Getting Air (2 page)

“Cockpit, this is ground crew,” a voice said. “Our pre-departure checks are complete. Standing by for pushback clearance.”

“Roger, stand by for pushback clearance.”

“United 39, you are cleared to position, hold on runway four left.”

“United 39, you’re cleared for takeoff, runway four left.”

Arcadia was coming down the aisle with a tray, passing out little bags of pretzels. I took off the earphones and desperately tried to think of something clever to say to her. She was almost upon me.

“Do you like pretzels?” I asked as she handed me a bag. What an idiot I am.

“Yes, but I like the big soft ones better,” she replied, “with mustard on them. That’s the way they eat them in Philadelphia.”

“Sounds delicious,” I agreed, even though the thought of putting mustard on a pretzel made me nauseous.

“Smooth,” whispered Henry when Arcadia walked back toward the front. “Now I know why the chicks dig you so much, Zimmerman.”

I am so lame. If it was the movies, I would have said something really cool and Arcadia would have fallen in love with me on the spot. Then we’d be at the airport waiting to get on separate planes and she’d run to me because she couldn’t bear the thought of living the rest of her life without me.

I started to work on a fantasy in which Arcadia and I were married. She’d give up being a flight attendant so she could travel around the world with me to my skateboarding competitions. Sometimes we’d fly off to tropical islands to pose for swimsuit calendars.

My fantasy was just starting to get interesting when I felt the plane rolling. We had pushed away from the gate. I could see the airport out the window as the pilot steered us onto the runway.

We didn’t have to wait long. Soon the plane was building up speed. Everything was shaking, but when the wheels lifted off the ground, it suddenly got smooth and quiet.

I gripped the armrest tightly and closed my eyes. My stomach felt like it was falling away.

“Don’t worry,” Julia assured me after we were in the air. “Seventy percent of all plane crashes take place on the takeoff or the landing. Takeoff looks fine, so our chances just got a lot better.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” I said.

Somebody left a find-a-word puzzle magazine in the seat pocket. I started looking at it, but I didn’t have a pencil. I couldn’t concentrate anyway. I picked up the card with a cartoon on it that tells you what to do if there’s an emergency. It didn’t hold my attention. I had a Game Boy, but the pilot said we had to turn off all electronic devices. I wished I could go to sleep and just wake up in California.

“Hey, check it out!” Henry said. He had poked holes in his barf bag and made it into a hand puppet. Henry even drew a little face on it.

“If you feel sick, throw up into me!” he said in a funny voice.

“Most amusing,” I told him.

I flipped to a few of the channels on the earphones, but all they played was lame elevator music that old people listened to in the last century. Good music to knit by. I guess that stuff is supposed to be soothing.

The video screens dropped down from the ceiling and the pilot told us he was going to show a movie, some chick flick starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Lucky I had a barf bag in case I caught a glimpse of it.

“Hey, did you ever notice they never have in-flight movies with plane crashes in them?” I announced to nobody in particular.

“Yer a foon, Zimmerman,” David said from behind me.

“A foon?” I asked. “What’s a foon?”

“A foon is a fool with an
N
in it, you foon,” David said.

“Oh, of course. Everybody knows that.”

“We’re not gonna crash, Zimmerman,” David said. “So pipe down or we’ll all beat the carp out of you.”

“Carp?” I asked. “Don’t you mean crap?”

“No, I mean carp,” David said. “Reverse the letters.”

“I’ll beat the carp out of
you
, man,” I told David.

“Not in this lifetime, Zimmerman.”

At that moment, I heard a scream.

I turned toward the sound of the scream, but I didn’t see anything unusual. There was a thud, like the sound of a body hitting the floor. Then more screams. I craned my neck to see what was going on, but I was still belted into my seat. I couldn’t see much.

“Somebody probably ralphed their breakfast,” David said.

“What the—” Henry said.

“It’s the stewardess!” somebody shouted. “We need a doctor!”

All the old ladies were screaming. Suddenly, a guy stood up. He was wearing a mask.

“Don’t move!” he shouted.

“Oh my God!” David said. “We’re being hijacked!”

My sister grabbed my hand. I grabbed hers. My heart started racing.

Another guy wearing a mask stood up about ten rows in front of us. This guy had something strapped to his waist. A box, it looked like. A bomb? There were at least two hijackers. Maybe more in the first-class section. I couldn’t see up there.

“Stabbed!” somebody yelled.

