The Trouble Series

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

I start running, which is difficult with the amount of people around me. I’m supposed to be at gate … gate … Dammit, I’m usually so good with remembering numbers. I manage to pull my ticket out of my handbag while still running. I see the nearest gate. Despite the panicked state of my brain, I manage to do the math. My gate is nine away from here.

I start running faster.

Six more to go.

Three more to go.

There it is!

I run down the empty ramp towards the desk and the two uniformed women who look like they may be about to leave. “Wait!” I yell. “Am I too late?”

One of them sighs as I reach the desk. “Almost too late,” she says in an accent I can’t identify. “But not quite.” She holds out her hand for my ticket.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I pant. I hand over my ticket, then dig in my handbag for my passport. I hand it to the second woman, who looks a lot friendlier than the first.

“Oh, you’re the one that guy kept asking us about,” she says when she opens my passport. She sounds South African—Afrikaans, possibly—which is such a comfort right now that I almost start crying.

“S-someone was asking about me?”

“Yes. He kept saying he had to wait for you. We forced him to board a few minutes ago.” She smiles. “He’ll be very happy to see you.”

Tears burn behind my eyes, and I take a deep breath and blink them away. I walk down the corridor as quickly as my shaking legs will allow. Once on the plane, I divide my attention between searching for my seat and searching for Aiden. I can’t remember where he’s sitting; I was going to leave it up to him to make a plan for us to sit together.

People are watching me. I might be imagining it, but they seem annoyed. Did I do something wrong? I find my seat—in between an overweight man reading a newspaper and a teen girl who looks like she’s already asleep—but the compartment above it is already full. I open three other compartments before finding space for my suitcase.

And people don’t stop staring for a second.

By the time I squeeze past the man and drop into my seat, my face is burning. Why, why did I have to start writing in that notebook? These stupid stories of mine have given me nothing but trouble. I should gather up every notebook I have and throw them all away. Or burn them. That might be more satisfying.

I rub my eyes, and my head throbs as a wave of utter exhaustion rolls over me. Hardly surprising considering it’s about six in the morning in London and I didn’t sleep all night. I dig inside my handbag and pull out my phone and the small drawstring bag that contains my flattened travel pillow. I press a button on the phone’s screen and check the time. Yip, it’s almost six thirty in the morning in London. Far too many hours since I last slept. With a great deal of effort—my lungs seem to be as exhausted as the rest of my body—I manage to blow up the pillow. I fit it around my neck. Then, still clutching my phone, I cross my arms and close my eyes. I’ll sleep for a little bit, just until they bring the drinks trolley around, or the next meal, and then I’ll search the aisles to see if I can find Aiden.

I wake abruptly from a dream in which I’m running through a crowded airport trying to catch Julia. My neck aches and my throat is horribly dry, but I don’t feel nearly as tired as I did when I first sat down. I blink a few times and wipe my hand over my mouth. Is that dried saliva on my chin? I find my phone lying face down on my lap—thank goodness no one stole it—and turn it over to check the time. I blink once more. Oh my heck, have I seriously been asleep for seven hours? No wonder I don’t feel tired anymore. I’ve got less than two hours left on this plane.

Ugh. I don’t want to be back in Durban.

And Aiden! I have to find him and tell him I made it onto the plane!

“Afternoon, Book Freak. Did you sleep well?”

I jerk to the side in fright as the person in the aisle seat leans towards me.

Aiden.

What? How did he get there?

Oh, crumbs, how awful do I look right now? I rub hastily at my chin, hoping to remove all traces of drool. I open my mouth to speak, then snap it shut. After seven hours of sleep, I probably have the most horrendous morning breath. And my hair—it’s all bunched up around my neck because of that silly blow-up pillow. Why does Aiden have to sit next to me now? And how? What happened to the overweight man with the newspaper?

Wait. Maybe I’m still asleep.

“You look confused,” Aiden says, then narrows his eyes. “Or is that your scared face? Because if it is, I’m starting to think you deserted me in the airport on purpose.” He leans back. “You know, if you detested my company that much, you should have just said so.”

“I—I’m so sorry,” I stutter, my hand fluttering near my mouth to try and shield him from the dragon breath. “I lost track of time while I was in the bathroom.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Really? You lost track of that much time? Okay, now I’m almost certain you left me on purpose.” He unclips his seatbelt. “But don’t worry. We can fix this. I’m sure the chubby gentleman will be happy to trade seats with me again. However,” he adds, “he may think it rather strange that after begging him to let me sit next to my sick sister to make sure she takes all her medication, I’m now abandoning her.”

“I—your sick sister?”

“Yes. You contracted the Millicent virus while we were on holiday. You became delirious in the airport, which is why you ran away from me.”

I take a few moments to process Aiden’s words before responding. “I’m guessing the chubby gentleman was quick to leave after that.”

“He was.”

“I’m also guessing there’s no such thing as the Millicent virus.”

“Well, that’s debatable. I had a horrid old aunt named Millicent. She was always cooking up disgusting concoctions in her kitchen. One of them could have been a virus.”

“Right. Did you tell the chubby gentleman that part as well?”

“Oh no. He heard the words ‘virus’ and ‘delirious’ and that was all it took for him to shoot up out of this seat. Poor man’s probably never moved so fast.”

I start laughing, then cover my mouth when I remember the dragon breath. “Well, congratulations on coming up with such an exciting story.”

Aiden inclines his head. “Thank you, but it was all you. I was inspired by your wild imagination.”

