Velocity To Never Exceed

Chapter 1

Loop 194

I never thought I'd be that person. Out of all the crazy people in the world, I still can't believe it's me – that I'm the girl sitting in seat 17C on a half-empty flight over the Pacific Ocean, ranting to anyone who will listen that the plane has only minutes left until it plummets to the sea.

But here I am.

My knee bounces so quickly it rattles my seat, even shaking the extended drink tray in front of me.

I'm twenty-three minutes in. Only five minutes left.

"There, there, dear," Margaret Evans murmurs, in concern. She's an older woman with a British accent, tucked against the oval window of the twin engine Boeing 737. I glance past her, out the window, but can see nothing except the wing of the plane against the dark sky. It's made of metal squares welded together like patchwork. A series of flaps trail the edge, moving up and down as the wind pushes through them. But I can't hear the wind. All I can hear is the white noise from the roaring engines, a constant hiss that makes me feel like someone's breathing down my neck.

Margaret reaches over the empty middle seat between us and opens her hand, revealing a couple of small white pills tilting in the crevices of her palm. "These will take the edge off. It's all natural. Lavender and magnesium, I think, you can look for yourself." With her other hand she holds out the bottle for me to inspect – it's some sort of generic drugstore supplement. But I shake my head in jerky movements, back and forth.

"I'm with you," Margaret attempts, in the spirit of comradery. A strand of grey hair escapes from behind her ear. She decided decades ago that she was going to age naturally, she once told me, and laughed that the greys multiplied like bunnies. "I'm a bloody terrible flyer myself," she adds, like it's just routine anxiety plaguing me.

As if I'm fearing a possibility, instead of an inevitability.

"Mags," I mutter, and she flinches at her childhood nickname, certain she's never told me her name in the first place. "Listen to me." I lean forward, gripping the armrest. She jolts and the jacket that's draped across her lap like a blanket falls to the ground. "The plane is going to pitch forward and shoot towards the ocean." I raise my unsteady hand to illustrate, holding it horizontally and then tilting it into a mostly vertical position. "That happens right after the woman in the very back row collapses."

Margaret watches me carefully. She shakes another pill from the bottle into her hand and holds out three.

I sling back the metal seatbelt and I'm on my feet, rushing down the narrow aisle. I hit a few knees invading the pathway, which earns me some unpleasant mutters and dirty looks. But I couldn't care less.

It's time.

I pause right before I reach the two tiny bathrooms at the rear end of the plane, and stare at the woman napping in the aisle seat, in the very back row. Janelle Fiori.

I study her face as if there's a clue hidden there, a new piece of information buried somewhere in her dark eyebrows that have been filled in with a pencil, or the deep creases in her forehead. Like a novice detective who flunked out of sleuthing school, I lean in, examining her dainty earrings and her thin-chained golden necklace with a simple teardrop pendant.

I have no idea what I'm looking for, but I search for something unusual. Out of place. Suspicious.

But I don't see anything. Everything appears painfully... ordinary.

I don't know much about Janelle, just a handful of facts. She's 56, lives in Boston, was visiting Maui for two weeks and staying at a residential address on the western side of the island. She traveled alone.

But they're just impersonal tidbits, and still after all this time, I have no clue who she really is. What her favorite food is. What her laugh sounds like. Who she loves.

Janelle's face is relaxed, round and peaceful, but at this exact moment her eyes open, just like I knew they would. She glances around, in a startled state, as if she isn't quite sure where she is. Then she stares up at me. Confusion spreads across her face. Her expression seems to say, who are you and why are you looking at me like that? But she doesn't say a word.

Instead her shoulders roll forward and she grabs the edges of her solid black cardigan, cinching it together as if she's fending off a sudden chill.

I scan the two seats beside her. They're empty, aside from silver knitting needles and a ball of multi-colored yarn. At some point, perhaps at the very beginning of the flight, she had been knitting something long and thin. Maybe a scarf.

But I don't remember much from the beginning of the flight. It didn't seem important, and I wasn't paying attention. I had other things on my mind.

The empty rows must've been the reason Janelle chose this seat in the first place. To stretch out and nap. I can't imagine any other reason someone would choose the last row of a mostly empty airplane. The seats can't recline and they're accosted by the stench of the bathrooms. They're also the last to deplane.

Except on this flight, no one is getting off.

Janelle hunches forward, as if something's wrong. Is it her stomach? Her heart? I search her face for clues but find none.

She's standing now, as if she's about to head to the bathroom. But she'll never get there.

I step forward and grab her hands in mine. They're warm. "I want to help you," my voice is high-pitched and desperate. I grip her hands tighter, pleading with her, begging her to give me something. Anything. "How can I help you?"

Janelle stares at me, her brown eyes nothing but saucers of fear. It's a haunting look. One I know well. I can't shake the feeling, somewhere deep in my gut, that she's trying to tell me something. That there's something she needs me to know.

She grips my hands harder and leans towards me. In a small voice, nothing but a whisper, she mutters something. But it's not clear. The words are mumbled, slurred together in one long meaningless sound.

Then her eyes roll back and her body collapses in a single motion, like it was made entirely of water.

A man rushes over, pushing me to the side. He's Gary Peterson, a pediatric nurse who works in a small practice in Boise. He begins to take her vitals. "I have a pulse," he yells, "but it's faint."

I slump against the backrest of the seat beside me, watching the rest of this play out the way I know it will.

One of the flight attendants, Cheyanne, cups her hands over my shoulders in an attempt to usher me back to my seat. This time I allow it. After all, I've learned the hard way that it's much easier to be sitting when the next part happens.

The part where the plane tilts forward and begins to nosedive.