What Could Go Wrong? (3 page)

Sea-Tac is a big airport, and there were hundreds of people, but after Charlie pointed
out how organized it all is, it wasn't so scary. We were leaving from Gate 48, and all the information about our flight was posted over a booth, as well as being shown on a television screen with a lot of other flights. Once in a while the information on the TV screen would change, but mostly it said each flight was on time. Except that after we'd sat there for a while and Max was getting tired of watching planes land and take off and wanted something to eat, the passenger agent in her dark blue uniform made an announcement over the loudspeaker.

“Flight 211 to San Francisco will be delayed slightly,” she said. “Flight 211 to San Francisco will be delayed.”

I jerked. “That's us! Won't we get to go after all?”

“Delayed only means it won't leave quite on time,” Dad said calmly. “Sit tight. I'll see what's up.”

He wasn't gone long. I was tense, because I didn't want anything to happen to spoil my first adventure on an airplane, my first trip to San Francisco.

“The plane was held up in Salt Lake,” Dad told us. “Had a passenger taken ill, it sounded like.”

Mom looked at her watch. “Will it take much longer? You told Mr. Hudson you'd be home to accept his call by two thirty.”

“Well,” Dad speculated, consulting his own watch, “we'll be okay if it's only half an hour or so. Otherwise, if the traffic is heavy, it might be cutting it sort of fine.”

“You don't have to stay with us, Uncle Don,” Charlie said confidently. “I've done this before, and there's nothing to it. We just sit here where the passenger agent can see us, and when they tell us, we board the plane. We've already got our boarding passes. Why don't you go ahead? No need to miss your call.”

“Sure,” Eddie added. “We're not babies. We don't need a sitter for an extra half hour of waiting.”

My parents hesitated. “Maybe we should go, Don,” Mom said. “It's an important call.”

“Sure.” I put in my two cents worth. “We'll be okay.” The adventure wouldn't actually begin until we were on our own.

It was a good thing Dad didn't know all the things
we
knew, or he'd have been more dubious than he was. He was still hesitating.

“We could ask the passenger agent to keep an eye on the kids,” Mom said. “There's no question about the plane taking off, is there?”

“No. It'll be here soon! It's on the way. Then it's only a matter of getting it loaded with supplies.” His gaze rested on Charlie, who was smiling calmly.

Dad said afterward that he was suspicious of that smile. But I'm sure he wasn't really. If he had been, he'd never have let us stay alone.

“I guess you're right. I'll speak to the attendant,” Dad decided.

And then there we were, like seasoned travelers, on our own. I felt like electricity was crackling along all my nerves, I was so excited. It would be the biggest adventure I'd ever had, and I was sure we'd do fine.

I'll have to admit, though, that it wasn't Charlie after all, but me, who took the first step that would change our adventure into a horror story.

I was glad Charlie was there, because Sea-Tac is this enormous airport, full of people who acted as if they didn't see us. Eddie put down his flight bag and a hurrying man tripped over it and sent it skidding across the slippery tiled floor. The man never even looked back, let alone apologized.

Eddie rescued the bag, looking uneasy, and sat down again with the bag on his lap.

“There sure are a lot of people going somewhere,” he observed as a family group of seven moved past us. They were Asian, loaded with cameras and flight bags similar to ours, wearing shorts or jeans and running shoes. We couldn't understand the language they were using.

Almost as if he were reading my thoughts,
Charlie offered, “It takes about fourteen hours to fly to Japan. Of course they show movies, but that's an awful long time to be fastened in with a seat belt. Dad says it's a good idea to keep your seat belt on even if the sign doesn't say you have to, just in case you encounter turbulence.” He seemed to take it for granted that
I
understood that, but he added for Eddie's benefit, “That's when you hit rough weather. If the plane drops suddenly, and you aren't belted in, you could get hurt.” And then, to both of us, “On a long flight you get fed quite a few times, though.”

He sounded as if he'd been to Japan, but I knew he hadn't.

