as if the clouds had hidden quills that have suddenly erupted up and out. A moment later the thunderclap hits them and with it turbulence, and the plane is kicked, knocked up and to one side. A dozen red lights stammer on the dash. Alarms shriek. Vorstenbosch sees it all in an instant as he is lifted off his feet. For a moment Vorstenbosch floats, suspended like a parachute, a man made of silk, filled with air. His head clubs the wall. He drops so hard and fast it’s as if a trapdoor has opened in the floor of the cockpit and plunged him into the bright fathoms of the sky beneath.
JANICE MUMFORD IN BUSINESS
“Mom!” Janice shouts. “Mom, lookat! What’s that?”
What’s happening in the sky is less alarming than what’s happening in the cabin. Someone is screaming: a bright silver thread of sound that stitches itself right through Janice’s head. Adults groan in a way that makes Janice think of ghosts.
The 777 tilts to the left and then rocks suddenly hard to the right. The plane sails through a labyrinth of gargantuan pillars, the cloisters of some impossibly huge cathedral. Janice had to spell “cloisters” (an easy one) in the Englewood Regional.
Her mother, Millie, doesn’t reply. She’s breathing steadily into a white paper bag. Millie has never flown before, has never been out of California. Neither has Janice, but unlike her mother she was looking forward to both. Janice has always wanted to go up in a big airplane; she’d also like to dive in a submarine someday, although she’d settle for a ride in a glass-bottomed kayak.
The orchestra of despair and horror sinks away to a soft diminuendo (Janice spelled “diminuendo” in the first round of the State Finals and came thi-i-i-i-is close to blowing it and absorbing a humiliating early defeat). Janice leans toward the nice-looking man who has been drinking iced tea the whole trip.
“Were those rockets?” Janice asks.
The woman from the movies replies, speaking in her adorable British accent. Janice has only ever heard British accents in films, and she loves them.
“ICBMs,” says the movie star. “They’re on their way to the other side of the world.”
Janice notices that the movie star is holding hands with the much younger man who drank all the iced tea. Her features are set in an expression of almost frosty calm. Whereas the man beside her looks like he wants to throw up. He’s squeezing the older woman’s hand so hard his knuckles are white.
“Are you two related?” Janice asks. She can’t think why else they might be holding hands.
“No,” says the nice-looking man.
“Then why are you holding hands?”
“Because we’re scared,” says the movie star, although she doesn’t look scared. “And it makes us feel better.”
“Oh,” Janice says, and then quickly takes her mother’s free hand. Her mother looks at her gratefully over the bag that keeps inflating and deflating like a paper lung. Janice glances back at the nice-looking man. “Would you like to hold my hand?”
“Yes, please,” the man says, and they take each other’s hand across the aisle.
“What’s I-C-B-M stand for?”
“Intercontinental ballistic missile,” the man says.
“That’s one of my words! I had to spell ‘intercontinental’ in the regional.”
“For real? I don’t think I can spell ‘intercontinental’ off the top of my head.”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Janice says, and proves it by spelling it for him.
“I’ll take your word for it. You’re the expert.”
“I’m going to Boston for a spelling bee. It’s International Semifinals, and if I do well there, I get to go to Washington, D.C., and be on television. I didn’t think I’d ever go to either of those places. But then I didn’t think I’d ever go to Fargo either. Are we still landing at Fargo?”
“I don’t know what else we’d do,” says the nice-looking man.
“How many ICBMs was that?” Janice asks, craning her neck to look at the towers of smoke.
“All of them,” says the movie star.
Janice says, “I wonder if we’re going to miss the spelling bee.”
This time it is her mother who responds. Her voice is hoarse, as if she has a sore throat or has been crying. “I’m afraid we might, sweetie.”
“Oh,” Janice says. “Oh, no.” She feels a little like she did when they had Secret Santa last year and she was the only one who didn’t get a gift, because her Secret Santa was Martin Cohassey and Martin was out with mononucleosis.
“You would’ve won,” her mother says, and shuts her eyes. “And not just the semifinals either.”