Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to Steve Tuttle, vice president of communications for TASER International; and my friend Erin MacLellan, for answering my research questions. Thanks also to Nancy Roe Pimm, Jenny Patton, and Linda Stanek for their comments; and to my editor, David Ga#8804; and agents, Tracey and Josh Adams, for having faith in my ideas before I did. And, finally, thanks to my family, for their many (mostly hilarious) plot suggestions. I am particularly grateful to my daughter, Meredith, for suggesting the plot twist that made everything work.
PROLOGUE
It wasn’t there. Then it was.
Later, that was how Angela DuPre would describe the airplane—over and over, to one investigator after another—until she was told never to speak of it again.
But when she first saw the plane that night, she wasn’t thinking about mysteries or secrets. She was wondering how many mistakes she could make without getting fired, how many questions she dared ask before her supervisor, Monique, would explode, “That’s it! You’re too stupid to work at Sky Trails Air! Get out of here!” Angela had used a Post-it note to write down the code for standby passengers who’d received a seat assignment at the last minute, and she’d stuck it to her computer screen. She knew she had. But somehow, between the flight arriving from Saint Louis and the one leaving for Chicago, the Post-it had vanished. Any minute now, she thought, some standby passenger would show up at the counter asking for a boarding pass, and Angela would be forced to turn to Monique once more and mumble, “Uh, what was that code again?” And then Monique, who had perfect hair and perfect nails and a perfect tan and had probably been born knowing all the Sky Trails codes, would grit her teeth and narrow her eyes and repeat the code in that slow fake-patient voice she’d been using with Angela all night, the voice that said behind the words, I know you’re severely mentally challenged, so I will try not to speak faster than one word per minute, but you have to realize, this is a real strain for me because I am so vastly superior ….
Angela was not severely mentally challenged. She’d done fine in school and at the Sky Trails orientation. It was just, this was her first actual day on the job, and Monique had been nasty from the very start. Every one of Monique’s frowns and glares and insinuations kept making Angela feel more panicky and stupid.
Sighing, Angela glanced up. She needed a break from staring at the computer screen longing for a lost Post-it. She peered out at the passengers crowding the terminal: tired-looking families sprawled in seats, dark-suited businessmen sprinting down the aisle. Which one of them would be the standby flier who’d rush up to the counter and ruin Angela’s life? Generally speaking, Angela had always liked peop#8804; she wasn’t used to seeing them as threats. She forced her gaze beyond the clumps of passengers, to the huge plate glass window on the other side of the aisle. It was getting dark out, and Angela could see the runway lights twinkling in the distance.
Runway, runaway, she thought vaguely. And then—had she blinked?—suddenly the lights were gone. No, she corrected herself, blocked. Suddenly there was an airplane between Angela and the runway lights, an airplane rolling rapidly toward the terminal.
Angela gasped.
“What now?” Monique snarled, her voice thick with exasperation.
“That plane,” Angela said. “At gate 2B. I thought it—” What was she supposed to say? Wasn’t there? Appeared out of thin air?”—I thought it was going too fast and might run into the building,” she finished in a rush, because suddenly that had seemed true too. She watched as the plane pulled to a stop, neatly aligned with the jetway. “But it…didn’t. No worries.”
Monique whirled on Angela.
“Never,” she began, in a hushed voice full of suppressed rage, “never, ever, ever say anything like that. Weren’t you paying attention in orientation? Never say you think a plane is going to crash. Never say a plane could crash. Never even use the word crash. Do you understand?”
“Okay,” Angela whispered. “Sorry.”
But some small rebellious part of her brain was thinking, I didn’t use the word crash. Weren’t you paying attention to me ? And if a plane really was going to run into the building, wouldn’t Sky Trails want its employees to warn people, to get them out of the way?
Just as rebelliously, Angela kept watching the plane parked at 2B, instead of bending her head back down to concentrate on her computer.
“Um, Monique?” she said after a few moments. “Should one of us go over there and help the passengers unload—er, I mean—deplane?” She was proud of herself for remembering to use the official airline-sanctioned word for unloading.
Beside her, Monique rolled her eyes.
“The gate agents responsible for 2B,” she said in a tight voice, “will handle deplaning there.”
Angela glanced at the 2B counter, which was silent and dark and completely unattended. There wasn’t even a message scrolling across the LCD sign behind the counter to indicate that the plane had arrived or where it’d come from.
“Nobody’s there,” Angela said stubbornly.
Frowning, Monique finally glanced up.
“Great. Just great,” she muttered. “I always have to fix everyone else’s mistakes.” She began stabbing her perfectly manicured nails at her computer keyboard. Then she stopped, mid-stab. “Wait—that can’t be right.”
“What is it?” Angela asked.
Monique was shaking her head.