The thought distracts me, has me wondering just what my mom and dad might have seen coming, and by the time I shut down that line of thinking, Philip has the plane sliding to a shaky, shuddering halt. If this is the end, I don’t need to see it coming. I bite my lip, keep my eyes squeezed firmly shut even as my heart threatens to burst out of my chest. The plane whines-not sure what part of it is making that horrendous noise or if it’s a collective death knell-so I choose not to focus on it.Įspecially when we start skidding to the left. Then Philip hits the brakes hard enough to slam me forward so fast that my seat belt is the only thing keeping my head from meeting the control panel. Seconds later, I feel the wheels skip across the ground. The ground looms white and unyielding below us, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

Which, by the way, definitely makes the top five things you don’t ever want to hear your pilot say while you’re still in the air. So I grab the bar on the plane door, which I’m pretty sure exists for just this very reason, and hold on tight as we drop lower and lower. I have no idea what a “quick landing” means, but it doesn’t sound good. It’s a short runway because it’s hard to keep a long one clear of snow or ice for any amount of time out here. Sure enough, I’ve only just spotted what passes for an airport in this one-thousand-person town (thank you, Google) when Philip says, “Hang on, Grace. It’s not the first description that popped into my head-no, that was the old cliché that hell has actually frozen over-but it is the most polite one as Philip drops even lower, preparing for what I’m pretty sure will be yet another harrowing incident in the list of harrowing incidents that have plagued me since I got on the first of three planes ten hours ago. Still, I can see well enough to make out that the so-called town he’s pointing at is full of mismatched buildings randomly grouped together. Not because of the mountains that loom over the area like long-forgotten monsters but because we’re in the middle of a weird kind of haze that Philip refers to as “civil twilight” even though it’s barely five o’clock. Then again, it’s pretty hard to see much of anything from up here. Way smaller than just my neighborhood in San Diego, let alone the whole city. “There she is,” Philip says as we clear the peaks of several mountains, taking one hand off the steering column to point to a small collection of buildings in the distance.

Crave by Felicia Fox