Citrus | ONC 2024 ✔️

2: Worth It

Most anyone, I believe, would not have drunk so much before jumping a plane straight on their way to see their other parent of a lost year. Yet, I let the liquid cling to my tongue like a temporary bandage, something to stop my bleeding heart. Not heal, simply stop the exploding hpressure, the buildup of liquid gathered to feast upon insecurities and pitfalls I would not and could not be aware of. Stopping the bleeding was a priority when trying to fix a water hose. No water would trickle to the nozzle at its full capacity if the thing was leaking. The thing would work, just not as well.

The thing needed to be replaced or taped up with waterproof sealant. Closed somehow.

I took a deep breath. The vacant hum of what I imagined was the air conditioning system was a comfort. That was the only noise registering in my eardrums, not the dysfunctional clatter of boarding the plane or my thundering heart.

Gulping, I slid the latch. I knew the long click meant the door was now open, a vacant green now displaying itself on the other side, and the possibility of running into another person in my same predicament available. Two of the three were definite. The remaining option had to be wrong in some way, not just the waves of tension coiling around my neck like vines but my occupation of a facility that should have been free for them to use. It was wrong somehow, cruel.

Colder lighting greeted my eyes, my arms extending for my brain. My feet moved from the linoleum floor to the thin, patterned carpet. Doing my best to avoid straying feet in the aisle, I tiptoed back to my seat in the middle, near the wings.

Smiling, Morgan's complaints came to my mind. He wanted to see out the window, "see the glorious world", not plain white wings.

At that moment, my brain registered a difference, an absence of a presence, and an increased volume of sound. The soft thump of shoes against the carpet played on repeat in my mind, the snores of other passengers, too. Most of all, Morgan's low whisper drifted through the thick air, setting alarms off in my brain.

Not wanting to appear awkward, I quickly sat down in the aisle seat. The cushion was unusually plush and somewhat more comfortable than mine, but still the same sad shade of midnight blue. I listened closely, droning the occasional bleep of Candy Crush, stamping of feet, and closing of now-vacant stalls in a blanket of haze.

"You have an amazing job!" Morgan said. I could hear the smile in his voice, like always.

There was a laugh, male, maybe. "It has its perks."

"And what about the pilot?" I swallowed harder, knowing he was, most likely, smiling wider. "I want to be a pilot when I'm an adult. That would be cool, right?"

The voice was new. "Of course it would..." There was a pause. "Give me a second."

Carefully, I leaned left, my elbow resting more flush against the armrest while thumping shrank and grew, words drifting in a chorus of hums rather than intelligible phrases I could dissect like a leaf. The pigments couldn't be coherently spotted, not even the ever so elusive carotenoids, the reddish color seeming to disappear in the foreign solvent of my brain. Just because the color was rarer than the chlorophyll didn't mean it ceased to exist, especially in chrysanthemums.

The thumping grew in volume, stopping. "If you want to, you can check out the cockpit, just this once."

"You're the best!" The prolonged pause could only mean one thing. I fully angled my body in the awkward position of staring down the aisle. Morgan was, in fact, hugging the flight attendant. "Thank you all so much!"

He was hugging the stranger. No, not just stranger, singular. He wrapped his arms around the attendants present, plural. A huge grin spread across his face, brown skin seeming to glow brighter under the otherwise depressing airplane lights. Even though the bulbs weren't at full capacity, that didn't change the color they emitted or how they made people look too much. People still aged the same, had the same hair color, eye color.