**WATTYS 2022 WINNER** Seventeen-year-old Evelyn Werth is on an endless flight from hell. She's the only person onboard Aloha Airways Flight 1333 who's caught in a 28-minute time loop.
During each cycle, four things happen:
1. The Internet goes out...
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Loop 398
After the loop reset, I swear I could still feel the scream trapped inside my throat. Like I hadn't gotten it all out.
That last loop was beyond awful, in every possible way. Nothing, and certainly no amount of loops, could have prepared me for that.
The drugs. The blood. Heather.
Mechanically, I drop my hand and scoop up the pacifier, passing it over the back of my head.
But whatever happened in that bathroom with that deranged man and Heather – how did it affect the cockpit? It's almost as if the plane is stuck in its own loop within the cockpit. And while I can stop some things like the drink spilling on Sibyl Erly's shirt, I can't change the pilot's message, the turbulence, Janelle collapsing or the nosedive. No matter what I've done, those four things are static. Unchanging.
It's like everything else is just decoration on the cake.
Panic sets in as I scan the aisle for Heather's blonde bob, but instead I see Rion. He looks like I feel.
Overwhelmed.Drained. Somewhat defeated.
He approaches my row, his bright blue eyes duller somehow, drooping at the very ends as his shoulders curl forward like it's a struggle just to stand. I want to reach out, to hold him up, to feel his arms around me again.
But now's not the time for that. There's work to do.
I tuck my legs up to my chin and he scoots past me. He moves Margaret's bag to her sigh of protest, and then collapses into the middle seat.
"We've got a lot to talk about," he says, not sparing a second.
But I'm preoccupied, my attention drifting to the aisle. A chill jolts up my spine. I watch, holding my breath, until I see a blonde flight attendant in a navy skirt suit twist her body around the tiny galley at the front of the plane, holding a bag of pretzels.
I shoot up, off my chair, flooded with relief. My spirits suddenly lift and I want to scream in joy.
Heather's alive!
This past loop was the first time I saw anyone die, and I didn't know if death could be a game changer. If something happened differently in that last loop and it was the first time Heather actually died, I feared it could be final. Like, final final. Regardless of random time loop anomalies.
But it isn't, and for the first time since these loops started, I'm overcome with pure elation.
I stumble over my own feet as I launch myself into the aisle, wrapping my arms around Heather in a tight bear hug. She's so much taller that my arms circle her waist, squeezing her like I've just seen my long-lost friend. Well, a long-lost friend who doesn't know me at all, and who also happened to have miraculously returned to the land of the living.
