That was a lie—she was scared to death. And she probably wouldn’t have the courage to actually open the metal box he’d just handed her. Who knew what was inside? Raw brains, maybe? Spiders?!
She tried her best to project an image of calm as she thanked him and stepped on board.
Inside, the Luftzeug seemed like a large, oblong tuna can: cold, cavernous, and empty with a high ceiling, bare metal, no carpeting—in fact nothing soft whatsoever—and something inside literally smelled fishy. Folded jump seats lined the hull in the front, and shrink-wrapped pallets were anchored to the floor in the back. There were no windows in the Luftzeug, but there was a galley near the nose of the plane with a coffee pot and several other metal doohickeys as well as a ladder, which Hailey was guessing led to the cockpit.
Scampering all around the fuselage—ALL around the fuselage, even zip-lining across the ceiling, though Hailey couldn’t actually see the zip-line—were gas-masked contort-men, who were examining each rivet in the hull. They gave Hailey an immediate and chilly case of the creeps.
She found an empty jump seat near the back of the plane and folded it down. Next to her and in the very last seat sat a student, who upon her approach raised his newspaper higher and, like everybody else on board, pretended not to notice her. But Hailey had already caught a glimpse of his handsomely rugged face, and she knew exactly who it was.
“Fin?” she asked excitedly.
He dropped his paper.
“Hailey!” he sang with a forced smile.
“Wha…you…” Hailey didn’t know where to begin. “You go to Bear Towne?”There. That was a question.
“Yes,” he answered, sounding annoyed.
She leaned her head toward him, turning it slightly with her eyes open wide as if to say, “…and…?”
Fin shook his paper and raised it again.
“Where have you been?”
“You know, it’s none of your business what I do,” he said from behind the Times.
Ouch.
Shrinking back into her place, Hailey noticed the other students pulling a small plastic bag from under their seats and putting whatever was inside into their ears then strapping themselves in.
She felt around under her own seat and found a bag labeled: Indispensable. Inside was a set of earplugs, which were easy enough to figure out. The seatbelt, however, involved no fewer than seven straps and two buckles, and it took until the Luftzeug roared to life for her to put it in order—with no help from Fin.
The engines of the Bear Towne Luftzeug spun up to an earsplitting screech, leaving Hailey to wonder why the heck she even bothered with the indispensable “ear protection.” Weirdly, nobody else seemed disturbed by the continuous, painfully shrill thunder and in fact, everyone seemed quite at ease, so much so that as soon as the plane took off and despite the incredible turbulence, one byone, each passenger unbuckled, got up, rolled out a sleeping bag on the floor of the plane and climbed inside. Before long, everyone on board, except for Hailey, Fin and just one other student sitting near the front of the plane, was stretched out and ready for bed—in the middle of the afternoon.
How anyone could relax with such a blaring racket and inside the coldest airplane in the world was beyond Hailey. Though, as she began shivering, she did wish that she, too, had a cozy sleeping bag to keep her warm and wondered if there were any blankets on board.
She stared at Fin until he acknowledged her.
“What?” he said, dropping his paper. It looked like he’d said it sharply, but Hailey couldn’t hear a thing over the scream of the Luftzeug’s four engines.
“I’m freezing!” she shouted to him, and everyone on the airplane—everyone except for the only other student not bundled up inside a sleeping bag, turned to look at her. Hailey’s cheeks burned.
Fin lowered his brow and cocked his head to the side as his jaw jutted out.
“You didn’t turn on your Buzzdoodles,” it looked like he said.
“My what?”
“Earplugs, dummy.” Fin reached over and flipped a switch above her head. It was an off-switch for the engine noise in Hailey’s ears, which apparently, everyone else had already activated.
“This was all in your student handbook,” Fin said rubbing his forehead. “Why didn’t you read it?”
“I would have read it, if I had gotten one,” she said in a voice of normal volume but increasing hostility. “There was no mention of earplugs in the letter I received, Fin, I would have remembered reading the wordBuzzdoodle,” she told him, lifting her chin. “There was nothing about a Buzzdoodle or cargo plane or sleeping bags or packing lists or the incredible coincidence that you’re also a student at the most remote school in the world.”
Fin gave her a half smile and leaned toward her, playfully bumping her shoulder with his own.
“Buzzdoodles are new technology out of BTU. Noise canceling earplugs,” he told her kindly, and Hailey sighed, loving the sound of his friendly voice. “So you don’t have to yell at me anymore,” he said with a wink.
