The Trouble with Flying (8 page)

“Sarah! My favourite middle daughter!” Dad calls from the lounge before striding into the entrance hall and greeting me with a hug. “I hope you videoed your entire visit to the Science Museum.”

I pull out of the hug and say, “Darn, I knew I forgot something.” At the look of disappointment on his face, I quickly add, “Relax, Dad. Jules and I did at least five mini interviews at various places inside the museum. She was more than happy to stand in front of my phone and act all goofy while talking about science.

“Anyway,” I continue, “Matt needs to go now, so I’m gonna say goodbye, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”

My parents take the hint and disappear into the lounge to give me a moment alone with Matt. I turn to him, and I’m about to ask what’s going on between us, but he takes my face in both hands and presses his mouth against mine before I can get a word out. He tastes of familiarity and … guilt. Because the last person I kissed wasn’t him. I try to relax against him and remember all the butterflies and goosebumps I used to get when he kissed me, but he’s already pulling away. “I missed you,” he says, then adds a quick kiss to my nose. “And now I’ve gotta go.”

I clench my fists at my sides as he turns away.
SAY SOMETHING!
“Matt, I’m … I’m a little confused. The night before I left …”

“Yes,” he says, stopping and turning back. “Yes, I know.” He looks down. “We were both angry. We both said very hurtful things we ended up regretting, and … well, now that we’ve had a few weeks to cool off, I think we should just put it behind us, you know?” He raises his eyes to mine and gives me an encouraging smile. “All couples fight. It’s normal. There’s no reason we can’t get back to the way things used to be between us.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “We’re good together, Sarah. I’d hate to lose what we have.”

He gives me one last hug, and I mumble, “O-okay,” because somehow it doesn’t feel like he left much else for me to say.

“Anyway, I need to go. I’ll see you on Friday morning.” He ducks out the front door and heads down the path while I try to figure out what he’s talking about.

“Friday morning?” I call after him.

“Yeah, I’m coming back to pick you up to take you to the farm.” He looks over his shoulder and, at the blank look on my face, rolls his eyes. “Grandpa’s ninetieth, remember? The party’s next weekend? I told you about it months ago.”

“Uh, yeah.” I do remember, but for some reason I’d thought it was happening after Christmas. “Okay, see you then.” I lean inside and press the button to close the gate. When I look back out, Sophie is running up the driveway.

“Hello,
sisi
!” she shouts, then just about collides into me. I wrap my arms around my younger sister, and we do a kind of bouncy hug thing that starts us both giggling.

“Where’d you just come from?” I ask her once we’ve recovered from our laughter.

“I was down the road at Braden’s.”

I raise my hands to make quote marks in the air. “You mean ‘that boy’?”

Sophie groans and closes the front door. “Yeah, Mom still doesn’t like him that much.”

She helps me carry my luggage down the passage to my bedroom, where I see a brown paper bag sitting on the bed. I open the bag and look inside. “Biltong! Fantastic!” I stick my hand in and remove a few pieces—finely sliced, just the way I like it—of the dried meat. “I’ve been so
lus
for biltong the whole time I was away.”

“I know,” says Sophie. “You mentioned it on Facebook, so I told Mom.”

I munch on the salty, spicy snack and mumble, “You rock.”

Sophie smiles sweetly and says again, “I know.” She pushes her blonde hair over her shoulder, then holds her hand out, palm up.

Jules and I both have dark hair like our parents, but somehow Sophie wound up blonde. She used to get upset about it when she was little—‘Why don’t I look like the rest of you?’—and Jules would tell her every time that she’d always secretly wished she had Sophie’s beautiful golden locks. That would inevitably lead to Sophie begging someone to tell her the story of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
, and by the time that was finished, she’d always forgotten she was upset in the first place.

I shake the paper bag over Sophie’s hand until several pieces of biltong fall out. “So
that
’s why you told Mom about my craving,” I say. “You knew you’d score some for yourself.”

Sophie smiles, but doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Mom says, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “Don’t fill up on biltong. We’re having dinner soon. Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom are almost here.”

She hurries away—probably back to the kitchen—and Sophie sticks a few more pieces into her mouth. The sneaky look on her face reminds me of Julia, which sends an unhappy lurch through me, which then gets me thinking about Aiden, which, in turn, twists my insides further.

I push the thought of either of them from my mind. “Want to see all the cool stuff I got overseas?” I say to Sophie.

“Yes, definitely.” She sits cross-legged on my bed while I unzip my suitcase, and even though I’ve never really connected with my younger sister the way I have with Julia, I’m so glad to have her right now.

***

When Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom have left, and everyone else has gone to bed, I find myself alone in my bedroom. The excitement of photographs and travel stories and handing out all the gifts I bought has passed. Julia’s absence and Aiden’s absence and the inevitability of having to return to a university degree I don’t even like after Christmas settle over me like one of those heavy apron things they cover you with when you have an X-ray at the dentist.

I finish unpacking my clothes, throwing most of them into a pile near the door to wash in the morning. When I get to the bottom of my carry-on suitcase, I slowly remove my notebook. I stand up and rub my thumb over the shiny, paisley-patterned cover. I flip through it—pages and pages of scribbled words squished close together—before opening the bottom drawer of my desk and tossing the notebook inside. I gather the rest of my notebooks from my bookshelf and add them to the drawer, then slam it shut. I don’t want to see inside those notebooks again. I don’t want to read my amateurish scribbles. They almost caused me to miss a flight, and—far worse—they caused all the hurtful things Matt and I said to each other the night before I left.

