A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter forty-seven

f o r t y - s e v e n

*

The plane's strange mood lighting disorientates me when I wake up to a purple-tinged cabin with no idea what time it is or how long we've been in the air. I remember eating a while after take-off, after Arjun and I took turns beating game levels on his phone to stay awake, but after that is a blur. My window shade is pulled down, my cheek pressed against it, and the weight on my lap, pinning me to my seat, turns out to be Arjun's head.

He's tucked up tightly across two seats, his body looking uncomfortably bent, but when I take out my earphones, I know from his snuffling that he's fast asleep. The back of his head is pressed against my stomach, his hand on my knee to anchor him in place, and his feet are poking into the aisle just enough that everyone knocks him and apologises when they head to the loo.

Moving as little as possible so as not to wake him up or roll him off me, I ease my phone out of my pocket and squint at the screen, instantly turning down the brightness before I can process the time. Apparently it's four o'clock in the morning, my phone still on California time, which means we've been in the air for five hours. Halfway there.

When I check the flight map, I forget about the whole the earth is a globe so planes don't fly in straight lines thing, and I expect to be somewhere over the east coast, so it takes a moment to process when I see that we're way up at the top of Canada, heading towards Greenland. There's a brief moment of panic that we got on the wrong plane, that this one is landing in Iceland or Norway, until I focus on the tiny writing on the screen in front of me which, I'm fairly certain, says that we're scheduled to land in London in five hours.

The cabin is silent. Most windows are covered, though a handful of open shades let in the morning light of a Hudson Bay dawn, and without music pouring into my ears, I can hear quiet snores in most directions. It's too early to be awake. It may be mid-morning back home, if my maths is even remotely correct, but the only way to tolerate the second half of this flight without Arjun to talk to is to sleep through it.

Easier said than done. My eyes ache and my throat burns with exhaustion as I switch my earphones from my phone to the in-flight entertainment and click on the first decent-sounding film that I've heard of. Arjun shifts in his sleep and almost rolls off the seat, but he doesn't wake up. I rest my hand on his hair, my elbow on his shoulder, and I start the movie.

*

The cabin's filled with light the next time I open my eyes, and Arjun is no longer horizontal. He's sitting up in the middle seat, the aisle empty, leaning against me as he reads his book. I'm about to say something, to stretch my arms and crack my back and ask how he slept, until I realise he's about five pages from the end. So I pretend I'm still asleep, and sneak a glance at the flight map on the screen in front of him.

My stomach flips when I realise we're almost home. My window shade is open – I guess Arjun must have leant over at some point – and it's bright outside. We're over land. According to the map, as far as I can tell, we're over Liverpool. Which means that right now, even this far up in the air, I'm closer to home than I will be when I land.

That makes my stomach flip again and I clench my hands into fists. Less than an hour to go, and most of that time will be the descent and landing. It feels like longer than three weeks since I was last on a plane; it feels like months since I last saw my family. As it is, it's been a couple of days since I last texted Flo and that seems like ridiculously long to not speak to my sister.

Next to me, Arjun groans. "Oh, god." He leans against me more heavily and the book drops from his hands.

"You ok?"