I had socks on. They were thick wool socks, padded along the bottom. I used to save them for end-of-season soccer games, when the ground froze and the cold would soak up through my cleats. They’d always kept my feet nice and warm before. Too warm even, sometimes.
There was a cake on the counter, but I didn’t feel like eating any of it even though I desperately needed the distraction. Food would do it now, but I wanted something different. I went over to the fridge. Inside was milk, soda, rolls, cheese, apples, and a package of hamburger.
My feet were still cold. I wiggled my toes, felt them press against my socks.
I picked up the meat. I’d make myself a burger. The kitchen would get warm when I cooked it, plus it would give me something to do. Something to think about. I dropped the package on the counter, pulled open the plastic that covered it. I pushed my hands into the meat.
As soon as I did, I was on the plane.
I can’t find anything to eat in my bag. I was sure I had something saved for this part of the trip, but I guess I didn’t. I wish I’d thought to get some actual food while I was stuck waiting in Chicago. Henry says something over the tinny intercom. It’s raining so hard I can’t make out the words. It doesn’t matter anyway. I can already tell we’re starting to descend because the trees are closer, and if he’s telling us there’s turbulence, well, the plane’s been bouncing around ever since we took off.
I glance over at the people across the aisle as I shove my bag back under my seat. The park guy, Walter, has finally stopped fiddling with his hat and actually put it on. The annoying blond lady, Sandra, says she wishes she could call home and check on her baby. I wish she could too so she’d stop talking about it.
Carl cracks his knuckles for the four millionth time and says, “I sure am hungry.”
I sigh. It was nice of Carl to let me have the window seat, but the knuckle cracking is driving me crazy, and I’m tired of hearing him talk about his family. And his heart attack. And his wife and how she won’t let him eat cake. I reach down and check the pocket on the side of my bag.
Food! Well, what the flight attendant on the way to Chicago handed out after an old lady complained. I knew I had something, but still, finding it there was like a surprise. That flight seemed like forever ago.
I rip open the tiny bag of pretzels with my teeth and stare out the rain-wet window at the clouds, which are gathering thick and dark. I saved the pretzels till now because the last part of the flight is so boring. Once you cross into Clark County it’s all trees. The only reason Reardon even has an airport is because of the Park Service. Stupid forest. I remember how, on the flight out, when we took off the trees seemed so close to the plane, kind of like they are now, so close, so close, too close and—
And everything after is a blur of noise and heat and pain.
When I can think again, I’m hanging upside down, legs dangling up into a smoky wet sky and this is what I think: My head hurts. I had a bag of pretzels. Where are they? I smell smoke.
I smell smoke and dirt and there’s rain on my face, in my eyes. It feels cool on my legs. Lying like this is giving me a headache, but I can’t think of how to fix it. All I can think about are those pretzels. I don’t know what happened to them.
I hear something. The thing is, it’s not a sound. It’s stillness. A strange, too-quiet stillness, like all the air around me has frozen.
Then the world explodes.
There’s a rush of heat, so hot I feel it like a sudden sunburn on my skin, and then I see it, a huge ball of flame shooting up toward the sky and spreading out, dropping all around me. Part of it falls and I feel it land on my feet, see bits of it spark down toward my head. I think I should move, but all I can do is stare at the fire. It’s so strange. Fire isn’t heavy. It’s light.
But this fire is heavy, and it’s caught on my feet, rain pounding on it and making it flicker. It doesn’t vanish, though, just sputters and flares up again. How does it do that? I close my eyes and try to figure it out, but it’s hard because my head still hurts and there’s rain everywhere and my feet are hot. I open my eyes and look at them.
My shoes are on fire, melting.
I can move then. I start shaking my feet, trying to get the flames off but they won’t move and I can’t turn, can’t do anything but kick my feet at the sky.
Then I remember the plane.
I remember being on it. I remember opening my pack of pretzels and looking out the window. I remember seeing trees all around us, so close.
I’m in my seat. Upside down, rain and fire all around me, and I’m still in my seat.
