crescendo

Past

OLIVIA

I was happy when John was alive. He was a 2nd-grade teacher at Ridgeford Elementary.

He loved teaching and children almost as much as he loved me.

He would always make me breakfast before he left for school, even though he had to leave early in the morning every day.

I didn't deserve him. The way he would smile at me before he left for work, the way his eyes lit up when he saw me, the way he made me laugh.

Every day I long for his eyes, his smile, his goofy smirk.

I wish I could see him again; just to have a chance to say goodbye.

Thinking of him used to make me happy. I don't know why it doesn't now.

He's gone now. His existence a picture; faded, and slowly losing meaning.

DEAN

I hear the loudspeakers calling out flight groups and shake Tom, who's asleep.

"Man get up! We're gonna miss our number," I exclaim.

"Okay, okay. I'm pulling up my ticket now," Tom grumbles.

We're group 5 and I listen closely to the loudspeakers.

"Group 5, boarding now," it announces.

Tom and I grab our stuff and get in line. The girl that I saw earlier must have already gotten on her plane. I think she was going to Gate 37.

A short, smiling woman scans our tickets and we walk through the tunnel to the plane.

We find our seats and sit down. Tom has the window seat and I have the aisle seat.

A woman in the row next to me is getting emotional while on the phone. The middle-aged man sitting next to her is sleeping. If he wasn't sleeping, I'm sure he would be sighing and looking annoyed.

The woman somehow reminds me of my mother, although she was never very emotional.

My father left us when I was 10. I don't remember much of the moment, except the look on my mother's face. She had always made an effort not to cry in front of my brother and I; she was always trying to present a calm and collected image for us.

I remember this moment because of the almost palpable feeling of abandonment. She cried to herself silently, painfully, not knowing that I was watching. I could hear what she felt as she sobbed quietly; regret, sadness, a loss of hope, defeat.

She was never the same after that. The facade crumbled more easily, she became more and more tired every day; weighed down by the guilt that it was her fault he left.

I've always wondered, "What if he never left? Would my parents have been in an unhappy marriage still? Would we be happy?"

I knew the answers to the questions, but I liked to ask them, hoping that the past would somehow be healed.

ISABELLE

I try to get comfortable in my seat; which isn't hard considering I'm in first class.

Before I got on this plane, I didn't have a job, I didn't have a life of my own, and I was JUST Joseph Sharpe's daughter.

Yes, it's true, I'm his daughter. And no, I won't call him so you can talk to him.

Anyway, let's talk about my family. Most importantly, my father.

We weren't always rich and he wasn't always famous. Making inventions and improving them takes time and energy; he didn't figure it out until my sophomore year of high school.

He had been working on the concept and use of thermal hydrolysis since I was 8 years old. The basic definition is turning waste matter (poop) into power. When he told me what he was doing, I thought he was wasting his time. What I didn't realize was that his invention would process waste while creating energy.

Turns out, you can make millions out of shit.