Dad gave me his old laptop before I left. Clymene loaded it up with tunes. Mom cried, reaching up from the bed to
hug me. Dad and Cly drove me to
the airport, Dad lecturing the whole way about what and what not to do, but the
words, not one of them, seemed to stick.
Because
I was eleven and traveling alone, they made me wear a plastic pouch around my
neck with my ticket and passport and paperwork shoved inside. I got to be escorted on and off the
plane by my own stew. Go geek
girl. I’m usually happy on
flights. But usually I’m with
Clymene and some doofy grad student, school just out, vacation starting, flying
off to join Dad at a dig site in some exotic place, a whole summer of adventure
ahead.
But
this time I was being shipped off, mid-year, into exile. All the little French families, sitting
around me on the jet, seemed so happy, kids talking in French to French mom’s
and French stews in their pretty pale blue uniforms, hair perfect, scarves
perfect, everything about them French and perfect, handing out magazines and
snacks and ear phones. One came up
and offered me a coloring book and Crayons.
I
worried about Lucia the whole way over and also about how I didn’t care if my
Mom cried when I left. Served her
right. I was so dried up
inside. It wasn’t like me at
all. Half way through the flight
we could look down through the clouds and see icebergs, little things bobbing
in the vast blue. No way our plane
is going to crash, I thought. Just
my luck.
Aunt
Mill––dressed in the same kind of trim suit as the stews, only hers was
darker––was right at the exit from Charles de Gaulle customs to greet me. She spoke to the Air France people in
fluent French as they signed my paper work. She’s just a few years older than my mom and looked a lot
like her, though with darker hair and much thinner. She had a cane but didn’t really use it, except when she’d
go up and down stairs. She
practically smothered me to death with her first hug.
Transfer
of prisoner complete, we headed out to find a cab, me dragging Big Bertha, my
monster suitcase. That’s when I
saw the shark. It was a poster in
a round advertising column that slowly circled round, lit up from inside, the
shark life-size. It was just an ad
for a TV show or something, I don’t even know, but it made me flash on the
shark on Moken Island, the one that tried to eat me. Tears jumped into my eyes and I started to shake, like I did
on the island after I got away from Mr. Shark. I completely freaked.
Aunt Mill didn’t notice.
She was saying something about how she thought I would love it here and
what great adventures I was going to have. I just nodded and kept walking, trying as hard as I could to
keep my shaky legs going forward, one after the other, so I wouldn’t fall flat
on my face.
☠
