LOTF: Before and After

Phase 2: Chapter 1

Chaos erupted among the cadet passengers in the Bainbridge Military Academy airplane as it slowly but surely continued descending towards the water. The plane kept rocking back and forth, and everything that had fallen onto the floor was sliding up and down the aisles. The sound of overhead bags slamming into seats and boys screaming and crying for their families filled Ralph's ears. Suddenly, the emergency alarm started blaring through the intercom speakers, making it impossible to make out any of the words behind the boys' screams.

Ralph tightened his seatbelt and pulled his knees to his chest. Jack followed suit and copied Ralph's position. Ralph could hear the sounds of the younger boys sobbing underneath the blaring alarm.

"Everybody tighten your seatbelts, hold your knees to your chests and put your heads down between your legs!" Ralph lifted his head and shouted at the top of his lungs, still hardly audible.

"Are we gonna die?" one of the little ones shouted back at him from a couple rows up.

"It's gonna be okay!" Ralph yelled back before tucking his head back between his knees.

"I don't know about that" Jack said, but only Ralph was close enough to hear him over the alarm.

The sounds of the alarm, the screaming, and the plane dropping at a pace that was quickening by the minute was overbearing. It felt to Ralph that they'd been falling for hours, though it had only been a handful of minutes. He wondered what Captain Benson was doing up in the cockpit. Was he okay? Did the engine fail? Did Captain Benson lose control of the plane? Was he even conscious?

As they got closer and closer to the water's surface, Ralph was pained by the sounds of his squadron screaming and crying beneath the alarm. Suddenly, the alarm picked up the pace at which it was blaring and became more urgent.

As they continued to descend, Ralph began losing hope that Captain Benson would regain control of the plane. He couldn't keep waiting for the plane to steady and for all the noise to stop. He had to make a plan.

"The lifeboat" Ralph said to himself, but Jack could only make out mumbles of his words. Jack ignored his friend until he looked over and saw Ralph undoing his seatbelt. Jack immediately shot his head up from between his knees.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jack shouted over the alarm, watching in horror as Ralph got out of his seat.

Almost immediately, Ralph was knocked to the floor when the plane continued to shift and rock as it plummeted downwards.

"Ralph!" Jack shouted loud enough to get the attention of half the boys on the plane. Only a couple of them kept their heads out of their knees for more than a few mere seconds.

Jack and a couple others watched as Ralph got knocked around into the seats as he crawled down the aisle towards the back of the plane. He laid down onto his back and kicked the door with both feet as hard as he could until it burst open. He crawled through the door and returned two and a half minutes later, dragging the folded up lifeboat in its carryon bag by it's string.

Ralph crawled back to his seat, having hit his head and most other parts of his body more than a couple times, and climbed back into it. He fastened his seatbelt and tied the string of the lifeboat to his wrist, triple knotted, as tightly as he humanly could. His hands were damp with sweat from stress and anxiety, but he did it.

"Are you fucking crazy?!" Jack shouted over the alarm after Ralph was back in his seat, his head down between his knees again.

Ralph didn't have the energy to respond. Instead he kept his head pinched tightly between his legs as he let the tears fall from his eyes for the first time since the plane started going down. He thought about his parents, his home, his old friends from East Point, the rest of his friends back at the military school. He wanted to stay composed for the rest of his squadron, but as they descended closer and closer to the surface, he had become too afraid to hold his tears back any longer.