I heard someone’s voice, but chose to burrow down further into my bed, drawing the blankets up tighter to my chest.
“A-hem, Nick?”
God, this person was persistent. It had to be Brian. I grabbed a pillow and flung it towards the general direction of the offending voice and put the other pillow over my head. I winced when I head the distinct sound of something crashing onto the floor.
“Hey nice one dork, you broke the picture frame!”
I quickly threw the pillow off my face and sat up, staring at Lizz’s face. Looking over her left shoulder, I saw the picture frame that once held a photo of my sisters and brother, now laying in pieces on the deep blue carpet.
“Aww, shit! That was one of my favorite pictures,” I mumbled as I threw the covers off and stood up. I looked at the time on the alarm clock after I slipped my glasses on. “4:15?!” I narrowed my eyes at the red numbers on the clock and then looked at Lizz. “4:15 am? Are you insane?”
“I, um, I couldn’t sleep,” Lizz defended. “Anyways, we should be getting ready to leave. Kevin told us we had to be ready by 5 am, no excuses.”
Groaning, I threw myself back across the bed, closing my eyes, wondering if we couldn’t post phone leaving for another four hours or so.
“So, anyways, I’m gonna go back down to my room and watch the sunrise. My bag’s already packed,” Lizz announced cheerfully. She glanced over towards the closet. “I take it you’re already packed too?”
I groaned again. Packing was not one of my favorite things to do. Packing, unpacking. Just the basic idea of living out of a suitcase. Needless to say, I planned on packing light and would go out buy the things I would need while we stayed in Fiji. All of us were pretty much unknown over there so shopping, eating out or just doing anything for that matter was nothing that had to be preplanned or supervised with bodyguards.
“Okay, so you didn’t pack?” Lizz questioned, her arms folded across her chest.
“I will.... I will, just go on and watch the sun rising, I can do this with my eyes closed, been packing for years.”
“And as usual, we wait for Nickolas to arrive,” AJ announced in a sarcastic voice.
“Give it a rest, jar head,” I snapped at AJ.
“Guys, come on, let’s make this an enjoyable trip, please,” Kevin directed to no one in particular.
As we walked towards the chartered private jet I suddenly realized that I had forgotten one important item for this trip, make that the only important item for the trip. I stopped in midstep, causing Brian to run into my back.
“Something wrong, Nick?” Brian asked from behind.
I could feel the panic rising in my body. “I can’t go.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Brian asked as he stepped around to face me, the concern evident in his face.
“I forgot my Dramamine.”
“It’s all in your head Nick, you’ll be fine or just do what I do and toss a few down on the flight,” AJ suggested.
“AJ, getting Nick wasted isn’t gonna help him on the plane,” Kevin remarked in a stern voice. “Okay Nick, all the shops are closed, the plane is running and we basically don’t have the time to run to a 24hour store, I suggest getting on the plane and taking a nap.”
“Besides, I’ll be beside you all through the flight,” Lizz added.
I smiled a tight lipped smile. This was not gonna be easy. I hated flying with a passion. I’ve flown more miles than I care to think about and I never got over the idea of how a big hunk of heavy steel could stay suspended in air, traveling up thousands of miles above the earth with only four small engines doing the work. A crash was always waiting to happen and if the flight had turbulnence, forget it, I would be one sick puppy.
Part of me wanted to kiss the tarmac before I got on the plane, but the macho testosterone levels in my bloodstream wouldn’t allow it. I glanced over at Lizz and tried my best to cover my nervousness as I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded for her to get on ahead of me.
We each took an upright seat in the middle row and I strapped my seatbelt on as tight as I could. Lizz reached out and squeezed my hand.
“Don’t worry, I got ya covered,” she whispered.
I managed to smile a lopsided grin. “You gonna protect me when it plummets into the ocean?”
“NICK!” Lizz reprimanded.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it but I really needed my motion sickness meds,” I whined.
Before anyone could reply to my outburst, the plane’s engines started to make that awful sound associated with the increase of speed as it started to taxi on the runway. I closed my eyes and gripped the armrests, silently praying that this would be a smooth flight without turbulence. As the plane leveled off, I eased my death grip on the seat. It didn’t help out too much with AJ making sounds of planes screaming downwards and then ultimately crashing.
“AJ! Could you knock it off? Can’t you see that Nick is a little nervous here?”
“Lizz, just ignore him, I don’t need you fighting my battles with him, he’s not worth it,” I quitely scolded.