The plane crashed.
The heavy fire on my shoes is a piece of the plane, covered with something, fuel maybe, hot and angry enough to burn even in the rain.
My shoes are still on fire. My feet are starting to hurt.
I jerk my arms down, fumbling for my seat belt. I find it, but it won’t pull free. I yank again, my feet kicking at nothing, and it opens. I fall and hit something solid, slamming into it. It hurts, pushing all the breath out of me, but I am too busy trying to get my shoes off to notice.
I end up shoving my fingers into the back of them and pushing. Hot rubber melts against my fingers, my feet sliding free, and I wave my hands in the air, arms stretched out like I’m flying. The wind blows again, hard, and water pours into my nose and mouth and pushes my soccer cleats—my lucky shoes—off my hands.
I wipe the rain off my face and stare at my pink feet for a moment. They look so strange, so bright and wet and resting on ground that doesn’t look like ground at all.
I touch it. It’s metal. I’m still inside the plane. I look around. Where I am it almost looks like a plane still, except everything up is down and there’s a hole where the bottom of the plane was, showing a strange dark red-gray sky.
There’s another hole farther up, a long jagged one dotted with broken glass, and I can see where part of the outside of the plane has bent inside. The rest of the plane should be there. It isn’t. Just the outside, more gray-red sky and fire and rain. I see a piece of foil caught on the edge of the hole, curling up into itself in the wind. There is a pretzel hovering above it, spinning in place before it is shoved away by the rain.
That’s where my pretzels are. I was sitting down there. How did I end up here, still strapped in my seat?
I don’t know.
Where’s the seat next to mine? It isn’t here. I wipe rain out of my eyes again and look at the hole where the plane was torn in two. Up by where my pretzels were. The seat is there. I can see it now. There’s a pair of boots near it. They aren’t mine.
That’s all I can think. They aren’t mine. They aren’t mine.
I shake my head. It hurts.
I have to move. To . . . something.
Speak. Okay, yes.
Speak.
“Hello?” I say, creeping forward, my feet tender and slippery. It takes me a while to reach the seat.
“Hello?” I say again and when I do, a hand stretches out blindly, knuckles raw red even in the rain. I scramble back, terrified, and end up almost falling out of the hole, my shorts catching on the jagged metal, rain smashing into my face as smoke fills my mouth and nose.
The hand is still reaching out.
It’s Carl. Carl, who was sitting next to me. His seat didn’t move. If the plane was turned right side up, if the holes in it could be pretended away, he would be ready to fly.
I move toward him. He is upside down like I was, blood dripping from his mouth. His eyes are open wide and sightless.
“Carl?”
He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t seem to see me.
I do not want to touch his hand. I touch his face instead, avoiding his mouth. His skin is warm. There is a pulse beating in his neck. I don’t know if it’s fast or slow. I can’t feel it very well. I press harder, trying to check. He blinks but his eyes stay so empty and when he breathes it’s so loud and so slow.
“Help me,” he says, his voice a faint wheeze
, and I grab the dangling end of his seatbelt and follow it up, pulling it open. I’d do anything to stop him sounding like that. To stop him staring with those empty eyes.
He falls hard but I grab him, taking his hand in mine, and start pushing back toward the hole I almost fell out of, pushing toward the rain and the smoky gray sky. He holds on tight and his breathing is louder than the rain, a thick rattling gurgle.
Where our hands join, the rain washes pink rivers over my skin. I try not to look back, to keep moving forward, but there is so much pink and he is moving so slowly, his hand growing heavier and heavier in mine. When I finally pull us free of the hole we fall into mud, rocks scratching my skin, and the rain is everywhere.
His hand falls away from mine and when I look back at him it’s still clamped into the shape it was when it held mine. His eyes are still wide open, and the rain washes into them, over the bright red stain that smears his mouth.
