so close to hope

XXII

You press your forehead to the window even though everything around you is rattling.

The whirring sound gets louder and louder and you have to grip the armrests to keep from sitting back in your seat. The last time you talked to Leo he explained the science of it to you -- something about force and velocity -- but you never imaged it would feel so clunky. Like riding a bike with a few loose screws.

Just when you're about to turn around to ask your moms if this is normal, the rattling abates and your stomach swoops in a weird, pleasant kind of way. But you hardly notice, because the ground is rapidly retreating below you.

Soon cars and buildings look more like wind-up toys and building blocks, and the city streets become a checkerboard grid.

The last thing you see before climbing above the clouds is a slate gray lake. It's not yours, you don't think, but you imagine that it is. There's a tiny fleck in the center and it takes you a moment to realize it's a boat. It's weird to think that there's a person on there -- someone with plans and dreams and worries -- who you'll never meet, who doesn't even know you exist.

You hope they're having a good day.

Dense fog obscures the view and you finally sit back in your seat. You wait to feel afraid, but if there's any fear in you it can't get past your brazen, astonishing joy.

You're flying.

***

You wouldn't have thought a foster kid could even get a passport, but it didn't turn out to be too much trouble.

At least, that's what your moms said. You didn't find out about the trip until the passport came in the mail. Suddenly you understood why, a few weeks earlier, Roseanne took you to CVS, where a teenage employee told you not to smile before taking your photo in front of a white screen.

When you opened the little blue booklet and saw your confused, unsmiling face looking back at you, you let out this high-pitched squeak and threw your arms around your moms waists.

Lisa laughed. "You don't even know where we're going yet," she said, tousling your hair.

"I don't care," you replied, and you meant it. You could be going nowhere and you'd be happy just to have something that meant you could travel anywhere, if you wanted.

Roseanne grinned. "Good. Because we're not telling you."

And they wouldn't, no matter how much you pleaded.

Your moms were acting strangely, though. They spoke in these fancy accents while making dinner, but eventually had to stop because Lisa couldn't stop giggling at how bad Roseanne's was. After dinner, instead of dessert you had milky tea and cookies, which your moms inexplicably called "biscuits."

On your way upstairs to get ready for bed Roseanne kept telling you to "mind the gap," and when you came out of the bathroom after brushing your teeth Lisa placed a plastic tiara on your head.

You put a hand on your hip and sighed, trying to hide your smile. "Will you just tell me?"

"One more clue," Roseanne said, nodding toward your room. "Go and see."

Waffles had discovered the clue first. The three of you burst out laughing as you watched him roll around on bed, scattering a bunch of multicolored slips of paper across your duvet. Lisa shooed him up near your pillows and gathered the final clues into a neat stack before handing them to you.

Not only were they different colors -- green and orange and blue -- they were different sizes. They had numbers on them -- 5, 10, and 20 -- and a symbol that kinda looked like a cursive "L."