confusion on his face tells me he doesn’t know. “Does she know how?”
“I don’t know,” he whispers. I picture him in his parents’ house: his bedroom bearing the memories of school, teenage friendships, music played too loud. Next to him, Zambezi is looking across the plane to the opposite aisle, and I think, Yes, I’m right. I had it right. A plan is slowly taking shape.
Missouri’s voice continues.
“I regret to inform you that the British government will not comply with our demands to impose fines on airlines unable to demonstrate their commitment toward renewable energy.”
I spin around, exchange horrified looks with Cesca and the others. What does this mean?
We don’t have to wait long to find out.
“We remain on course for Sydney,” Missouri says. “There, we will show the government the true impact of their failure to act by flying into the iconic Sydney Opera House.”
Ganges spins around to look at Zambezi, whose horrified face matches those of the other hijackers.
They didn’t know. This wasn’t part of the plan.
My stomach lurches.
A man in a window seat stands up, his phone in his hand. “They’ve scrambled fighter jets! It’s all over Twitter.”
“It’s the Air Force!” someone shouts from across the cabin. “They’ve come to rescue us!” A cheer goes up—defiant, emboldened—and I exchange glances with Cesca, whose face is taut and pale. My stomach twists. With Missouri gone, people are dropping their arms, rubbing stiff muscles.
“What will the jets do?” Derek asks, his sharp eyes catching our concern.
“They could force us to divert to Brisbane,” Cesca says. “Or they might escort us to Sydney airport and stay close till we land.”
Rowan leans in, making a tight quadrant that leaves no room for Alice. “And if Missouri tries to make for the Opera House, like she says?”
“They won’t let us get there.” Cesca pauses. She drops her voice so only the four of us can hear, knowing that we need to keep the cabin calm, that what she’s about to say isn’t something the other passengers should hear.
“They’ll shoot us down.”
THIRTY-NINE
4 A.M. | ADAM
Mina’s voice is beautiful. She speaks in the luxurious way that linguists often do, their words velvety with the knowledge of the path each phrase has taken. She considers English her first language, having lived here her whole life, but it is interchangeable with French—the language her parents spoke at home. She claims not to speak Arabic, although she can understand it, but every now and then, she’ll slip in a word or two that just doesn’t translate into English.
“Everything translates,” I said. It was pre-Sophia. Pre-marriage.
“Ishq,” she countered without a beat.
“What does that mean?”
“Love, only—”
“See—it does translate!”
“—it’s so much more than that. Ishq is your greatest passion, your other half. The word for ivy comes from the same root. Ishq is a love so great, you cling to each other.” She smiled at me. “Ishq is what we have.”
Ishq, I think when I hear Mina’s voice through the answerphone. Not confident now—not rich and velvety—but thin and scared, tears thickening her words and blurring them into one rapid, terrified note.
“Tell her she’s brave and beautiful and clever and that I’m in awe of her every single day.”
Her words play over a jarring bed of Mariah Carey. All I want for Christmas is…
“And—I love you too.”
The knot in my chest twists tighter. There’s never been anyone but Mina. Girlfriends, yes, before I met her, but the moment I did, the memory of them melted so far away, I struggled to name them. I’d been waiting, that’s all. Waiting for Mina.
Sophia lies on the floor, her head on my lap and my eyes fixed on the barely there flutter of a pulse in her neck. A gentle rasp accompanies each shallow breath, her face so swollen as to be unrecognizable. I want so badly to hold her, to trace her features, to cup her cheeks in my hands.
“Is she okay?”
Even through the coal chute, I can hear the panic in Becca’s voice. I want to tell her, No, she’s not okay. I want to let her think that she killed her, want her to go through just one-hundredth of the pain I went through, watching my daughter have an anaphylactic attack. Instead, I let the silence speak for me, my focus fixed on Sophia’s closed eyes, on the weight of her body on my lap. The skin on my wrists is rubbed raw from my efforts to pull myself free, sweat and blood sticking dirt to my fingers.