“We made it,” I tell him, “we’re all right,” but he doesn’t blink, doesn’t move and when I go back to him there is nothing to feel in his throat and his skin is wet and cooling. The rain smells like metal, like blood, and keeps pouring into his open eyes, making tears. I lean over his face, covering him from the rain, watching his eyes as I wipe his mouth with my shirt. He doesn’t blink. His chest doesn’t rise and fall. He doesn’t see that we have lived.
“Come on,” I say, pleading, but he doesn’t answer.
Someone else does, though.
Someone else screams.
I look around, but there’s nothing to see but rocks and metal and trees, hovering over everything at the edge of the smoky sky. There’s another scream, louder this time, and I realize some of the rocks are actually part of the plane, that it’s smashed into the ground and is on fire, disappearing.
I run over to it but I can’t reach it. It’s too hot, so hot the bottoms of my feet hurt, and I don’t hear anything now except the rain.
Then I see Sandra.
She is trapped under the burning piece of plane and is trying to crawl out from underneath it. Her mouth is open, but she’s been pushed down into the ground, mud all around her while the plane melts above her. I can see her hair, wet bright yellow, and her hands are clawing at the ground. I can’t move. I want to, but I can’t. All I can do is see her face, mud and fire swallowing her, her terrified eyes.
Her wedding ring shines yellow in the rain too, reflecting fire, and as it crawls up her she screams and screams and her body writhes like a snake, her skin—
“No!” I say, but the fire doesn’t hear me. It keeps burning, and rain blows into my eyes and smoke pours up my nose and into my mouth, metallic and meaty. I gag, falling onto my knees. The ground is wet underneath me, and I stare at it, mud and pine needles oozing around me. All I see are Carl’s eyes, so empty, and Sandra’s eyes, so afraid. I see his stiff empty hand and her desperate clawing ones, and I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see anything.
I have to find someone who can help. Henry. It’s his plane. He will know what to do. He will be able to make things better. I will find Henry.
I can’t. I can’t find him. I can’t even find the cockpit. I find a piece of it, twisted metal holding broken gauges, but Henry is gone, and so is the door that he closed before we took off. It’s like he wasn’t even on the plane.
I do not want to find Henry anymore. I don’t want to see what’s left of him.
What do I do now? I don’t want to look around anymore, but I don’t know what else to do. I am wet and the fire is still burning, flames all around me. I don’t know how to get through them. I wish there was someone here. My feet hurt. Why is there a hat on the ground?
Walter. It’s Walter’s hat. Where is he? Why do I see his hat but not him? Maybe he lost it like I lost my pretzels. Maybe he’s wandering around just like me.
“Walter?” I call. The rain washes my voice away.
I say his name again. He doesn’t reply, but there is something closer to the trees, another piece of plane that isn’t burning. It isn’t a big piece, but it’s large enough to cover someone, and it’s just lying there, wet in the rain. I walk toward it calling, “Walter?”
He doesn’t answer, but he’s there. I can see the top of his head. I push at the metal. It doesn’t move. I push harder, and it scrapes slowly across rock, shows a slight dip between two large stones.
Walter is there. He is resting inside the stones. He isn’t wet at all. He looks fine. His eyes are closed, but there is no blood, and I know he just needs to wake up like I did. I touch his shoulder.
Then I see his legs.
They aren’t legs anymore. They are—they are ground up, split open, wedged broken into the rocks, his insides on the outside, and it looks like meat, he looks like meat, but his mouth isn’t open, he isn’t screaming, he just looks like he’s asleep. I just imagined what I saw, I didn’t see it and I will wake him up and everything will be all right.
“Walter, wake up,” I say. He doesn’t open his eyes. The wind blows, catching his hair and pulling it. It pushes rain over us, water washing down, soaking him, running down into his legs only they aren’t legs at all anymore.
I fall down. I am not running but I fall anyway. I hit the ground hard and there is dirt in my mouth. The rain washes it away. I see Walter’s hat. It is still lying on the ground. I should get up and get it but I don’t want to move. I don’t want to see anything else.
It is very warm behind me. I feel heat on my back, my legs, and my feet. The fire is spreading. I hear it too, popping and hissing.
