Chapter Text
Jade hadn’t told any of her friends that she’d never flown before. It hadn’t seemed important. Surely it couldn’t be any different than riding a bus or catching a train. Not that she’d ever ridden a train before, either. Of all of her friends, she knew she was by far the least-traveled. Growing up, her family hadn’t had enough spare change to spring for things like plane tickets and lavish vacations. Hell, she was only able to attend Rainbow High because of a scholarship. A scholarship that, again, none of her friends knew about.
They wouldn’t have cared. She knew that. Still, she’d gone this long pretending that she was as well-off and cultured as her peers; what was the harm in holding on indefinitely? The idea of propelling through the air at supersonic speed had only made her stomach churn slightly. She thought there would be no need to clue anyone in on her inexperience.
Now, as she sat in her window seat on Row G, she wasn’t so sure.
Her palms dug into the armrests, long nails tracing frantic patterns against the blue plastic. She leaned her head back and let her eyes drift to the blinking lights that told her whether or not she could smoke or unfasten her seatbelt. There was a movie, she thought, one she’d seen a long time ago. She couldn’t remember the name of it now, but the girl in the movie had been afraid to fly, too. Her boyfriend explained that most flight problems occur within the first five minutes after takeoff. All she had to do was wait for the ding of the no-smoking sign, and she’d be golden.
It was a shame that they hadn’t even started down the runway.
The pilot had already asked them to turn off their cellular devices, leaving her with nothing to distract her tumbling mind. She’d packed a book for the flight, but there was no way she’d be able to focus on the words. Her headphones would have been a life-saver, but without a cellular device to connect them to, they were useless. All she had were the strange earplugs Poppy had demanded they all wear to ease the pressure on their eardrum. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing.
“Jade?”
She opened her eyes. Bella had turned in her seat to face her. She’d been laughing with the rest of their group, leaned over her aisle seat to laugh with Ruby and Skyler, who sat on the other side of their row. Jade had been too nervy to throw herself into their conversation.
“Yeah?”
Bella’s glossy lips twisted into a frown. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied, voice sounding breathy even to her own ears. She swallowed. “Perf.”
She felt Bella’s dubious eyes rove her face, growing more wary by the second. They stopped as they grazed her hairline. “You’re sweating!”
Jade’s hands moved to the edge of her beanie. She hadn’t even noticed the sheen of nervous sweat that had begun to form there. “It’s hot in here,” she said defensively.
“Violet is literally wearing her fur coat,” Bella said, nodding up the aisle. Sure enough, Violet sat beside Sunny, arms crossed over the sleeves of her fluffiest jacket. She seemed tense, too, but Jade imagined her unease had more to do with the unfortunate lack of wi-fi connection than nerves.
“Violet always runs cold.”
Bella rolled her eyes. She knew Jade had a point - Violet complained any time the thermometer dipped below seventy. “Even so,” she said, reaching out a perfectly-manicured hand, “you need to take that hat off.”
Jade caught her hand before it could touch the edge of her beanie. Her fingers gave an incriminating tremor.
“Jesus,” Bella said, snatching her hand away and taking Jade’s hat along with it. “Are you having a panic attack?”
She shook her head, though her breath was growing increasingly shallow. “I don’t think so.” She flexed her fingers, testing to see if they’d gone numb. They hadn’t. “Not yet, anyway.”
This did nothing to dissuade Bella. She knew Jade struggled with panic attacks, that she’d been having them long before she started at Rainbow High. Medicine kept them from being debilitating, and her doctor had lowered her dosages in recent months. Now, though, she wished he hadn’t.
“Did you take your medicine?” Bella whispered.
Jade closed her eyes and nodded numbly. The world began to tighten around her. “I’m not on the good stuff anymore, remember?”
The good stuff were the benzodiazepines she’d been prescribed during the time when the attacks had been bad enough to keep her from even leaving the house.
“I didn’t know you were afraid of flying,” Bella said, reaching for Jade’s sweaty palm. She stopped herself. “Touch or no?”
“Yes, please,” Jade replied, tightly clutching her hand. “And, yeah. Neither did I.”
Still keeping a tight grip on her hand, Bella reached under the seat to dig around in her purse. Jade felt the ends of her fingers begin to go numb, and her heart lurched.
Okay, she thought. So you’re panicking. We can deal. Probably.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Go to your safe space, she thought, conjuring up memories of her family’s living room, of dripping ice-skates discarded before the fireplace and steaming hot cocoa warming her hands. Of boxy television sets playing reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and rain on a tin roof. She wrapped her body into a pretzel position, not caring how ridiculous she might appear to the other passengers. Somehow, she managed to keep hold of Bella’s hand.
“Take a deep breath,” Bella said.
Jade did, surprised as a wave of lavender and strawberry wrapped itself around her. She took greedy gulps of air.
“There you go,” said Bella, rubbing a hand along Jade’s back. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” She rustled in her pocket again. “Here, put these in.”
Jade opened her eyes, finding herself a little more present in her body. She frowned at the wired earbuds coiled in Bella’s hand. “You can’t have those out, Bells,” she said, voice still breathy, though not alarmingly so. “They said so.”
“They said we couldn’t have cellular devices,” she said, smiling slightly. She waved the prehistoric pink body of an iPod. It was old, the kind that didn’t even have a touch screen. “Luckily, this thing hasn’t connected to the internet since, well, ever.”
Blearily, Jade thought back to the bleak days when iPods had to be loaded directly through the PC, mostly with music from hard copies of CD’s already owned. “Where the hell did you get this thing?”
Bella smiled. “I never got rid of it,” she said. “It’s easier to carry when I jog around campus. Here,” she said, offering the earbuds to Jade. She accepted, gratefully replacing Poppy’s earplugs.
She passed Jade the roller-ball perfume. “Smell this,” she said. “I’m going to cover you up in my blanket.”
Jade didn’t protest as Bella did just that, creating a cocoon of Overstimulation Repellent. Suddenly, the earbuds began to play music.
“ All day, starin’ at the ceiling, making friends with shadows on my wall,” sang Matchbox Twenty. “ All night, hearing voices tellin’ me that I should get some sleep because tomorrow might be good for something.”
An immediate wave of relief passed through Jade. In the dark, surrounded by the smell of Bella and the song she knew had gotten Jade through her darkest moments, she could let herself drift somewhere that was safe.
“Better?”
Jade tightened her grip on the hand that she still hadn’t relinquished and nodded.
Somewhere above her, the no-smoking sign dinged.
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