A Journey, A Coincidence, A Memory

Chapter 14: Maisie

January 20, 2022, 8:30 am

"London?! Turbulence?!" Lara squeals.

"Yup," that's kind of freaky that we're heading to London, but I don't really care about turbulences.

"Oh no, I want to get out of here!" Lara has some sort of plane phobia I think which is literally blasting out her right now. "We don't even have desired seats!"

"Well, maybe we can find a way out of the baggage area to the passenger seats," I say as I start searching for some gate along with Lara who is horror-stricken right now by the turbulence. "Any luck?"

"No, I can't seem to find a gate anywhere!"

I try to look even harder; it might be blended in with the walls, so I continue looking. I could then see a door-like shape which seems to have an area where the door could open. "Lara! I found it!"

"What, really? Where?"

"Over here!" my voice came out exceedingly loud and it echoed across the area. I hope no one heard me.

Within a millisecond, the door bolts open with a courteous-looking flight attendant entering in.

"What are you two doing here? How did you even enter this place? Go back to your seat please."

My social anxiety increases. I don't want to do the talking. Lara takes a glance from me and puts herself in front of me; she says, "Well, technically, we don't belong on this plane. We just ended up in one of the air cargo boxes as we wanted to save our lives from some criminal who was chasing us. We hid in it and passed out then woke up to find out that we were in a plane flying to the UK."

"So, you're not supposed to be here?"

"Yes, I'm supposed to be spending time with my family," and I could see tears spilling down her red cheeks.

"Hmm, I see. Come with me," she instructs and we follow her to wherever she's heading.

We make our way through the front of the plane with no clue of where we're heading. We proceed forward to the first-class area and make our way to the pilot's cockpit. I stare in shock as the flight attendant opens the door of the cockpit and lets us in; I have never been in a cockpit before.

I carefully see each and every detail of the cockpit along with two pilots driving the plane. I can already feel my drowsy dizziness hovering around me as I look at the pilot's window. I steal a glance from over a hundred buttons on their control panel; they must've earned over a million dollars a year, but that's not true. It should be a certain recommendation to protest about; they do a lot of hard work.

The flight attendant speaks to one of the pilots, "Hello there Mr. Peterson, I just want to inform you that these two girls here need help in getting back to Los Angeles. They weren't meant to go to the UK which is why I need you to alert ground control and instruct them to call the police to take care of these kids."

Wait ... what? Did I just hear that? Call the police? For what? This makes no sense.

"Okay," Pilot Peterson replies. He clicks one of those confusing buttons and talks in the speaker, "Hello ground control from the UK; this is Mr. Peterson. I need to inform you that two girls in this plane, flight 457, have entered the plane unintentionally and will need help into returning to Los Angeles. Please alert the police that these two girls will be coming."

Okay, this is senseless. What do they want the police to do with us? Give us a penalty or something?

Lara is bewildered more than I am; her startling face answers that.

The flight attendant asks the pilot, "Okay, so where should we situate these girls for now?"

"Put them in first-class," Pilot Peterson says as he shoots a service-granted-glance at me.

The flight attendant leads us out of the cockpit and takes us to some first-class seats. I always dreamed of sitting in first-class, but not in the time when you're about to get a maybe-penalty from the police.

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Lara and I were dumbstruck by what we heard minutes ago. All I want to do now is to go home and never want to see a view of anything outside it. I hate when the word 'police' comes against us; that's definitely not a pleasing sign.

I wake up from my reverie of the penalties we'll get from the police, and wake up Lara from hers. "We should do something, girl. We only have thirty minutes to think about it," I say in a panic-stricken manner.

"What should we do? We lost hope, girl. Now we're going to get penalized by the police; it's hopeless," Lara says negatively.

"Maybe we will get penalized; not for sure. Plus, we didn't do anything illegal. We were just trying to save our lives. Maybe they'll help us."

"Either way, I wouldn't want to go near the police." Something has got on Lara's nerves lately. It's like she's afraid of something, but I have no idea what.

I switch into thinkingmode. The only mode which is challenging. I look at our surroundings, thinking it'll help me and it does. I stare at the exit door of the plane, with a plan coming into my tiny brain.

"I have a plan, Lara," I say bashfully.

"Well, it better be good," she says waiting for an expected answer. "Spill what you got!"

"Well-"

"Attention flight crew and passengers, we will reach the destination shortly in about twenty minutes. Please fasten your seatbelts as we are in a landing position, thank you," and that familiar voice of Pilot Peterson interrupts me.