Young Writers Society

To Rosa it felt totally surreal how they were suspended hundreds of feet above the clouds, how time seemed held fast by a leash, how her world had become a thirty-feet long cylinder of metal and plastic and how no one but she seemed to find this odd, or at least worthy of some consideration.

She felt it totally surreal for the airplane to be jerking like a yacht crashing against waves and have people sipping their drinks, ignoring how these sometimes sprayed over their shirts.

Rosa sunk some more into her seat and held the unused CD player between her hands like a prayer book. She had no mother beside her to drown her fears in, no brother to laugh away her anxiety. She couldn’t help but think that, were the airplane to fall, she would die screaming to herself, not hugging anyone around her. Rosa rubbed her eyes. Traveling had felt so big in her list of plans, and as she moved with the throngs of people she felt emptied from her expectations, drained of excitement by the anonymity of travel, the mindlessness of transition, the solitude of novelty – especially that last one, since just about everyone seemed so at ease, so in control and learned in the art of traveling.

Bounce, bounce, bounce – they were skidding violently through the asphalt of air. Rosa felt the flush of sickness rising inside her. Droplets of sweat crowned her forehead like muted diamonds.

The man beside her emerged from his reading to peer at her face. He gave her a smile of pity. “Want me to call the stewardess?”

Rosa shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Alright.” He rearranged his glasses, scanning his book once again. “But keep in mind, darling, I’m flying for the third time this week. This kind of turbulence is perfectly normal.”

This might have been her first time traveling, but Rosa was a quick learner. To fit in, just pretend to know exactly what you are doing, pretend to know exactly what others mean by their words. During the following airplane tremor she simply squeezed the handles of her seat till her fingers were white. “Thank you, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She really did try to keep it in mind for the next minutes. The turbulence and nausea only worsened by the second.

Rosa didn’t want to throw up in front of these statues that only came to life to scoff an It’s-perfectly-normal. She unclasped her belt and made a run for the cubicle, pushed the sliding door as she had seen others do throughout the flight. As soon as the door had locked and the overhead lights had turned on, she felt her knees buckle to another jolt of the aircraft.

Aiming proved to be difficult. She saw the metal toilet bouncing below her, sometimes close, sometimes far, like a frenzied pendulum. And yet the only sounds reaching her ears were the murmurs of the cabin crew beyond the thin wall of the bathroom and the occasional thud whenever they propped against the airplane wall for support.

She didn’t care that the stewardesses tried to keep the calm through hushed alarm. Rosa was simply amazed that a young child hadn’t yet started crying, that some unit hadn’t been mobilized for an elderly in stress. Maybe the people outside were waiting for the fall like she was, trapped within themselves and the silence of unfazedness.

The airplane jerked once again, and Rosa felt as if her insides had been vacuumed of air, felt lifted in a rush of zero gravity. Her face in the mirror – eyes perfectly round with horror, mouth open in the mute O of “Oh no” – confirmed that, indeed, this jerk was not like the others.

As the veil of air sustaining them seemed to rip in two to reveal the space below, Rosa’s main thought was of the mirror refracting the anguish of her face, and how she would be staring at her own death as it happened. The scream was ready in her throat as the airplane – in that final, decisive second – began to pull up.

Even so, it took a few gulps of air to be certain she wasn’t dying of asphyxia.

God God God, with every heartbeat. That was all she could focus on. That, and the returning sensation of footing.

After a minute, Rosa pushed open the door, took a few steps into the hallway. Maybe she hadn’t thought through what she had expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Nothing had changed. Not a single person had turned towards the other to laugh off their survival, to rejoice in a second more worth of breathing. Rosa blushed, deep crimson heat blooming on her face. If someone had x-Rayed the previous scene she alone would be pressing against the walls of the lavatory in the deepest horror she had ever experienced, while beyond her walls the world continued, maybe a tad frazzled, but nothing more. It-was-perfectly-normal.

It was good that the world was so calm, Rosa reasoned with herself. It was unhealthy to become too affected too soon.

However, as she walked slowly to her seat, Rosa felt tiny, trapped within herself.

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The cabin was empty of passengers and finally unmoving, the horizon of plane warehouses and pine trees visible from the cabin windows. Rosa crouched on the floor along with a stewardess, looking for a lost earring. Back in the ground, the less-than-normal element of just about everything around her – the bathroom, the cabin shape, the small, brick-shaped food – struck her, and she lost what little remaining faith she had in the airborne cosmos civilization was equipped with.

Rosa found her earring. She was bid farewell. She picked up her things and left the aircraft, made a thoughtless trek to the baggage claim.

She was staring at the line of bags sliding by when someone near her scratched their throat.

“It was bad, wasn’t it? Not that it matters anymore, but still.” She had not seen the girl before, but the girl gave her a hesitant smile before returning her eyes to the luggage line.

“I thought it was bad,” said Rosa. “I was in the lavatory during that really big one.”

“Oh,” said the stranger, her eyes widening slightly as they turned back to Rosa’s face.

Oh. It hit Rosa like a stone. Oh. It was all Rosa needed.

“That must have been awful.”

Rosa nodded, but already the coils of her loneliness were being undone by the tiniest mutual thought, the smallest sensation of togetherness.

“But like you said, it doesn’t matter,” said Rosa.

“Right.” Once again the stranger smiled, wider this time, and then grabbed one of the bags rolling by. “Well, goodbye then.”

“Bye,” Rosa said, feeling lighter than she had all day. She walked with the throngs of people towards the airport exit, losing track of her footsteps in the shouts and passing cars but not really caring for the solitude. Eventually, she knew now, someone would smile. Someone would gently bridge the gap between souls.

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This was written under the pressure of a deadline, and I have the impression that it shows. Critiques are very, very welcome.