Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [9]
Sylvia barely glances at the document. “Yes, ma’am,” she says. “But we have completed the final boarding of this aircraft. The jetway door is closed.”
Jessica doesn’t know what’s more troubling: that the jetway door is closed? Or that she looks old enough to qualify for “ma’am” status? Either way, she has to stay on Sylvia’s good side if she has any hope of getting on the plane and staying out of the airport detention center for problem passengers.
“But the plane is right there,” Jessica says, desperation creeping into her voice despite her best efforts to keep calm. “And I’ve got my boarding pass.”
Sylvia is no-nonsense. When she shakes her head, her sprayed blond flip moves as a single unit; not one of the hundreds of thousands of individual hairs has the audacity to stray. “We have completed the final boarding of this aircraft. The jetway door is closed.” Her tone is like an automated recording, unchanged from the first time she said it.
“But I’m just one person—”
In that moment of weakness and doubt, Jessica half swivels her head. It’s an almost unconscious impulse, too quick to register anything or anyone behind her.
“Once the jetway door is closed, it stays closed.” Sylvia claps her hands together to illustrate her point. Her nails sparkle with the same opalescence as her lips, both painted an infantilizing pink that coordinates with her powder-blue Clear Sky uniform only in the sense that they are hues best left to gender-specific bibs and diaper bags. “It would be against TSA regulations to allow any passenger to board this aircraft,” she briskly insists, her smile tightening with every word. “We always advise our passengers to provide adequate time to—”
“I did provide adequate time! I was held up at security by a stark-raving madwoman trying to smuggle …”
Sylvia’s smile is frozen and synthetic, like a plastic-flavored Popsicle; she is clearly bracing herself for the tirade of passenger complaints against the incompetent Transportation Security Administration, the inconvenient Newark Liberty International Airport, the inhospitality of Clear Sky airlines, the indignities of air travel in general, none of which she can solve herself. But Jessica stops midsentence, distracted by a blurry movement in her peripheral vision. It’s the plane, of course, taxing away from the gate and toward the runway. It’s her flight, Clear Sky Flight 1884 with nonstop service to St. Thomas, the one she can’t miss. And it’s leaving without her.
Was Marcus coming or going? she wonders again. And this time, when she turns her head, it’s deliberate. She looks long enough to confirm—he’s gone—that she’s missed her opportunity to get the answer.
Jessica’s cell phone comes to life inside her bag, and she jumps—jumps!—as if she just discovered a venomous snake rattling around in there. She gets ahold of the vibrating device, then fumbles with the buttons for a few surprised moments before confirming that it isn’t a phone call from Pineville but a short video from the Virgin Islands.
“Woo-hoo!” shouts Bridget, hair whipping up and airborne like patriotic yellow ribbons as she leaps in front of an impossibly blue sea. “Woo-hoo! We’re getting married tomorrow!”
The tiny screen goes blurry as Percy turns the lens on himself. “I’m marrying a freak,” he says. “A beautiful freak.” His grin takes up the whole screen.
The action returns to Bridget, now turning floppy cartwheels across the sand. “This is paradise! Just wait until you get here! You won’t believe it!”
Percy swivels to catch Hope photographing Bridget with a very large and expensive-looking camera. Hope realizes she’s being filmed, goes cartoonishly cross-eyed, then shouts something that can’t be heard over the rumbling wind and the waves. Then, without an official sign-off, the screen goes blank.
Jessica covers her face with her hands, breathes in and out. Sylvia, who has been waiting professionally if not patiently all this time, clears her throat.
“So,” Jessica says, revealing what she hopes resembles the