Turbulence

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

T minus 2 hours 39 minutes

Kennedy and Willow boarded the plane and found their seats in the very back row. As much as Kennedy hated the exhaustion and paranoia that came from flying in a pressurized cabin with hundreds of other germ-ridden strangers, she found planes to be some of the best places to people-watch. It was a good thing too, since for the next twelve hours, there wouldn’t be much for her to do except read, sleep, and stare at her fellow travelers.

Her pastor’s wife had given her a few books to take on her trip, missionary biographies Sandy thought she might enjoy. The Lindgrens were in the middle of a huge home remodel to give their adopted son more space and repair damages from a house fire last fall. Sandy was donating most of their books to the St. Margaret’s library or else passing them on to others, which was how Kennedy ended up with a backpack full of biographies about people like Hudson Taylor and Amy Carmichael, pioneers in the modern missions movement. She doubted it was reading her agnostic roommate would approve of, but Willow was currently obsessed with some high-def shooter game on her smartphone, so Kennedy didn’t think she’d care. Besides, Willow had spent twenty minutes flirting with a math teacher from Washington at the gate and was hoping to angle her way closer to him for at least some of the flight.

Kennedy was in the aisle, which gave her a clear view of the passengers as they boarded: A short, white-haired woman with spectacles that made her look like she should be in a tree baking cookies with the Keebler elves. Ray, the twenty-something teacher who flung a charming albeit somewhat awkward grin Willow’s way when he spotted her on the plane. A fat, middle-aged man in an orange Hawaiian shirt gripping the arm of a sullen-looking teenager. Her shorts might have been appropriate on a sunny beach but certainly not in the chill of Boston in December, and her Bon Jovi T-shirt was so faded it might have been as old as the band itself.

Many of the travelers appeared to be flying solo, a miscellaneous group ranging from single men in flannels and jeans all the way up to business women in heels, hose, and mercilessly pressed skirt suits. A balding man in Carhartt pants sat across from a younger one with an SVSU sweatshirt. Kennedy tried to figure out what the initials stood for.

Interspersed amongst the single travelers were a few families. A couple with four kids, none of them older than Kennedy had been when her family first moved to China, made their way toward the back of the cabin.

“I wonder if they know what century we’re in,” Willow muttered, raising her eyebrow at the mom’s head scarf and the long denim skirts the girls wore.

Kennedy tried not to stare. They certainly weren’t the type of family she was used to seeing around Cambridge. The mother sat across from Kennedy with two preschool-aged kids, a boy and girl, while the older daughters sat in the row ahead with their father, whose jet black beard reached to his chest.

“I didn’t think the Amish were allowed to fly,” Willow mumbled.

Kennedy couldn’t tell if her roommate was joking or not. All the information she knew about the Amish came from her mom’s love affair with historical romance, a genre Kennedy avoided as a rule whenever possible. Once a month or so back home, she had to sit with her mom and watch a sappy historical movie, usually about swooning heroines and sensitive heroes that more often than not made Kennedy want to barf. Some of the films were set in Amish communities. Others were on homesteads in the 1800s. It was hard for Kennedy to keep them separate in her mind.

“Actually, they’re probably Mennonite,” Willow finally decided. “Oh, well. At least the kids won’t be too bratty and scream the whole flight. Spare the rod, all that junk.”

Kennedy pried her eyes away to give the family a small semblance of privacy. She wondered if the children were self-conscious looking so different than everyone else. Did they care? Or were they so used to things being the way they were it didn’t matter?

A rustic-looking passenger in a Seattle Seahawks hoodie plopped into the row directly in front of Willow and Kennedy. The girls wrinkled their noses at each other at the overwhelming stink of body odor and cigarettes. Willow reached into the braided bag under her seat and pulled out two air purifier necklaces she’d purchased for their flight. She handed one to Kennedy, and they both slipped the small gadgets over their heads. If there was one thing Kennedy and Willow shared, it was their desire to breathe germless, stench-free air.

