our remaining cash from pounds to dollars, just in case we needed cash fast in New York.
Henley looked at the seats by the gates as we passed them. “So do we sit by our gate and just wait now?”
“That’s usually what happens.” Here I was, telling Henley what “usually” happened at airports even though I had only been to an airport once before. That’s usually what happened in the movies, though.
Henley spotted it first. “Gate Twenty-Three. That’s us, right?”
There was a long line of people parked at the closed door that led to the plane. It wasn’t moving, so I saw no sense in standing with them. They were probably all first class and business class, anyway.
Although the seating area was getting crowded, we found two seats next to each other toward the back, next to a nursing mother.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said as we sat down.
“Oh, no problem,” I said.
“I figured nursing Alex would be better than him starting a screaming fit in the middle of the terminal.”
Henley crossed his legs and started to jiggle his foot.
At first I thought he had some issue with the nursing mother, but then I saw his eyes were unfocused and aimed lazily at the floor twenty feet in front of him. He was simply bored.
“You want something to do?” I guessed.
“Well, yes. That would be nice.”
“Why don’t you go walk around the terminal and look at all the stores, then?”
Henley looked as if I had said animals could talk. “They have shops in airports?” He was standing already.
“Yes, they do. You can even look at the magazines in the small kiosk over there.” I pointed to the compact setup across the walkway. “But stay close. We don’t have that much time till we board. And be sure to use the restroom before we do.” I didn’t know if I was talking to a child or someone more than fifty years my senior.
“Yes, ma’am.” And he was off.
The woman next to me had probably listened to the entire conversation, though she politely pretended she hadn’t heard a thing. She must have thought we were a strange couple indeed.
I watched Henley first walk over to the magazine stand. He stared long and hard at the rows of bestselling books they had on the shelves. Knowing him, he’s always looked at books the same way ever since he was little. Henley was the type of person to find the words in book titles to be constraining. He’d stare at the colorful covers and imagine his own worlds within the pages of the books.
He moved on to the magazines in the spinning cart and picked one up.
From where I was, I couldn’t tell what he was looking at, but I hoped it was a motoring magazine. Henley would love to see how differently the cars of this time were made
and run compared to the automobiles of his era. Or maybe it was a magazine like National Geographic, and he could see full-spread photos of national parks and landscapes he was familiar with.
Whatever the magazine was, Henley took his time flipping through it. It looked like he found an article he liked, because he spent several minutes on one page. Maybe it was a humorous article, because his lips twitched as if he was trying to keep from laughing.
Henley was best when he thought no one was watching. He was genuine. Maybe naïve, compared to the people of this time, but so was I. Henley was real.
He put the magazine down and spent some time turning the cart. He was probably marveling at how it moved so smoothly. He even leaned down to look at the gears and wheels on the bottom. After briefly scanning the other magazines, Henley left that kiosk and moved to the one next to it.
It looked like an airport gift shop. They sold teddy bears, no doubt with some sort of London shirt, boxes of chocolate, probably with Big Ben on the lid, and of course the most obligatory tourist gift of them all: T-shirts emblazoned with the word “London” over and over. I wondered what Henley thought of them, as he stood still and gazed at the rack of T-shirts for far longer than I would have expected.
He moved on and out of sight, probably to look at more stores farther down the hall.
I sat for a while and studied the other people near me at the gate. They all seemed busy, glued to the tiny screens of their phones and tablets. It wasn’t that interesting to watch.
I figured I would use the restroom while I waited.
I asked the woman next to me if she would mind saving our seats, since I was taking the backpack with me.
When I returned, she was still rocking her baby in her arms and murmuring to him.
“Thanks. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Not at all.”
I noticed they had started boarding our flight. But it was still Groups One and Two. I looked at our tickets. We were Group Four.
Henley was walking toward the gate. No doubt he had heard the announcement that our flight was boarding.
“We’re going on soon?” he asked. “Should we get in line?”
“Since it’s almost our turn, why not?”
We stood toward the side so people who were in the previous groups could still get past us.
The Day Before Forever Page 22