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Seat 14A. The aircraft has not yet moved.
ME: We boarded. I’m in. Window seat like an idiot so I can watch the wing fall off in real time. 5:51 PM
DON: wings don’t fall off 5:53 PM
ME: That’s exactly what someone would text the wife of a man whose wing fell off. 5:53 PM
ME: The flight attendant tried to gate-check my carry-on, the little one, and I said no thank you, it goes under the seat with me. It’s fragile. 5:54 PM
DON: you ok? that’s a lot of feeling for a tote bag 5:55 PM
ME: I’m fine. I’m at a gas station of the soul, Donald. 5:55 PM
DON: I’m at an actual gas station. Indiana. 14 hrs to go. Try not to text me your will until at least Kansas 5:56 PM
ME: There’s a man next to me in 14B. Charcoal suit. Book the size of a cinder block. Hasn’t looked at the safety card ONCE. Flies all the time, you can tell. I hate him with my whole heart. 5:58 PM
DON: you’ve known him 4 minutes 5:59 PM
ME: Four minutes is plenty to build a rivalry, Donald. 5:59 PM
***
Pushback from the gate.
SkyConnect™ Welcome aboard! For just $19.00, stay connected with SkyConnect™ in-flight WiFi. “The sky’s no limit!” 6:04 PM
ME: I just paid nineteen dollars to text you my final thoughts. Dad would’ve loved that. He never met a fee he couldn’t be furious about for an hour. 6:05 PM
DON: ha. he really would 6:06 PM
ME: Engines just did the noise. THE noise. The one that sounds like a thing right before it stops being a thing. 6:07 PM
ME: 14B just said “that noise is normal.” Without looking up. Like a wizard. I want to be him and I want him to be quiet. 6:08 PM
ME: THERE WAS A SECOND NOISE. A thunk. From underneath. Like a vault closing. 6:11 PM
ME: 14B (eyes still on book): “that’s the landing gear retracting. you want to hear that one.” 6:11 PM
ME: He is infuriatingly correct and I would follow him into battle. 6:12 PM
***
Climb-out. The world tilts in the window.
ME: We banked and the entire state of Indiana stood up on its side and tried to pour itself into my lap. I made a kettle noise. I checked the bag was still under the seat. 6:14 PM
DON: you ok? 6:15 PM
DON: hello 6:21 PM
DON: Carol. 6:24 PM
ME: Sorry. 14B told me to “talk, it helps, tell me anything,” so I told a total stranger about Maddie’s graduation and how you’re driving 16 hours because you’d sooner be buried than boarded. He nodded. He turned a page. 6:25 PM
ME: I just realized he turns a page exactly every 90 seconds. Tick. Tick. Who reads like that. 6:31 PM
DON: maybe a fast reader 6:31 PM
ME: Don nobody reads a cinder block at a perfectly even pace through turbulence. That’s not reading. That’s a man pretending to read. 6:32 PM
***
The seatbelt sign chimes. The captain drawls something soothing. The plane begins to shudder.
SkyConnect™ ✨ How’s your flight going? Tap to rate your SkyConnect™ booking experience! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 6:38 PM
ME: Absolutely not the time. 6:38 PM
ME: Chop started. I told 14B it’s fine, chop is just air, the wings flex, they bend them almost in half in a factory in Washington, I saw a documentary. And then I put my hand on the bag under the seat and left it there. And Don. DON. 6:40 PM
ME: He stopped turning pages. 6:41 PM
ME: His knuckles are WHITE. There’s a muscle going in his jaw. The serene wizard of 14B is gripping his own thighs like the plane owes him money. 6:42 PM
DON: ask him how many times he’s flown 6:43 PM
ME: I asked. 6:47 PM
A four-minute gap.
ME: Don he said “including this time, once.” 6:51 PM
ME: ONCE. The briefcase. The cinder block. The landing-gear wizardry. HE READ ABOUT IT ON A FORUM LAST NIGHT. He has a SYSTEM. He’s been flying his system, not a plane. 6:52 PM
ME: He told me — and I am quoting a man in a $400 suit — “I would consider it a personal kindness if you would become frightened again, immediately, so that I have something to do.” 6:53 PM
DON: lol. LOL 6:53 PM
DON: the calm guy was you the whole time 6:54 PM
***
Here the record shows a voicemail, left for Don, transcribed by the phone’s automatic service. Punctuation is the machine’s. So are the errors.
— Voicemail, 6:58 PM, duration 1:34 —
“Okay I can’t type this fast enough so I’m — hi — I gave him my hand. The wizard. He’s holding my hand like a man at sea and I told him in for four, hold for four, and I told him about your fake bad back, the one you invented to skip the conference nine years running, every fake (laughter) every fake vertebra, and we’re both LAUGHING now in row fourteen like two people who’ve decided the plane’s going down and found the one other person who gets the joke. And Don. I went looking for the scared just now and it’s gone. I set it down somewhere over Illinois and walked off without it. I forgot to be afraid because the man next to me was more afraid. And Dad’s in the bag, Don. Under the seat. The one I wouldn’t let them take. It’s the good tin one Maddie picked, and he asked ME to do this, not Gary, not Linda, he asked me — he said, ‘take me out to Sutter’s Lake where I taught you to back the boat trailer down the ramp, and don’t you dare mail me, you get on the (unclear) plane, kid, you owe me a ride.’ Because he knew. He knew I’d have driven nine hundred miles to keep my feet on the ground and he wouldn’t let me, the old goat, he made being scared into a thing I had to do for HIM so I’d finally — (unclear). Anyway he’s here. We’re flying. Delete this, I sound deranged. Oh. It’s recording. Of course it is. The mountains are coming. Bye. Bye.”
