Stories Collide - A Stuart Gibbs Story

Chapter 16: Landing

We boarded the plane and found our seats. Erica, Chip, and I hustled into row 22. Erica made Chip have the aisle.

"It's fine," he had claimed. "I like the aisle." A few minutes later, 3 people in a row stepped on his foot while going past. Then someone ran their suitcase wheels over him.

The airplane seats were crummy, peeling, and squished together so close that you were almost on top of the other person. The whole plane smelled like humans, which I had recently learned was not a good smell. And the plane was old to begin with. The walls were scratched and scarred. The floor was slightly squishy.

"Attention all passengers, we will be taking off in 20 minutes," said the pilot. "Please make yourself comfortable during this time."

"That's a joke," Erica muttered, fiddling with the seatbelt. She tried to plug it in, but to her annoyance, there appeared to be some Cheerios smashed into the seat belt plug. She rolled her eyes and gave up.

I tried to plug in my seatbelt, but it was shorter than all the others and only expanded for about 4 inches before it snapped taut. I tried again, pulling as hard as I could. This time, it launched far and so abruptly that it nailed Chip in the head. He gave a yelp of pain. I thought I noticed Erica smirk.

15 minutes later, the plane took off. Across from us, a baby started crying. Then another one started. Erica shot all their mothers dirty looks and stuffed earplugs into her ears.

It was going to be a long ride.

I fell asleep.

7 hours later, I awoke to the sound of the pilot announcing, "We will be landing in a few minutes. Please fasten your seatbelts."

Erica set down the book she was reading and tried, again, to cram her seatbelt into the plug. Again, it didn't work.

As the pilot said, 10 minutes later, we were through the clouds. I could see underneath us a large city with many buildings. Los Angeles, I thought.

A few minutes later, we landed. I felt the BONK of the plane as it touched the runway.

"What city in California are we going to?" I asked.

"Here," said Erica. "Los Angeles."

We grabbed our luggage and excited the plane. The mothers with crying babies excited right behind us. We grabbed our carry-on bags and hustled out of the airport as quickly as possible.

We regrouped outside. It was lightly sprinkling rain.

"So," Catherine said, taking out her phone. "The car rentals are this way." She turned left and she and Cyrus started walking. The rest of us followed them.

By the time we got to the car rental place 5 minutes later, all of us were soaking wet. H we quickly ducked into the building.

Cyrus rented two cars. Catherine, Mike, Zoe, Alexander, and I climbed into one of them. Cyrus, Erica, Chip, and Jawa went in the other.

We had been in the car for 4 and a half minutes when Mike asked, "What are we supposed to do here? Do you think Harlan just sent us on a wild goose chase to California? He gave us no instructions!"

Catherine said, "Yes, but I suppose his choice of location was not random. Why here, of all places?"

"Maybe because it's on the other side of the United States," suggested Zoe.

"I doubt that's why. It's also a more expensive place to go, and as you know, the CIA and MI6 are both operating on a shoestring budget now. If there was no reason why we were getting sent somewhere else, they would have sent us somewhere else."

"Good point," Zoe conceded.

"So," Catherine finished, "I am guessing that there is something important here, even if we don't know what it is."

"I guess that makes a certain amount of sense," said Mike.

"I guess," said Zoe.

We approached our hotel.

It was already raining, but when we got out of our car, it really started pouring. Our bags were getting drenched with rain.

We hustled inside the hotel. There were a lot of hotels and motels in Los Angeles (we had passed 9 on our way), but the one we picked appeared to be at the lower end of the spectrum. The lobby smelled like dew, there were stains on the carpet, and the receptionist didn't appear to be in a huge hurry to check us in. We had entered behind one other person, and 15 minutes later, they finally finished with them. Catherine walked up to the desk. The receptionist seemed to realize that we were in a slight hurry, so she checked us in 1 minute.

Catherine got 3 rooms, one for Mike, Alexander, and I, one for Chip, Jawa, and Cyrus, and one for Zoe, Erica, and herself.

We finally reached our rooms. They were all on the tenth floor, and the hotel didn't have an elevator, so we had to run up the stairs.

We all got together in Erica, Zoe, and Catherine's room.

"So," Erica said. "What the heck are we supposed to do now?"

"Go to bed," Mike told her, then tried to express his tiredness by yawning expressively, but he ended up falling off the tiny bed and bumping his head on the rock-hard floor.

We all stared at Mike.

"Besides that, what are we going to do tomorrow? We have no instructions, we have no CIA contact, and Harlan just tried to blow us up."

Mike, who had just gotten up off the floor, argued, "Well, while we're in California, we might as well enjoy it. Let's go to the beach!" Mike whooped and waited for us to agree in approval, but that just led to us all staring at him again.

"Actually, that is not a bad idea," said Catherine. She looked up thoughtfully. "We don't know what to do, and even if the CIA, or at least Harlan and whoever he convinced, are after us, the beach or somewhere nice is probably exactly where they would expect us to go. We might as well learn something. And have a nice time while we're at it."

Erica began to protest, but Catherine shushed her and said, "I know you don't like this, but we don't know what else to do."

Mike whooped again. "So, we're going to the BEACH! On a mission! This is the best!"

"There was a water slide and a pool on your last mission, was there not?" Asked Jawa.

Mike stared at him. "You obviously didn't see the photos that I sent you guys. It was tiny! And everything else sucked, too! And it was too crowded anyway. With a bunch of toddlers. So who knows what's in the water?"

"So," Zoe said. "We're going to the beach?"

"Yes," Catherine said.

Everyone agreed. Cyrus muttered under his breath, but didn't oppose.