“I think she’s dead!” one of the old ladies shouted. “The stewardess is
dead
!”

The first hijacker slapped the lady in the face, then shouted, “Do as we say or you’ll be dead too!”

He had an accent. I couldn’t place it.

Arcadia, the flight attendant, broke down in tears.

“She’s my friend!” she sobbed.

“Sit down and shut up!” the guy with the bomb strapped to his waist ordered. Neither of the hijackers looked much bigger than any of us. They might have been twenty, twenty-five years old.

For a minute, I was just stunned. My heart was thumping and I was sweating all over. This was so far from anything that I ever expected to happen to me. I was paralyzed. I think we all were. At least for a time.

You get on a plane and you expect to fly somewhere. You expect somebody to pick you up at baggage claim and your life continues as it was in some other place. You don’t expect some lunatics to take over the plane.

I put my arm around Julia. We don’t always get along. But if these guys so much as touched my little sister, I would kill them. I didn’t know how, but I would. Julia had already taken my cell phone out of my backpack and was frantically pushing the buttons.

“I can’t get a signal!” she said.

“We’re gonna die,” Henry said behind me. “I’m only thirteen years old and I’m gonna die. I never even got the chance to kiss a girl and I’m gonna die. Nobody ever survives a hijacking.”

“That’s not true—,” Julia said, but she stopped because the plane started to dip and roll. It could have been turbulence, but probably not. My guess was that there was a fight going on in the cockpit. There were probably two other hijackers in first class who somehow got into the cockpit. I looked around. Some of the old ladies were sobbing. Some were praying. Some were just paralyzed with fear. Like us.

“It’s all over,” Henry said softly, and then he started to cry.

“Screw that,” whispered David. “We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We gotta do something.”

David had been pretty quiet up until then. But there was determination in his voice.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked.

“Fight
back
,” David said. “How many of them are there?”

“Four, I bet,” Julia said. “These two guys guarding us, plus there are probably two in first class who rushed the cockpit.”

“And there’s four of us, including Squirt,” David said, nodding toward my sister. “That’s an even fight.”

But these guys had weapons, and they had already killed somebody. None of us ever killed anybody. None of us ever even
hurt
anybody.

“Let’s get them,” said Julia, punching one fist into her open palm.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told her. “I promised Mom and Dad I would take care—”

Julia wouldn’t even let me finish the sentence.

“You guys are going to need all the help you can get.”

“How do you think they got in the cockpit?” Henry asked. “I thought those doors were supposed to be locked and secure.”

“They’re smart,” Julia said. “They found a way.”

“That guy has a bomb,” I said. “If they’re going to blow the plane up, there’s no point charging them. He’ll just set it off early. Maybe we should try to reason with them.”

“Are you crazy?” David said. “There’s no reasoning with these people! They’re suicidal. I bet you a million bucks that bomb is phony. He’s just using that to keep us away from him.”

“They’re going to crash the plane into a building,” Julia said. “That’s what they did on 9/11. I read all about it. I’ll bet they’re gonna hit the White House. That’s what they were trying to do with the fourth plane on 9/11. But the passengers fought back and crashed it into a field in Pennsylvania.”

“I can’t believe this is happening to us,” said Henry.

“We gotta do something,” said Julia. “And fast.”

The plane made a big bump and all the old ladies screamed. The two hijackers were watching us carefully. They each had a hand in one pocket. We had to whisper.

“What weapons do they have?” asked David.

“The bomb,” I said.

“The bomb is fake,” David said. “That’s for sure. What
else
do they have?”

“No way they could get a gun or knife past security,” Julia said.

“Then how did he kill the stewardess?” asked Henry. “He must have used something sharp.”

“He could have assembled a knife out of smaller pieces after we left the ground,” David said.

“They’ve each got a hand in a pocket,” said Julia.

“It could be a bluff,” David said. “They could have nothing.”

The old lady in front of me, the
real
Mildred who asked me to put away her sweater, leaned toward me.

“My friend, Adeline, said he jammed a pencil into the stewardess’s neck!” she whispered.

“A pencil?” David hissed. “They hijacked the plane with a
pencil
!”

“There are about thirty of us and two of them,” Julia calculated.

Yeah, but twenty-six of us were heading for a knitting convention. The hijackers were looking in our direction. I could see their eyes even though they were wearing masks. They knew the old ladies weren’t likely to put up much of a fight. We were the ones they had to worry about.

The one who killed the flight attendant looked nervous. But crazy nervous. Like he might go nuts and kill one of us just to set an example and keep the rest of us quiet.