***
Descent into Denver.
ME: We’re landing. Gold light coming in sideways, all over the seats, all over the bag in my lap — I took him out from under the seat for this part. The Rockies are pink and enormous and could not care less about any of us, which I find, for the first time in my life, comforting. 7:40 PM
ME: 14B let go of my hand and turned back into charcoal. Buttoned his cuffs. Said “you were never, at any point, fooling me into thinking you were calm.” I said “you turned the pages too evenly.” He said “my one flaw, in an otherwise perfect deception,” and walked off into his recovered dignity. 7:44 PM
DON: did you tell him? about your dad? 7:45 PM
ME: No. Some things you only tell the people you almost die with by accident. 7:46 PM
***
ME: Sutter’s Lake tomorrow, early, before the graduation. Just me and him and the cold water and the boat ramp he was so proud I finally learned. I’ll have driven nothing. I’ll have carried him the whole way myself, in the air, like he wanted. Turns out that was the gift. Not the lake. The carrying. 7:55 PM
DON: he’d be proud of you. you know that. 7:56 PM
ME: He’d say “nineteen dollars for WiFi” and be mad about it for an hour. 7:57 PM
DON: and THEN he’d be proud of you 7:57 PM
ME: Yeah. 7:58 PM
ME: Don, the wing was attached the whole time. 7:59 PM
DON: they usually are 7:59 PM
ME: Save the voicemail. 8:01 PM
DON: already did 8:01 PM
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This is a great read! The husband-wife relationship is very special; even through texts, one can feel it. I am terrified of flying, so I can relate to how she feels - and how ironic that the man next to her, whom she assumes is a frequent flyer, is anything but. I love how you leave us wondering about what is in her carry-on, and it is slowly revealed. How could something possibly happen to her on that flight when she is charged with handing her dad's ashes, the man who would've been appalled for an hour at the $19 fee! Really well done on what I believe is the toughest of the five prompts this week!
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Thank you so much! I’m always excited when someone mentions the carry-on because that was probably the biggest balancing act in the story. I wanted readers to know it mattered without revealing why too early. Honestly, I had never written anything entirely through text messages before, and more than once I was convinced I was writing myself into a corner, so it was a relief to hear the format worked for you. And yes, I suspect Carol’s dad would have spent a full hour complaining about the $19 WiFi before admitting he was proud of her. Thanks for reading and for such a thoughtful comment!
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This was a very clever way of getting a ton of information out. It’s a great idea that can really give different readers a different understanding of the piece.
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Thank you! One of the things I enjoyed most about this prompt was figuring out how much information could be hidden inside ordinary texts and little throwaway comments. The format forces you to trust the reader to connect pieces that would normally be explained directly. I’m glad it worked for you, and I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment.
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This is delightful. There are two stories going on here and they are interwoven so subtly that the reader doesn't notice until the end how much information she has received. The texting form is perfect for what is presented here. Good story!
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Thank you so much! I’m especially glad the second story revealed itself gradually because that was exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted the texting to feel light and conversational on the surface while quietly carrying the heavier story underneath. It’s always a relief when a reader notices that balance because it can be easy to overplay one side or the other. Thanks for reading!
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My stomach dropped the second I saw the "Here the record shows a voicemail..." section because I was like omg the plane is actually gonna crash and this is her voicemail. And then hit me with the dead dad instead, yoinks lol! The whole thing was so well done, I was invested. The use of (unclear) in the voicemail for the curse words made me laugh.
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I love how the humor and the sentimentality The reveal about the carry-on is great, and I love how we get a sense of what the dad was like too. I assumed 14b was a frequent flyer too so it’s especially funny that he’s not. I also appreciated the $19 an hour WiFi, although, I have to side with the dad on that one. 😂
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Thank you so much! One of my favorite parts of writing this was trying to let readers meet Dad through everyone else's comments about him rather than through flashbacks. I’m also glad 14B’s reveal landed because I was counting on readers making the exact same assumption Carol did. And I have to admit, the older I get, the more sympathetic I become to Dad’s position on the $19 WiFi. 😄
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Enjoyed this very much! Was looking forward to seeing how people tackled this prompt. That word count runs out pretty quick doesn’t it? Can I offer a very small critique - those small breaks about the chimes and the descent took me out of the story, I think your writing was clear enough that it would have flowed just fine without them. I liked the voicemail transcript, that was a nice touch.
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Thank you! This prompt made me realize just how quickly 3,000 words can disappear. I appreciate the feedback too. Those transition breaks were my attempt to keep the flight moving in the reader's mind, although I spent an embarrassing amount of time debating whether they belonged there at all. I'm glad the voicemail transcript landed. That was the point where the story finally figured out what it wanted to be.
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