Kennedy unzipped her backpack. She was in the middle of a biography about Gladys Aylward, a London parlor maid who ended up traveling to China as a missionary. When war broke out with Japan, she led over a hundred orphan children to safety. The story was mesmerizing, exciting enough to turn into a major Blockbuster success. It would sure beat those farm romances her mom watched. Kennedy only had five or six chapters left. She could probably finish it by takeoff if she jumped right in, but she waited, relishing the fact that she had absolutely no reason to rush. The plane would touch down in Detroit in two and a half hours, let off a few passengers, take a few others on, and then it was a ten-hour ride to Anchorage. Besides calling her parents when she landed, she had absolutely nothing on her to-do list. She could read during the entire flight if she wanted to, or sleep, or try to figure out Willow’s silly shooter game in two-player mode. For the first time in four months, she had no lab write-ups, no research papers, no book assignments, nothing at all to worry about. She’d even promised herself not to jump ahead for her literature classes next semester. The only classic she had with her was A Christmas Carol, which hardly counted since she read it every December anyway. This break was all about relaxing. She still didn’t know what to expect from Willow’s family way out in rural Alaska, but she was ready for an adventure — an adventure she couldn’t enjoy if she burdened herself with tons of assignments and self-imposed deadlines.

The seats filled up as quickly as could be expected with a hundred or more passengers with bulky luggage and winter coats banging into the seatbacks and each other. Kennedy took in a deep breath, thankful for Willow’s air purifier, which looked like some kind of strange techno-amulet. Even if the benefits were all placebos, she was happy for something to give her a small edge against the germs blowing rampant around the cabin.

The two older Mennonite children carried small backpacks, and as if on some unspoken cue, they each took out a book in nearly perfect unison. Kennedy watched with curiosity. She didn’t have any siblings, never knew what it was like to share a room or share her toys, what it was like to have someone to play with or pester as the mood struck. She hadn’t considered herself lonely as a child, but at times like these she felt a certain heaviness in her chest as she wondered what life might have been like if her parents had decided to have more than one kid.

A row behind the older children, the mother began to read a Dr. Seuss book to the two youngest kids. Kennedy had a hard time pinpointing why she found that so strange. Was she so accustomed to picturing women in denim skirts and headscarves as strict and stoic that it was odd to think of them picking something as frivolous as Horton Hatches an Egg? The mother laughed, a clear, joyful sound that forced Kennedy to study her face more closely. She was young, much younger than Kennedy had guessed when the family boarded the plane. Clear skin, shining blue eyes. Kennedy couldn’t help but thinking of Scrooge’s niece in A Christmas Carol with her little dimpled smile that Dickens lauded so eloquently.

A minute later, the wife frowned and stopped reading. What was wrong? Her daughter tugged on her sleeve, and she absently handed the girl the book before she adjusted her head covering and shifted in her seat. She stared at her two children, as if she were about to speak. She reached her hand out until she nearly brushed her husband’s arm but withdrew it a second later.

Kennedy followed her gaze to the front of the plane, at two men with turbans and long beards who were boarding together. One was significantly older, but they both wore loose-fitting pants with long cotton robes instead of an American-style shirt. The noise in the cabin diminished, as two dozen whispered conversations stopped at once. Kennedy glanced around, trying to guess what was wrong. The Mennonite mother clenched her husband’s shoulder. Willow must have noticed it, too. She nudged Kennedy.

“You’d think with those long beards they’d be instant friends, wouldn’t you?” Mischief danced in her eyes.

The husband turned to look at his wife. Kennedy couldn’t hear their words, but the worry on both their faces was unmistakable. Meanwhile, the younger man with the turban nearly dropped a heavy briefcase he tried to heft into the overhead compartment.

“Oh, great,” mumbled the Seahawks fan in front of Kennedy. “Stinking Arabs.” He looked around as if trying to find a sympathetic ear. “Why they gotta put them so close to the cockpit?”

Willow smacked him on the back of his head. He turned around with an expletive, which she answered with a mini lecture about the myriad pitfalls and injustices of racial profiling. Kennedy wasn’t paying attention. She was still watching the Mennonite couple, studying the way the color had all but drained from the wife’s face.

“I can’t say what it is,” she told her husband. “I just have this feeling something is about to go wrong.”

He looked at the newly boarded passengers. “Because of them?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t say. I just know that something is wrong here. It’s not safe.” She clenched his arm with white knuckles. “Please, I can’t ... We have to ...” She bit her lip.

The husband frowned and let out a heavy sigh. “You’re absolutely certain?”

She nodded faintly. “I think so.”

“It’s probably just nerves. It’s been a hard week for all of us.” There was a hopefulness in his voice but resignation in his eyes.

She sucked in her breath. “This is different. Please.” She drew her son closer to her and lowered her voice. “For the children.”

“All right.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and signaled one of the flight attendants. “I’m so sorry to cause a problem,” he told her when she arrived in the aisle, “but you need to get my family off this plane. Immediately.”