“Let’s wait somewhere secure,” Abram says. “Not in a glass hallway exposed to the whole world.”
“Almost there,” I assure him. He’s right, of course. I need to focus, but I can’t seem to shake my whimsy. Despite the multitude of dark memories this place evokes, the few bright ones I built with Julie keep rising to the surface and painting a dumb smile on my face. Things were so easy then. So simple and sweet. Just me and my kidnapped crush and her boyfriend’s brain in my pocket.
I lead the group down the boarding tunnel to the door of my former home, my refuge from the horrors of my undead existence. I never imagined I’d come back here to hide from something worse.
I pull open the airliner’s massive hatch and step aside with a grim smile. “Welcome aboard.”
THE PLANE IS EXACTLY how we left it. The empty beer bottles, the plastic trays of frozen pad thai, and of course, my stacks of memorabilia. It strikes me for the first time how extensive my collection was. Pens, paintbrushes, cameras, dolls, action figures, a painting, a tuxedo, undelivered letters, framed family photos, a tower of comic books . . . About a third of the plane’s seats are filled. If I found one or two items on each infrequent hunting trip, how long must I have been here to accumulate such a hoard? Six years? Seven? In all that time, why didn’t I rot away like so many of the others? Why am I not just another dried-up metathesiophobe, hissing with fury over everything that’s changed?
Julie sits in her chair of choice. She picks up her old quilt made of cut-up jeans. But this time she doesn’t use it as a shield against me. She pats the middle seat and I sit beside her, luxuriating in the privilege of her trust.
M turns in a slow circle to take in the cluttered disaster of my domicile. “You brought a girl home to this?”
“I found it charming,” Julie says.
M grunts.
“Where was your place?” Nora asks him. “Can’t imagine it being any cleaner.”
“It was clean,” he says. “For a public restroom.”
Nora starts to laugh, then her face stiffens. “A restroom?”
M shrugs. “It was a room with a door. Just ended up there.”
Nora regards him with an odd, crooked expression that’s completely unknown to me. The only thing I can read in it is confusion, but it’s more than that.
“I was a zombie,” M says, growing defensive. “Wasn’t picky about housing.”
Nora looks at the floor, looks through it.
“What’s wrong?” Julie asks. She moves to get up, but Nora shakes her head and snaps out of it.
“Nothing. Sorry. Déjà vu or something.” She addresses M without quite looking at him. “Do you remember where you used to live? Sometimes I feel like we’ve met before.”
M answers cautiously. “I think . . . Seattle?”
Nora shakes her head again. “Nope. Never been there.” She looks up and takes a deep breath. “Anyway, what do we have to eat? I hear airline food is excellent.”
She disappears behind the flight attendant curtain and starts banging around in the kitchen drawers.
“Nora?” M calls to her, dropping the duffel bag from the Porsche onto one of the seats. “Food’s . . . in here.”
Silence for a moment, then she emerges from the kitchen and opens the bag, digs out a Carbtein cube and a water bottle and takes this sad meal to the back of the plane.
M looks at me. I shrug. I look at Julie. She shrugs.
I notice that Abram hasn’t come inside yet. He’s still standing in the doorway with Sprout, running his eyes over the unaccountable oddness of my former home.
“This is where you want to hide?” he says.
I raise a hand to demonstrate the safety features of the aircraft. “One entrance. Emergency exits. Small windows.” He doesn’t respond, so I keep going. “High ground. Good visibility. Solar pow—”
“Watch Sprout,” he cuts me off, nudging his daughter forward. “I’m going to run a perimeter check.”
Sprout runs forward and stops at our row, staring at me expectantly. When I don’t react, she says, “Move please.”
I scoot out to the aisle seat and Sprout plops down next to Julie.
Julie shoots me a look of perplexed delight, holding back a laugh.
“You like Julie?” I ask the girl, and she nods earnestly. I smile. “Me too.”
I look back to the doorway to give Abram a few tips for his tour of the airport, but he’s already gone.
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