The Worst Class Trip Ever Read Free

guy he would have to check the bag.
    “No!” he said, like really angry. “It will fit!” He had some kind of accent, but not Spanish. He pushed the bag really hard and got it to go in. The flight attendant gave
him a look, but didn’t say anything. He looked like a guy you didn’t want to get any more upset than he already was.
    Which is exactly what my friend Matt, who I believe I already mentioned can be an idiot, proceeded to do. He pointed up at the luggage compartment and said—too loud, as
usual—“What do you think he has in that bag? A missile?”
    The big guy heard this. He looked down at Matt like he was about to pick him up by the neck and stuff him into the overhead space, which this guy was definitely big enough to do. The shorter guy
with the sunglasses said something to him, and he sat down.
    “Jeez,” said Matt, still too loud. “Maybe it
is
a missile.”
    “Will you shut
up
?” I said, but it was too late: We looked back, and the big guy was leaning forward, his head almost in our row, glaring at Matt, for like ten seconds, just
leaning over us and
staring
. He was really close, and he looked a little crazy, and I’ll be honest: I was scared. Then the little guy said something again, and the big guy sat back.
Matt and I looked at each other, like
whoa
, but even Matt wasn’t stupid enough to say anything else.
    When the plane was loaded the same flight attendant came down the aisle checking things, and she told the little guy he couldn’t hold his backpack in his lap.
    He said, “I need to hold it.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, not sounding sorry. “You can’t hold it during takeoff or landing.”
    “Is very important.”
    “You can hold it after we take off. Right now it has to go in the overhead.” She reached for the backpack.
    “No!” said the little guy, pulling it away.
    “All right,” she said, “then you’ll have to put it under the seat in front of you.”
    “I am not comfortable doing that.”
    “Sir,”
said the flight attendant, “you can
not
have that in your lap. Either you stow it now, or you’ll have to get off the plane.”
    This time the big guy said something quietly to the little guy, in what I think was a foreign language. The little guy sighed and stuck the backpack under the seat in front of him, which was the
seat that Matt was sitting in. The flight attendant gave the little guy a look and walked away.
    Matt leaned over to me. “What do you think’s in the backpack?” he said—whispering, fortunately.
    “How would I know?” I said.
    “You think it’s a bomb?”
    “No!”
    “Why not?”
    “Because, moron, he had to go through security.”
    “Well, then what is it? Why’s he acting so weird? Him and his friend with the missile…”
    “It’s not a missile!” I said, too loud—that’s the kind of thing Matt makes you do—and all of a sudden I realized the big guy was leaning forward and glaring
at us again, so I shut up. We stayed quiet during the safety lecture where they show you how to fasten your seat belt and tell you that your seat cushion floats, which I’m sure would be
really helpful if the plane actually crashed into the ocean at five hundred miles an hour.
    I noticed that after we took off, the little guy immediately reached down and got the backpack out from under Matt’s seat. But then I stopped thinking about him and started trying to
figure out how to talk to Suzana, two rows behind. My idea was to pretend I had to go to the bathroom, and then, when I walked past her, I would say some funny thing that would make her laugh, and
we would start having a conversation, with me standing in the aisle, which was good because I would be standing and she would be sitting down so I’d be taller.
    This seemed like a solid plan, except for one thing: I didn’t have anything funny to say. I spent the first half hour of the flight trying to think of jokes, which wasn’t easy
because Matt kept whispering to me