The Call - Michael Grant [25]
So he researched Pale Queen and came up with a song he’d never heard.
Finally he Googled Vargran. There were only a couple of references to a mythical language. But not so much as a word of that language.
No help. It was depressing. If Google didn’t have an answer, how was Mack supposed to figure it out?
Finally, it was time to board the plane. They found their seats. Stefan got a window. Mack got a middle seat. The aisle seat was filled by a rather large woman who occupied a good portion of Mack’s seat as well.
Mack’s anxiety was growing second by second. The ocean—it was right there next to the Los Angeles airport. They would be flying over the ocean for fifteen hours.
Mack had several ways of dealing with his phobias. One was screaming and running away. He was very strongly tempted to do just that.
The other way was to try and talk his way through the fear, using reason and logic and a lot of babble to reassure himself.
“It’s just water, there’s nothing wrong with water. Except it’s salt water, but who cares about salt, right, that’s not the problem, salt, who cares? It’s deep that’s the problem it’s deep deep deep like miles and miles deep so deep that light doesn’t even reach the bottom which is full of like glowing radioactive fish monsters of course if you sank that far down you’d already be dead which isn’t really very reassuring, is it?”
“What?” Stefan asked.
“Ocean. I don’t like ocean. I really, really, really don’t like ocean. Because it’s, like, so deep, you know? And you can’t see what’s in it even.”
Stefan said, “Huh. We’re moving.”
“I know we’re moving, I can feel the plane rolling, I’m not in a coma, I know we are moving and getting ready to take off and fly straight toward the ocean.”
“Probably we won’t land in the ocean,” Stefan opined.
“Probably? Probably? Probably we won’t land in the ocean? Probably? That’s the word you want to use?”
The flight attendant chose that moment to begin the safety lecture. And what was Mack’s least favorite part? The part about the life jacket under his seat. That was not helpful.
“Yeah, it’ll be totally okay as long as I have a stupid yellow life jacket on and I’m blowing into the stupid tube and then I’ll float around the big giant deep cold ocean and I won’t drown right away which is great because that way the sharks will have plenty of time to find me and eat me little by little and bite off my foot and I’m screaming and then it bites my butt and then—”
Stefan said, “Sorry, man.”
“Sorry?” Mack shrilled, his eyes wild with panic. “Sorry about what?”
Stefan twisted in his seat and socked Mack in the jaw. It wasn’t anywhere close to Stefan’s strongest punch. In fact, it could be considered an almost friendly punch in the face.
Still, it snapped Mack’s head around, stunned him, made his eyes go blurry, and stopped the endless flow of panicky words.
“Thanks,” the fat lady said. “He needed that.”
The plane was in the air before Mack recovered his faculties.
“Dude—you punched me!”
“You’re under my wing, Mack. Can’t have you freaking out.”
Mack felt his jaw. It still seemed to be attached. But the angle might be off just a bit.
Mack glanced out of Stefan’s window. He saw the bright lights of Los Angeles. And he saw the ominous blackness where the land ended and the ocean began.
He closed his eyes tight and gripped the armrest.
How long he sat like that, frozen, he could not know. At some point he fell asleep. While asleep he continued to clutch the armrest.
He woke hungry to find that there was a meal—of sorts—on the fold-down table. Stefan was eating his.
“You’ve been moaning,” Stefan said.
“What was I moaning?”
“‘We’re going to die,’” Stefan said, and chewed a piece of meat. “You kept moaning it in your sleep.”
“What happened to the lady who was sitting here?” Mack asked.
“She found another seat.”
Mack felt a little offended. But not much. The screen on the seat back in front of him showed a map with the plane superimposed. Los Angeles was far behind. Sydney, Australia, was much closer but still far ahead.