“Could we go ride on the shuttle?” Eddie asked. That was a sort of little underground train that took you out to the North Satellite, if that was where your flight left from; I'd been on it when we went to meet Grandma Cameron once, and it was fun.

“No,” I said firmly. “There's no telling exactly when our flight will leave, and we're not running around taking any chances on missing it.”

“Yeah, we better stay here,” Charlie backed me up, and Eddie sank back in disappointment.

I was getting tired of sitting facing the big floor-to-ceiling windows, because not much was happening out there that we could see. There was a 747 sitting at the next gate over, but nothing was going on over there; nobody was getting on or off. Once in a while, off in the distance, a jet lifted off or landed, but they were only visible for a few minutes.

I shifted around to look back at the people milling around. Two old ladies were having an argument with the passenger agent because the plane was late. We couldn't hear what the uniformed young woman was saying, but the lady with the funny hat was getting quite loud, demanding to know exactly when Flight 211 would take off.

I guess when I turned back around I must have stuck my foot out in front of me farther than I intended, because the next thing I knew a man was falling over it. He lurched forward and dropped the folded newspaper he was carrying as he grabbed at the next chair arm to keep from going all the way to the floor.

I yelped and leaned over to rescue the newspaper, murmuring an apology, but he jerked the paper away from me as if I had some contagious disease. He was rather fat and sloppy, with a wrinkled Hawaiian print shirt and pale blue slacks belted under his belly. His eyes were pale blue, too, and smallish for his face. My mother would have washed out my mouth with soap if I'd said what he said to me.

I know my face turned red. Charlie made a protesting sound that died when the man snarled at him, too.

I felt awful. People close to us were staring. “I'm sorry,” I said again. “I didn't mean to . . .”

I let the words trail off, because he wasn't staying around to listen. He stalked away and took a seat in a back row, away from everybody else.

“What a jerk,” Charlie said. “It wasn't like you tripped him on purpose!”

The old ladies who had been making a fuss over the delay went by, giving me disapproving glances. My face burned. I pretended I was interested in a plane that was just landing.

Eddie squirmed on the hard seat beside me. “I'm getting hungry. I wonder if I should eat a candy bar or go buy something. Dad gave me some money. Would I get lost if I went and found something to eat? Do you think the plane would take off before I got back?”

I didn't know if he was really hungry already or only changing the subject to make me feel better.

“Our plane isn't even at the gate yet,” Charlie said, standing up and stretching. “It'll come right here when it's ready to load, so we've got plenty of time to get a bite. There's a place down that way, cafeteria style. I'm hungry, too, and we don't want to eat up the stuff we're carrying because we may need it worse later on. Come on, let's go. Bring your flight bags; it's not safe to leave them sitting here.” He paused after he picked up his own bag and said under his breath, “What's the matter with him, anyway?”

“Who?” I asked, but I knew, and I didn't turn around quite yet.

“That guy who tripped over your leg. He just gave me a dirty look. He must've been to
the islands. Or maybe he's just going there. He doesn't look like he'd have much fun on the beach, if that's where he's going.”

“What're the islands?” Eddie wanted to know. For twelve, he was sort of naive. He got his feet tangled up in the straps of his bag before he could pick it up, and then he swiveled around to look past the Japanese family group and an elderly couple talking in whispers. “Wow! You need sunglasses to look at his shirt.”

“The Hawaiian Islands, stupid,” Charlie said. “Come on.”

When I finally turned around, the fat man was reading his newspaper and didn't pay any attention to us. I walked very carefully after the boys, making sure I didn't bump or trip anyone else.

We each got a hamburger and a Coke and Eddie had a bag of potato chips he shared. Eddie eats more for a boy his size than anyone else I know; he was still hungry, but Charlie said maybe we'd better head back to our gate, so Eddie didn't get the second burger he wanted.

We came back down the broad corridor, munching chips. There were more people now. Two planes were loading. It sort of gave me prickles down my spine, because in a short time it would be our turn.

