“Someone woke up on the wrong foot, hm?” she asks in her casual tone, very well knowing she is teasing me.
“More like didn’t sleep at all,” I say.
“Are you nervous?”
“No,” I say and look away.
“Gods, you are a terrible liar,” she says. “Why are you nervous? Do I need to be nervous, too?”
“No,” I say. “I simply dislike flying.”
She scoffs something that awfully sounds like “Contolfreak” and laughs. “We will be alright. The chances of a plane crashing are so low, you’d probably die more likely from being run over by a truck in Manhattan.”
“I know that,” I say, annoyed. “But I like my feet on the ground.”
“You like your feet in a predictable environment, different things.”
My hands snap into fists, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by her.
“Do I enrage you?” she asks, as if it were something to be proud of.
“You annoy me,” I say harshly.
“I can live with that,” she says. “I’m just giving you a sip of your own medicine.”
“So you say I annoy you?”
“No,” she says without even looking at me. “That’s your interpretation. I just point you towards the things you try to deny.”
“I’m not in denial,” I say with a raised voice.
“Sure, Karen, tell yourself that.”
I have the immediate desire to strangulate her. If not for the boarding call, I might have done it.
We enter the plane, and my heart beats up into my throat. Everything is tight and compressed, too many people.
“Take the window seat,” she orders me, but I am not opposed, because it means I have her between me and the rest of humanity on this plane.
I can’t stand the energies flying around. People are stressed and agitated, some are blunt idiots, others are arrogant bastards, and all their energies waft around. Everyone talks, the loud noises, the airplane beeping, and different scents.
I am completely overwhelmed.
Breathe. In and out,I tell myself, but I can’t calm myself down enough, and my fingertips dig painfully into my palms.
I don’t even look at Amelie. I just stare straight at the screen, my body tense.
The airplane moves, and I gasp for air.
It’s the moment she grasps my fist and slides her fingers into the compressed hand.
“Homeostasis maintains a consistent internal environment: the Example of thermoregulation,” she says completely out of context. “Building on discoveries about cellular physiology, scientists in the nineteenth century realized that the body can be viewed as a self-contained environment, carefully regulated so as to provide optimal conditions for cells to live and grow.”
“Are you reciting the Breedlove & Watson Behavioral Neuroscience book to me?” I ask as I interrupt her.
“Yep. The international 8th Edition. Just listen.”
And she talks. She reads the book to me without having it in front of her. She reads paragraph after paragraph, explains and describes the charts to me, and all that comes from her mind.