Walter’s hat blows away. The wind takes it up into the air, off into the trees.
I forgot about the trees. I saw them, but I forgot they were there. I look at them. They look angry. They are blowing in the wind, whipping around like they need to grab something, someone. I can’t see Walter’s hat anymore. The trees have eaten it. I shouldn’t have looked at them.
My head feels strange, hot, and I reach up and touch it. My hair is on fire. The ends of it are burning, sizzling away.
I stare, and then I am running. I don’t know how or where but I am. I am clumsy though, and I fall, landing hard on the ground. Rocks cut into me, rain tasting like dirt and metal on my lips splashing over me, and overhead the sky flares bright red and smoky. I think of Carl, lying on the ground and Sandra, clawing and struggling as her ring shone fire-bright. I think of Walter’s hat and his legs.
Everything starts to dim, going dark, and I am glad. I don’t want to see anymore.
When I woke up the sky was burning.
Twenty-Two
I was still in the kitchen when Mom and Dad came back. I saw them through the window. They were sitting in Dad’s car, and they both looked upset. Dad kissed Mom, and she wiped her eyes. They both looked at the house and saw me. Mom got out of the car. Dad waved at me and then backed down the driveway. I looked down at the counter. At my hands. I went over to the sink and started washing them.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen. What I’d remembered. I was still washing my hands when Mom came into the kitchen.
“Are you cooking something?” she said. “You should wait and wash your hands after you’re done with the hamburger.”
I’d washed all the soap away but I kept rubbing my hands together under the water. I could still feel meat on them. I could still see it.
“Meggie, you’re going to rub your hands raw. And how long has this hamburger been sitting out? It looks—”
“I remembered the crash.” My voice sounded fine. I was surprised by that. It should have sounded raw, broken. But it didn’t.
“Remembered?” Mom’s voice didn’t sound fine. She leaned over and turned the faucet off. Her mouth was open, trembling. “Of course you remember it.”
“I didn’t. I woke up in the hospital and didn’t know where I was or what had happened. You and Dad had to tell me.”
“But then you remembered.” When I didn’t say anything she rested both hands on the
counter, leaning against it. “You might have forgotten a few details but that’s no reason to say—”
“Details?” I said, my voice rising, cracking. “I forgot seeing Carl die after he asked me to help him. I forgot watching Sandra burn to death. I forgot seeing what was left of Walter. Those aren’t details.”
She paled. “Meggie—”
“They aren’t details,” I said, shouting now. “They were people, they died, and I saw all of it and forgot. How could I do that? How could I forget what happened to them?”
“Megan, please don’t—”
“What? Don’t talk? Don’t tell you that I was holding Carl’s hand when he died? Don’t tell you that Sandra screamed until she couldn’t anymore but kept looking at me, and that her eyes—”
“Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t blame yourself for living, for being a mir—”
“Stop! Stop pretending everything is fine. Stop pretending I’m fine.” I leaned toward her, and she shrank back against the sink. “Tell me why I lived when they died and then tell me why I’m such a fucking miracle.”
She started to cry. “You are,” she said, reaching out to take my hands in hers.
“Liar,” I said, and walked out of the room. Out of the house. She came after me, grabbing my arm as I reached the end of the driveway. She was still crying, her face red and wet, and she tried to pull me to her.
I pushed her hands away and her face crumpled, her expression going lost, frightened. “Megan, everything is fine. You’re fine, sweetie, you really are. Just listen to me—”
“No,” I said. And then I walked away.
The thing was, there was nowhere for me to go. All I had was town, bounded by the trees and hills, a border I didn’t want to see, much less cross. I walked to the end of the road anyway and then started running, hoping my long strides would take me away from myself.
It didn’t work. My mind stayed full of what I’d remembered in the kitchen, everything I’d forgotten so there that now it was all I could see. I ran by Lissa’s house, and then I ran by Jess’s. They were both home but I knew I couldn’t go and talk to them. I wouldn’t know what to say. I headed toward the church instead.