“Quickly, please!” He’s all smiles and gleaming white teeth, but his insistent yet friendly manner gets us both moving again. Emma’s eyes are still fixed on me. I don’t like the way she suddenly seems so abashed.
“Is this your first year?”
“Yes.” Emma gives a thin smile, and suddenly I want to hug her. Or I would if I wasn’t dripping with sweat. And, actually, not even then. We’ve only just met. But why is she alone here? Newbies are usually brought by their parents. Even when they’re from Saudi Arabia or Mexico. Germany is hardly far-flung by the standards of our school.
“I’m just on a year abroad,” she says as we hurry down the long corridor. The walls are close, and the carpet swallows our footsteps. I don’t like the way she stares at the floor as she speaks. She seems kind of... unhappy.
“Cool. Your English is great.”
I immediately sense I’ve said something wrong.
“Thanks,” she mumbles as she raises her eyes.
I want to ask her so many questions—where exactly she’s from, if she’s excited, all that stuff—but I can’t because we’ve now reached the plane door. Another flight attendant is waiting for us.
“Welcome on board,” she greets us, but her smile is impatient.
“Where are you sitting?” I ask Emma. All the other passengers have their seat belts fastened. They’re staring at phones already in airplane mode or looking toward us in annoyance.
“Twenty-seven D,” says Emma, glancing over her shoulder at me. “How about you?”
Blast... For a moment I seriously wonder how cheeky it would be to ask someone to change places.
“Here,” I reply as we reach 22C. The aisle seat, and obviously there’s nothing free anywhere nearby. The woman in the middle has already got chunky noise-canceling headphones on and doesn’t look like she wants to be spoken to.
“Oh, OK.” Emma doesn’t stop. “Enjoy the flight. See you later, Henry.”
“Yeah.” I gulp. “You too.”
Emma
The middle seat in my row is free. Of course it is. It’s booked in Mum’s name, but Mum’s stuck somewhere in Nice, not here beside me.
I realize that only after Henry’s sat down and a flight attendant is telling me not to undo my seat belt until we’ve reached cruising altitude.
So I sit there, ignoring the cabin crew’s safety announcements and trying to send Henry a message with my eyes, begging him to turn around.
It doesn’t work. He’s on his phone, I can see him typing, then looking up guiltily, presumably because the flight attendant has told him to put it into airplane mode.
Turn around, turn around, turn around.
I could gesture to him to come and sit next to me later. Well, if he wants. Would he want to? No idea. Doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t even know ifIwant him to. No, that’s not true. I do know. I don’t want him to. No way. He seems nice, but why should I care? He’s a man. And we all know what that means. Broken hearts and tears shed that we can never get back. Being with someone for six months, only to get a text message out of the blue saying he isn’t feeling it anymore. I’ve had enough of guys like Noah, from my old school, or my dad, who left and never got back in touch. Yet here I am, flying to Scotland to look for him, unable to stop gazing at Henry. Why am I doing this?
Henry doesn’t turn around, and the longer I hope he will, the sillier I feel. We might not even be in the same year. It’s abig enough school that we might never bump into each other again. Which would be a shame... God, Emma! Enough now.
I stare at his shoulder in that dark-blue hoodie and wonder how old he is. Must be in his final year. There’s something about him. Something self-assured and relaxed. The way the Abitur students stroll down the corridors at home, because they’re so grown-up, so casual, like the whole fucking school belongs to them. But maybe everyone at this boarding school is like that. I guess I’ll soon find out.
Either way, he doesn’t turn. Not that it would mean anything if he did. I pull my headphones out of my bag and play an old One Direction song because it’s almost time for takeoff and I could do with a bit of chill.
Why isn’t he turning around? If he sat beside me, I could start asking him about the school. Or other questions. Why he’s flying from Frankfurt to Edinburgh when he sounds so clearly British that I didn’t even need to ask him where he’s from. Was he on holiday? What’s boarding school like then, and oh, do you happen to know a guy named Jacob Wiley? No? Oh, well, never mind, doesn’t matter...
I’m so obsessed.
The plane stops taxiing, and the engines roar more loudly. I’m pressed back into my seat, and because I’m always a bit nervous about takeoffs and landings, I shut my eyes. Just for a moment, just until we’ve leveled out and I can feel halfway confident that we’re all going to survive. Mind you, I’ve heard that landings are more dangerous than takeoffs. Whatever... Stop thinking about it. I’ll listen to my music and that’s all thatmatters. Taylor Swift takes over from One Direction, then Lana DelRey from Taylor.
I squint over occasionally. In case Henry turns around. But all I can see are his elbow on the armrest and part of his face resting on his hand. And I can see that he must be seriously tired because his head nods forward every twenty seconds.
Has he just got off a night flight? The dark rings under his eyes and the fact that he’s wearing jogging bottoms suggest that.
