Tessa stared out the window of the 737 at the towering castles of clouds surrounding the plane. Glowing corridors of vapor and light split open to encircle the plane, to welcome it into their fairytale landscape. At one time she might have been impressed, even astonished by this journey through gossamer light, but today all she saw was a bunch of stupid clouds.
When she was younger she used to lie on her back in the summer grass and look up at the clouds with her mother, pointing and giggling and finding mystical creatures in the sky; mermaids and dragons and fairies. Just like all children do at one time or another.
“See that one,” she would cry. “It’s a unicorn!”
“Yes,” her mother would say. “I see it. I see it.”
Whatever the clouds really looked like, Tessa could always find a unicorn.
But not anymore. No, today there were only clouds in the sky. Shapeless and blank. No unicorns. Just misty haze surrounding her. In fact, she hadn’t seen a unicorn in a long, long time. She couldn’t even remember when.
She glanced over at the profile of the man escorting her. He’d told her his name: Special Agent Eric Stanton. He didn’t really look like an FBI agent, more like an accountant. Hair parted on the side, baby face, clean shave. But he wasn’t wearing a ring, and he wasn’t really that old-maybe twenty-two or so-and he might have actually looked cute if he could lose the tie and the old-man-looking glasses, grow a little soul patch… ruffle up his hair a little…
“Yes?” He was looking directly at her now. “Did you need something?” He had soft brown eyes.
“Um, no.” She looked away, out the window again. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned close. She could smell his aftershave.
Gak. Why did he have to use aftershave?
“You OK, kid?”
Kid!
“I’m fine.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” he said sarcastically. “As your chaperone I’m very glad to hear that.”
She looked at him again. What in the world was wrong with her! The guy was probably over thirty! Old enough to be her dad. She folded her arms and glared at him. She glanced momentarily at the Sudoku puzzle he was working on. He’d been struggling with it for the last hour or so. It was rated “expert.” Huh. Yeah, right. He should have probably been doing one rated “toddler.”
She studied it for a few brief seconds. “Six, nine, eight, four, one, three,” she said.
“What?”
“The bottom row. Fill those in, you should be able to take it from there.” After registering his surprise she added, “Though I wouldn’t bet on it.”
He looked down at the sheet then back at her. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just easy to figure out when you’re a kid.”
Then he made a small sound with his mouth half open, asked her to repeat the numbers, looked down at his puzzle, and started scribbling. While he filled in the squares in his lame little puzzle, Tessa turned back to the wall of the airplane and stared out the window, searching the sky for something. Anything.
But all she could see were miles and miles of clouds.