I wondered if it would make me queasy to take off. Charlie had already explained about airsick bags, and I prayed I wouldn't have to use one. I never got carsick, though, so Mom said I'd probably be fine. It would sure be embarrassing if I wasn't.

We were almost back to the seats near our departure gate when it happened.

The old lady walking ahead of us, carrying a light blue bag just like mine, was jostled by an anxious-looking couple running to make their plane, I guess; they knocked her sideways and her purse flew out of her hand and came open, scattering its contents all over the floor.

“Oh, no!” She stopped and half-turned, and I thought she could have been a twin, nearly, to Dad's aunt Letty, who was eighty. She wore plain sensible white shoes and a blue-and-white striped summer dress, with a white sweater over her shoulders.

She stared down with dismay at her belongings, rolling every which way, and someone else came along and kicked a glasses case so it slid under one of the seats on the carpeted area.

“Sorry,” a woman muttered when she stepped on a small mirror, but she didn't stop.

The old lady's white sweater had slid off, and I made a grab for it. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her because she seemed so bewildered.

The boys were ahead of me, but I could see the sign for Gate 48, so I knew I couldn't get lost. “Here, I'll help you,” I said, and knelt down to reach for the glasses case, hoping none of those hurrying travelers trampled on me while I was retrieving things.

The lady had a nice smile and rather faded blue eyes; she thanked me profusely when I handed her the glasses. “Oh, dear, the mirror's broken, isn't it? Well, I don't believe that old superstition about bad luck, do you? Besides, at my age, seven years of it would be ridiculous.”

I picked up the pieces of the mirror. They weren't worth saving, so I dropped them into one of the containers they had for ashtrays. “I
think this is all of it,” I told her, gathering up a brush with a few silvery hairs clinging to it and a handkerchief with pink roses embroidered in the corner.

She stuffed them back into her purse. “I guess I should have sat down before I tried to open this up for my coin purse. Do I still have that? Oh, yes, here it is.” She gave me a wide smile. “You're so kind, dear.”

“That's okay.” I saw that the boys had stopped and were looking back, and Charlie gestured toward the big windows where a silvery plane stood at our gate. My stomach fluttered with excitement. I was already moving in that direction when the old lady asked, “Can you tell me where Gate Number 48 is, dear?”

“Sure. That's where I'm going. I'll show you,” I offered, and hoped she'd walk fast enough so I wouldn't get there late. Our seats were reserved, so it didn't matter for that reason if we weren't at the head of the boarding line, but I wanted to get on and settled as soon as possible. Maybe the butterflies in my middle would subside by the time we took off; they
were active enough to make me think uneasily of the airsick bags.

She walked all right. Dad's aunt Letty has bunions, so she walks as if her feet hurt, but this old lady was quite spry. When we entered the boarding area, there was a cluster of passengers around the ticket agent's booth. They weren't forming a line yet, though, and Charlie decided we might as well sit down again rather than stand there holding our bags.

The little old lady sank into the chair next to me with a sigh.

“My goodness, I thought it would be easier than this,” she said. “It's such a big place, it's confusing, isn't it? Though I had excellent directions.” She gave me a tentative smile. “I'm a little nervous. It's the first time I've ever flown.”

Charlie leaned out around me to see her better. “There's nothing to it, ma'am,” he said, and I wished Dad could see how polite and thoughtful he was being. “I've flown lots of times.”

“Oh, good. My son said it was easy, but he couldn't bring me to the airport.” She rummaged in her sweater pocket for a roll of mints,
took one, then offered them to us. “Care for a mint?”

We each accepted one and returned the package. She settled back more comfortably, crossing her ankles. “My son drove me up here to visit my sister in Mukilteo, but then he had to go on to Vancouver—the one in British Columbia, not the one in Washington—so I have to fly home alone. My, it's tiring to visit someone for a week.” She assessed our looks, seeing us all so different. “You're not brothers and sisters, are you?”

“No. Cousins,” I supplied. She'd told us about herself, so I thought I should tell her about us. “We're going to visit our aunt in San Francisco.”