Suddenly, the plane started to bank into a right turn. I don’t know a whole lot about geography, but I know there are no turns when you’re going from New Jersey to Chicago. It’s a straight shot.

“Why are we turning?” I asked.

“We’re heading back toward the East Coast,” Julia said. “Probably to Washington…or New York.”

Looking to my right out the window, I could see the ground outside. There was a river.

A voice came over the speakers. It sounded almost mechanical, like he was reading from a script.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the pilot. Everything will be okay. Be calm. We are returning to the airport. Nobody will be hurt.”

“That’s bull,” David said.

Some of the old ladies were praying. Others got their cell phones working or were talking on the phones mounted in the back of the seats. The hijackers weren’t doing anything to stop them.

“I love you,” I heard them saying into the phones.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”

“I need you to be happy for the rest of your life.”

“He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”

“Tell your mommy and daddy I love them.”

“He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

“I’m sorry we argued…”

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me.”

“Oh God, please help us. I just want to see your face again.”

“Help us, Jesus. I don’t want to die!”

“I’ve got to call Mom and Dad,” Julia said, trying to get a signal on my cell phone. “They’ll know what to do.”

“There’s no time for that!” David said forcefully. “We need a plan
now
.”

“Please remain sitting,” announced the ‘pilot.’ “We have a bomb aboard. The airlines has our demands. Please remain quiet and nobody will be hurt.”

Arcadia was standing in the galley, still sobbing about the other flight attendant.

“We’re going down,” Henry said. “We’re all going to die!”

“All they’ve got is a pencil!” David said, taking off his seat belt. “If you guys are too wussy, I’ll go after them myself.”

Before David could get out of his seat, the plane started making erratic movements. Climbing and dropping. Slowing down and speeding up. Shaking. Planes weren’t built to fly like that, I knew. One of the overhead bins opened and stuff spilled out into the aisle.

“Oh my God!” somebody screamed.

“Be quiet and you will be okay,” said the guy with the bomb. “We are returning to the airport. If you try to make any moves, you will endanger yourself and the aircraft.”

“Just stay quiet,” said the other one. “Don’t try to make any stupid moves. We have a bomb. We have weapons. We will use them if we have to.”

“He’s bluffing,” David said. “If he had weapons, they wouldn’t have killed that lady with a pencil.”

“Nobody can help us,” whispered Julia. “It’s up to us.”

“Even if we die,” Henry said, “maybe we can do something so fewer people will die on the ground.”

They were right. We had to do something, and right away.

“Okay, what’s the plan?” I asked.

“We can’t all rush the cockpit at once,” David whispered. “The aisle is too narrow to get by.”

“We gotta get past these two guys first,” said Julia.

“I’ll go after the guy with the bomb,” Henry said. “I took karate.”

“You took karate for like three weeks, Henry,” I reminded him.

“I learned some stuff,” Henry said. “If you press on the carotid artery, it cuts off oxygen flow to the brain. It can kill a man in seconds.”

“Oh, and you think he’s going to just stand there and let you press his carotid artery?” David said. “He’ll jam a pencil in
your
neck. Look, here’s the plan. Henry and I gang up on the guy with the bomb. Zimmerman, you and Squirt go after the smaller guy. That’s two on one. If we can take these two guys out, then we’ll charge the cockpit and get the other guys.”

It made sense.

“I want to help too.”

It was Arcadia, the flight attendant. She was in the galley next to us, fussing with a coffeepot.

“What are
you
going to do?” asked David.

“I’m boiling water,” Arcadia said.

“What, you’re making
coffee
for them?” David said.

“The water is to
throw
at them!” she said. “Then we can use the food cart as a battering ram to get into the cockpit.”

“That’s smart,” Henry said.

“Hey you, blondie!”

It was the hijacker, the one who didn’t have a bomb. “What are you doing back there? Get over here!”

He was coming toward the back of the plane. I could see the pencil in his hand. Maybe he was going to stab Arcadia, just like he stabbed the other flight attendant. I felt like I had to do something. I didn’t know what.

My instincts took over. As he passed my seat, I grabbed my skateboard with both hands and swung it up, back, and as hard as I could. I connected with the back of his head. He fell forward and crumpled to the floor.

“Nice shot, Jimmy!” Julia yelled.

The old ladies started cheering.

“What about the plan?” asked Henry.

“Forget the plan,” David said. “Let’s get the other guy!”