A hand clamped hard on my forearm, fingers digging in, and before I could tell them not to touch Johnny—I don’t know why I thought she couldn’t do it herself—the words were whipping out of her, sensuous soft-edged things delivered like the edge of a straight razor. I looked up into scratched aviators over a heavily moustached face, a tan uniform, red-brown face. His expression wasn’t angry, despite the power of his grip. Just... immovable. Like hers. Could not be swayed.
My head began a slow spin, and I looked over at Johnny just as they put the cuffs on her.
“Wait,” I finally said, “don’t, don’t do that—”
My arms were wrenched behind me and something hard and hot went around my wrists—the cuffs must have been in the cop’s pocket, I thought feverishly, to be so hot. They were ready for us. Ready for us to not go quietly.
Still no one had said a word except for us. Johnny was talking more calmly now, cuffed like me, hands behind her, looking up at the grey-haired cop who had his hand around her upper arm, fully encircling it. They didn’t like girls to have bare arms here, did they? Not like her to forget that. Had she left her jacket on the plane? She was completely white except for two red dots, like stickers, above her eyebrows. I felt boneless with fear, watching her mouth move.
And suddenly I couldn’t hear what she was saying, because my ears started to ring, a piercing whine.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I said to the cop, voice already thick with it. “I’m—”
“What?” he said.
It all came up, everything I’d eaten on the plane, plus the noodle salad I’d had in Edmonton International, but I’d been drinking so much water that it was a clear jet studded with orange chunks—and why was it always orange, I wondered dimly, coughing and spitting to clear my nose just as another jet burst out. Both cops yowled and stepped back.
And in that split second, Johnny flattened them both—elbow to the throat, kick to the balls—and grabbed the front of my t-shirt, and we took off.
I stumbled on my wet shoes, actually falling to my knees at one point with a sickening crack. She hauled me up and hissed “Come on!” but I couldn’t pump my arms, I kept trying to even though I kept also reminding myself that I couldn’t, just wiggling my shoulders like a pigeon. I saw Johnny checking her speed for me, as if shifting down to a lower gear, and felt a brief stab of gratitude and annoyance, cutting through the green haze of the nausea. Someone screamed behind us, loud over the patter of footsteps. I didn’t dare look back. We weren’t even the only ones running in the airport, though most of the others were headed in the opposite direction, towards flights they were about to miss. They made good camouflage, though, as we raced towards the sunlight they were leaving behind.
Where were we even going? The baggage check carousels were in the way—easily leaped—and then through another, unmanned security gate, and bodies congregating at the door.
“Quick!” Johnny gasped, and we darted left, my shoes still skidding horrifyingly, into a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT in several languages. It was one of those ones you had to push for thirty seconds before the door opened, but Johnny did something to the wiring under the handle, spun back around, and we were through.
We banged down a hallway and finally through a set of revolving doors, my bag—my God, how had they let me keep my bag? They must have wanted to search it—briefly getting caught. Then we were free and running into the street, dodging cars and donkeys and horses, miraculously it seemed, before I realized that they were all at a standstill in a miles-long traffic jam surrounding the airport. The air, a damp slap, smelled intensely of unfamiliar things—exhaust, salt, ammonia. The ocean? Where were we?
It was so hot and bright that my pupils screamed and I felt my stomach heave again, as if it weren’t completely empty, and we pounded through the crowd, deking between dusty bumpers, and out the other side. Huge hotels flashed by, marked with names even I could read: Hilton, Sheraton. What? Not safe yet, I knew; she didn’t have to tell me. Never been so far from home, never been so far.
We ran and ran, sliding around cars and hopping barriers, past houses and trees and yards, people