With that being said, it seemed that AJ was losing interest in picking on me and got up and left his seat and walked over towards the wet bar.
Lizz didn’t back down. “Yeah, but still, that’s pretty mean.”
“If you don’t have a problem, I usually listen to music and try to relax during a flight, so would it be okay if I.....” I gave Lizz the sad puppy dog eyes as I held up the headphones.
“It’s ok, do what makes you relax, I’m gonna get up and get a soda, do you want anything?”
I shook my head as I slipped the headphones over my ears. Soon I was listening to Nirvana and I could feel my body almost instantaneously relax and I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up when I felt Lizz’s hand grab mine in a tight grasp. I was disoriented at first but after a few moments, I got my bearings and looked around the plane. When I looked at her, I could see she was nerved up about something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I slipped the headphones off with my free hand.
Before she could reply, I felt the plane take a big dip. My heart literally lept into my throat. AJ was screaming like a banchee and I glanced over at Brian, his face looked pale and he was never unnerved about flying....ever.
“We’re going down.” I told Nick, my voice shaking.
Nick’s head whipped back around, his eyes wide with fear. “Wh-what?”
“We were hit by lightning. It hit an engine.” Then for added emphasis lightning flashed again, illuminating the small cabin of our plane. Not even a second later a crash of thunder ripped through the angry sky. The plane shook again and made another sharp dip.
“Oh god...” Nick whispered. “We’re- we’re going to crash?” He looked around frantically.
“No, emergency landing.” Brian said hurriedly, gripping the arm rests.
“Emergency landing my ass!” AJ shouted over the racket. “No fucking way we are going to land in the middle of the ocean and live.” He turned around and glared and Nick and I. “It’s all your fault! You guys attract trouble!” He yelled erratically.
Before either of us could respond, Howie laid a hand on AJ’s arm. “Man, you gotta calm down. We need to keep our heads.”
“He isn’t thinking clearly.” Brian assured us. I wanted to laugh. Not ha ha funny laugh, but delirious, petrified, looney laugh. How the hell did this happen? This was supposed to be our vacation and now we were going to make an emergency landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a tiny plane in a raging storm. I felt Nick panicking next to me and I had to admit I wasn’t too far behind.
For a brief moment my mind drifted back to a family vacation. We were on our way home and there was quite a bit of turbulence on the plane. I was loving every minute of it. I even put on my walkman and started jamming to the turbulence. Ever since I could remember my dad had always recorded the theme song to all the movies we watched on a cassette. The Beetlejuice theme song was perfect for the harsh rocking of the plane. Everyone around me was slightly nervous about it, yet there I sat, bouncing all over my seat to Beetlejuice. I snapped back to reality and I ridiculously wondered if I could play the Beetlejuice song, everything would be okay.
Kevin stuck his head out from where the cockpit was. I think he had disappeared up there almost immediately after take off. “Put your head between your knees and try to cover yourselves the best you can. Wrap your arms through the seat covers, now! We don’t have much time. Make sure you are buckled in. The only chance we have is to try to skid the jet across the water. When it hits, it’s going to sink fast. And I mean fast! The pressure is more than likely going to break some of the windows and they are going to immediately flood with water. We need to get the emergency door open as fast as we can before the water pressure makes it impossible to open. Then we need to get out and get as far away from the jet as possible. Did everyone get all that?” He shouted above the racket.
We all nodded numbly and began doing as Kevin instructed. He went back up with the pilot and I looked at Nick. Neither one of us said anything, but we didn’t really need to either. Not that either of our brains were functioning clearly enough at this point to come up with something coherent to say. Instead, I shifted my crossed arms so I could grab Nick’s, holding it in a death grip. Another pocket of turbulence and this time the plane dipped sharply to the left. I heard stuff fall and screaming. I’m sure I was one of the ones screaming. The next thing I saw will forever be etched into my memory. If I survived this, that is. Lightning flashed once again and now with the tilted plane, the ocean looked like it was less than 50 feet below us. The waves crashed and reflected the lightning as it rushed to meet us. I stared out the tiny airplane window with sort of a morbid fascination. This was it. I squeezed Nick’s hand tighter, shutting my eyes. I didn’t want to see this. In seconds, it would all be over and I didn’t want to see the destruction it left in it’s path. I could barely hear anything anymore above the noise. I wondered what everyone was saying. Shouting out their good-byes, praying, or merely screaming wordlessly.
There was one last shudder and then a massive crash. My scream was cut off when my head was thrown forward. It hit something and I lost consciousness.
