Before Takeoff by Adi Alsaid

Author:Adi Alsaid [Alsaid, Adi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

We all picture ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, and no one reading is a stranger to fantasies of becoming a savior. Michelle is as guilty, but she also knows that there is no shame in these fantasies. She even believes them, every now and then. She knows that eventually an opportunity will present itself where she will be able to at least attempt to save the day, and if this isn’t that moment, then what else could it be?

“I think I might be to blame for this whole thing,” she says, standing up.

James chuckles, “Still not true.”

Michelle thinks back to the moment she touched the light, desperate to remember if that was when everything started to fall apart. In her memory, the order of events is muddled, the whole day a concatenation of weirdness. She can picture herself standing in front of the light, reaching for it, realizing that it’s a button and pressing it down. James was somewhere off to her side, lost in thought. What happened the moment right after? Did one of the explosions happen then, or did that come later? The blackouts? Try as she might, all she can see is that moment, her and James, a photograph of the past, not video footage. She’s trying to make sense of the sequence of events. Might as well try to make sense of disease, Michelle. Might as well make sense of the way tragedy gets handed out to people, a little here, a little there, like petals thrown by a flower girl at a wedding, indiscriminately tossed about. Sometimes it lands in one place all at once.

“We should go back to it,” she says. “Do something about it.” She’s still reaching into her memory, trying to grasp more than just the image. This happens to Michelle a lot. When she thinks back to friends she’s left behind in Jakarta, in Buenos Aires, in Basel. That night two years ago when she had friends over to watch a movie, the still frame in her mind: Lisa sitting on the floor at Gabriel’s feet, her arm casually thrown back to rest on his knees. The glow of the screen reflecting on their faces, the look in Gabriel’s eyes, which to Michelle is a clear indication that he was falling in love with Lisa right then and there. But she can never access the memory the way she wants, move a little forward in time to see if she can still see the look in Gabriel’s eyes, or if it’s just something she’s added into the memory.

The thought that memory is fallible terrifies Michelle, the fact that the narratives we create from our experiences are fabricated by faulty minds, stitched together like fiction, no bearing on reality. Right now it feels like she’s responsible for everything happening at the airport, that the moment she pushed the green button was when hell started breaking loose. Who knows, maybe this all started because she was an asshole to her grandparents, because she didn’t treat a goodbye as a goodbye.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.