I close my eyes and groan. “It’s my wild imagination that almost caused me to miss this flight. I started writing down a story in my notebook while I was in the bathroom, and my watch stopped working so I didn’t realise how long I was taking.” I pull my sleeve back and show Aiden my watch as proof. “So I really am sorry for abandoning you in the airport. I looked out for you when I got onto the plane, but I couldn’t see you anywhere. I was just going to have a quick nap and then look for you, but … I guess that didn’t happen.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I remembered your seat number,” Aiden says, “otherwise I might still be picturing you hiding out at the airport, so desperate to get away from me that you were willing to miss a flight for it.”

I laugh and consider slapping his arm playfully, but I don’t think I’m cool enough to pull that off. “How long have you been sitting next to me?”

“Uh … since the seatbelt light first went off.”

“What?” Embarrassment heats my cheeks. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Well, I was tired,” Aiden says with a shrug. “I figured since you were sleeping, I might as well sleep too.”

“You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping. I look like I’ve been sleeping, but you look perfectly groomed.”

“Do I, now?” His sexy grin makes a reappearance. “And how would you know what I look like when I’ve been sleeping?”

“I … I didn’t mean …” Flustered, I pull the blow-up pillow away from my neck—why didn’t I do that when I first woke up?—and reach for my handbag. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Aiden bursts out laughing. “You can’t keep escaping to the bathroom, Sarah.”

“But I actually need to go this time!” I protest.

“Oh, so when you told me you needed to go on the last flight, you were lying?”

“I—no—just let me past, please.”

Aiden moves his legs aside with a sigh, and I hurry away before I embarrass myself further.

In the tiny bathroom, I neaten up my hair as much as I can without getting the electrified look before rubbing some fruity scented cream on my hands and neck. Perfume might be better, but I left it in my suitcase in one of the overhead compartments. I pull out my travel sized toothbrush and toothpaste and get to work ridding myself of dragon breath. Julia thought it was hilarious that I bothered to get a travel toothbrush, but she’d be grateful if she were in this situation.

I get back to my row to find Aiden holding a phone that looks far too familiar. “Hey, that’s mine.” I squeeze past him, dump my handbag on the floor, and sit down. “Hand it over.”

“What, I thought you left it on your seat specifically for me to look at.”

My chest constricts as I think of all the whacky and embarrassing photos I took over the past three weeks. “What exactly did you look at?”

“Relax, Book Freak. I was just looking at your background photo. Is that your sister? The one you were visiting?”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Yes, that’s Julia.” I take the phone from him and look at the picture of Julia and me puckering our lips for a selfie with Big Ben in the background. It’s ridiculous how much I miss her already.

“She’s the photographer?” Aiden asks.

“Yes.” I lock my phone and slide it back into my handbag. “Sophie is The Artist Daughter and Julia is The Photographer Daughter. Formerly known as The Perfect Daughter.”

“Formerly?”

“Yes. She kinda lost that label after she ran away from home and didn’t contact anyone for almost a year.”

“Really?” Aiden looks at me to check whether I’m joking.

“Really.”

“Wow. I mean, there were times I wanted to run away, but I never actually did it.”

“Yeah.” I pull my knees up to my chest. “My parents were really upset.”

“Understandably. That sounds a little …”

“What?”

“Well, a little selfish. Running off and not contacting anyone. I could never do that to my mum. She’d be devastated.”

“I guess.” I trace invisible patterns across my knee. “Julia had a good reason for it, though.”

“It must have been something big.”

“It was.”

“Was it to do with your parents?”

I shake my head.

“So why ignore them for so long?”

I take a deep breath. “It was … complicated. A whole lot of things. And my parents were too distracted by their own work to notice any of it. My dad’s an overworked high school teacher and my mom runs a lab at a biotech company. I mean, they’re good parents, but they get really busy and then they miss a lot of stuff. So when The Big Thing happened right after Julia’s finals, I think something inside her just … snapped. So she left.”

I look up to see if Aiden gets what I’m trying to say. I know it shouldn’t matter what he thinks of my sister, but for some reason, I care about his opinion.

“How did you two end up close then?” he asks. “I assume you’re close, since you just spent three weeks with her and you didn’t want to leave.”

“I kept sending her emails after she left. Eventually she started responding. I think she liked that I wrote about random stuff. Everyone else wanted to know why she left and where exactly she was and when she was planning to come home. I figured she didn’t want to talk about that, so I didn’t ask. Anyway, somehow I ended up feeling closer to her after she left than I ever did when she lived at home. So in a weird sort of way, I’m glad she ran away.”

Aiden nods. “I used to be close to my sister like that.”

“But not anymore?”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t elaborate.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Here I am rambling on about my family, and I haven’t asked you anything about yours.”

“There isn’t much to say. It’s just me, my mum, and my sister.”

“And all the relatives you’re meeting up with in South Africa.”

“And all of them.”

I notice he doesn’t say anything about his father. Should I ask? Would it be rude to ask? Would it be rude not to ask? Ugh, how did I become so socially inept?

“Tell me about your other sister, Sophie,” Aiden says, changing the subject.

So I tell him about Sophie’s paintings and her digital art and her beautifully detailed doodles, and before I know it, we’re beginning our descent. My stomach drops along with the plane. Aiden becomes more anxious on the outside—fingers tapping, knees bouncing—and I become more anxious on the inside. The ground grows closer. Closer. Closer.

Touchdown.