When I’ve finished unpacking and changed into pyjamas—summer pyjamas! No more climbing into bed covered in at least four different layers!—I open the lid of my ancient laptop and turn it on. I wait patiently while the aged beast grumbles, whirs, and blows hot air in its attempt to start up. After several minutes, it seems to be alive and ready. I open the browser and head to Facebook. I scroll through the news feed for a few minutes, but no matter how many videos of cute toddler relatives or captioned pictures of weird cats or random status updates I see, I can’t stop my eyes from continually moving up to the search bar at the top of the page.

Aiden. I want to search for Aiden. The problem is, I don’t know his surname. I caught a glimpse of the name tag on his luggage, but all I remember is that his surname ends in
ison
. I think. Which doesn’t exactly help.

Maybe it’s better that I don’t know his full name. After all, it feels like it might be wrong to search for him. Like in some weird way I’m cheating on Matt.

Okay, look,
I tell myself.
You thought you and Matt were no longer together when you kissed Aiden, so you didn’t really do anything wrong there. And
he
technically kissed
you
, not the other way around. And all you want now is to be friends with him. Nothing wrong with looking him up on Facebook just for that.

I open a new tab and go to Google. I hesitate, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.

“What are you doing?” I whisper to myself.

Before I can change my mind, I type
surnames ending in “ison”
into the search bar. I scan the results that come up, but I don’t see anything too helpful. I was hoping for a list or something. I look at a few articles and pick out some surnames—Addison, Morrison, Bettison, Madison—before returning to Facebook. I try each surname paired with the name Aiden, but I don’t find the guy I’m looking for.

“It’s just not meant to be,” I mutter to myself. I close the laptop with a mixture of disappointment and relief settling in my stomach. I climb into bed with my phone—which is about a century ahead of my laptop in terms of technology—and open the email app. I saw an email from Livi when I was scrolling through messages at the airport, and I think I could do with some best friend love right now. I smile at the words in the subject line:
You smell nice
. Livi likes to title her emails with weird statements that have nothing to do with the content, just to make sure nobody misses them. I’m amazed half the messages I’ve received from her haven’t ended up in the Spam folder.

I tap the screen to open her email.

From:
Alivia Howard

Sent:
Sat 14 Dec, 8:13 pm

To:
Sarah Henley

Subject:
You smell nice

One week and counting! Woohoo! I am SO glad this year is almost over—I never want to see another German brat in my life. And BOY do I have a story to tell you! A story involving a BOY, actually ;-) I don’t think even your made-up stories can top this one! We need to book a poolside date SOON so I can tell you all about it.

xx Livi

_____________________________

From:
Sarah Henley

Sent:
Sun 15 Dec, 10:34 pm

To:
Alivia Howard

Subject:
Re: You smell nice

Oh, I think I have a story that might top yours. And mine isn’t made-up either!

_____________________________

From:
Sarah Henley

Sent:
Sun 15 Dec, 10:37 pm

To:
Julia Henley

Subject:
Never again shall you mock the travel toothbrush

Jules! You will
never
guess what happened to me on the plane …

_____________________________

Harrison!

I wake up on Friday morning with the name on the tip of my tongue, and I’m convinced it belongs to Aiden. I know I caught a glimpse of the label on his bag, and when I close my eyes, I can clearly see an ‘H’ after his first name. I guess my brain just needed a few days to remember that detail—or it could be that after a few days of obsessing, my brain manufactured a false memory while I was sleeping.

To prove to myself that I
haven’t
been obsessing over Aiden, and that I
don’t
care whether I’ve remembered his surname correctly or not, I intentionally bypass my laptop on the way to the shower. It already feels about five hundred degrees hotter than any day should ever have the right to be at 8 a.m., so I turn the shower tap until the water is as cold as it will go. Afterwards, I take my time choosing a pretty summer dress. I eat breakfast slowly, make my bed, and start packing my bag for a weekend at Matt’s grandparents’ farm—all while pretending half my brain
isn’t
focused on the laptop in the corner of my room, as if it has some magnetic influence over my thoughts. I choose a pair of shorts, another dress, some summer pyjamas that are appropriate to wear in front of other people—
not
my old-enough-to-be-transparent nightie with the cartoon cow and
Over the moooooooon
written on it—and then try to remember which of my three bikinis Matt likes the most. Because I’m supposed to be thinking of him, not Aiden. Matt is my boyfriend. Matt is the guy who loves me. Matt is the one I’ll probably spend the rest of my—

“Oh, this is ridiculous.” I drop the tangle of bikinis onto my bed and rush to the corner of my room. I sit down at the desk and open the lid of my laptop. The machine whirs for a moment or two, then blinks out of hibernation mode and shows the last page I was on: my email. I open a new tab and navigate to Facebook. The moment the site loads, I type ‘Aiden Harrison’ into the search bar. A second passes, and then a whole list of Aiden Harrisons show up. I lean forward, examining the tiny profile picture next to each name.
Not him … not him … not him …
not him … Is that … ?
My heart does an uncomfortable double beat thing and a tiny squeal escapes my throat as I recognise the fifth Aiden Harrison.

It’s him! I’ve found him!

Okay. Breathe. Calm down.
I push my wheeled chair away from the desk and pat out a random rhythm across my knees. What am I doing? Am I going to send him a friend request? And then what? What if he accepts? What if he doesn’t? What if he’s not using his phone or a computer or anything while he’s on holiday and he only sees the friend request when he gets home and doesn’t even remember who I am?