We’re greeted on the plane by a spindle-thin Asian woman in a pencil skirt and high-collared white blouse. Her eyes are amazing—mismatched green and gray vortexes, the pupils wide and black, like someone took a hole punch to a starscape. She’s sizing us up, and her gaze is borderline rude, like she’s weighing meat.
“Miss Sei,” Dorf says. “Chief science officer from the Sapani Corporation. She’ll be assisting with the expedition.”
Her tongue clicks against her teeth and she strides away down the body of the jet, waving for us to follow.
We do and I watch her shoulders moving in a square under her blouse. Next to me Jules lets out a low whistle. “We are definitely traveling first class.”
I’m assuming he’s referring to the iPads in the armrests, the flat-screens showing screen savers of beaches and waterfalls, the random potted mango plant next to the jump seat.
Miss Sei ushers us into a lounge, all white leather, shiny black wood, and chrome. Sofas curl along the walls like huge Persian cats. A bar stands in one corner, three Art Deco stools and a bunch of brightly labeled bottles poking up like glass chimneys. Red Spikes, Norse God, and the others file past us, through a glass door and into the jet’s next compartment. Miss Sei gestures us toward the sofas and follows them, wordless. Dorf pauses. He smiles at us.
“All yours,” he says, and sweeps his big hands out on either side. “I’ll see you all in Paris. Bright and early tomorrow morning.”
He ducks after Miss Sei. A door slides shut. We’re alone.
Wait, that’s it? No introductory speech? No “‘Welcome, young chickadees”‘?
We sit in a semi-catatonic daze for about a millisecond. And now Jules says: “This. Is. Awesome,” and sprawls himself all over a sofa, and it’s like no one even thinks this is bizarre. Lilly bounces from barstool to mango plant to waterfall screen saver, cooing appreciatively at everything. Hayden goes to the bar and starts clinking through the bottles. I sit down on a couch, hook one leg over the other, and watch the carnage.
Will eases himself onto the sofa next to me.
Neither of us speaks. The pilot tells us to prepare for takeoff. I glance over at Will. His hands are on his knees. His eyes are serious, like everything he’s seeing is an epic tragedy. I agree, Will. I do.
Jules and Lilly are on their phones, laughing about something, and I get sour grape-y for a second, wondering if they remember the contract stipulations about no social media and no sending pictures, or if they’re just doing whatever and hoping they won’t get caught.
Will clears his throat. I glance over at him. He clears his throat again and says: “There aren’t any seat belts.”
His voice is gorgeous, deep and quiet, and it has a slight drawl, the a’s and r’s softened to buttery nothings.
“Nope,” I say.
Silence. That must have been his entire repertoire of small talk, so I decide to help him out. I wave toward the others. “Gonna be a blast, huh. Nine hours with these people? And then two weeks. And then another nine hours. What we really need are cages. And tranquilizers.”
He peers at me. His eyes go a shade bluer and a shade curious.
“Cages and tranquilizers!” I say again, louder. The engines are revving up. The lights on the runway spread away in twin orange lines, like well-trained fireflies.
One of Will’s eyebrows cricks a little. “No. But seat belts would be a good idea.”
Um . . . Right. I don’t know how to communicate with people who don’t understand sarcasm. Supposedly you can tell the intelligence of someone by how well they recognize humor, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I live by that. It’s a comfort to assume that when people don’t think you’re funny, it’s because they’re just stupid people.
“Okay.” I scoot an inch away from him and slide my headphones on. “Good talk.”
End of that relationship. I hit the screen on my iPod. Music flows.
I watch the cabin slant as the plane takes off. Will doesn’t move from the sofa, which strikes me as awfully gallant of him considering I just scratched his name from my mental Book of All Things. I close my eyes and wonder if maybe this trip will be okay. Maybe I’ll get along with these people. It’s not impossible. People make friends sometimes, just by accident.
“Hi!” Lilly squeaks, and practically pile-drives herself between Will and me. “We didn’t really meet before. I’m Lilly. Hi.”
My eyes snap open. I was listening to Ingrid Michaelson and I was at that part of the song where you can actually hear the smile in her voice. Let’s get rich and buy our parents’ homes in the south of France. I love that part. I listen to the whole song for it.
“Hi,” I say. I don’t take off my headphones.
“What’s your name?” Lilly asks. She smiles at me encouragingly.