Monstrum Read Free Page A

smile reassuringly. “Fine.”
    An gives me a suspicious once-over but turns back to the window and stares at the relentless black.
    Trying to manage my fear, I reach for the necklace I never take off and the stone that lies right between my collarbones. Closing my eyes, I rub the oval aquamarine between my thumb and forefinger and focus on my lungs’ rise and fall. The ritual always helps relieve the tightness in my chest so I can breathe easier.
    Thank God I have my necklace. Mona, my adoptive mother, gave it to me a year ago, the week before she died. I was sixteen. Her death made me a triple orphan, because at that point, I’d already lost my birth mother at age three (car accident) and my grandmother at five (complications from diabetes). My father (asshole), who was never involved in my life, was happy to sign off on Mona’s fostering and then adopting me when I was seven.
    Mona and I had nine awesome years together. And then cancer came for her, probably because people who love me and take care of me have big targets on their backs.
    Cancer is a royal bitch.
    Mona did a couple amazing things for me before she died. For one, she helped me with the paperwork to become emancipated so I could stay in our condo and finish high school without having to move ... God knows where. I don’t even know. Probably back into foster care.
    The other amazing thing is this necklace. She put it on me and said her spirit would always be with me. I smooth the gem, wanting to believe that, but I sure could use the actual Mona right now. She’d say something reassuring, and I’d pretend to believe her.
    â€œHey, Sammy,” Gray is saying, and I tune back in to the world around me. “How many people are flying this thing, anyway?”
    â€œTwo,” Sammy replies. “Pilot and copilot.”
    I frown. That doesn’t seem like a lot of people to keep this big metal bird up in the air. Or enough people to save our butts if something goes wrong.
    â€œHang on,” I chime in, thinking vaguely of news coverage of a plane crash I saw not that long ago. “I thought there was a whole bunch of people in the cockpit. At least four.”
    â€œOn a small jet like this?” Sammy asks tightly. “Two, tops.”
    Just then, the flight attendants reappear at the top of the aisle.
    A chorus of questions rises to greet them:
    â€œIs the pilot sick?”
    â€œIs this a terrorist attack?”
    â€œAre we still over the water?”
    â€œWill the flight be diverted?”
    The woman leads as they start their determined march to the back of the plane. She raises her hands for silence but does not, I notice, look anyone in the eye as she speaks. “There’s going to be another announcement,” she says, her voice calm but loud enough to be heard over the murmuring. “Right now we’re doing a cabin sweep, just as a precaution, to make sure everyone is buckled and all the carry-ons are secure.”
    Everyone murmurs uneasily as they put their stuff away. Soon she’s level with me in the aisle, checking Gray’s side of the plane first, opening and then slamming his overhead bin, and then the one above me.
    She does all of this without looking any of us in the face, and that, suddenly, is too much for my frazzled nerves to take. Without giving myself time to think, I grab her forearm.
    Her muscles are strung tight, so it’s like I’ve grabbed one of the marble statues at an art museum. Caught, she has no choice but to look at me and see what I want. Her eyes are a vivid hazel, and her cheeks are flushed.
    Her name tag says
Emily
. Staring at her face, I get a sudden jolt of what she’s feeling: stark fear, ruthlessly repressed. I’d had a generic question on the tip of my tongue—
is the pilot okay?
or,
this happens all the time, doesn’t it?
—but now there’s only one thing I want to know:
    â€œHow bad is it?” I breathe.