Earth to Emily (Emily #2) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Author:Pamela Fagan Hutchins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781939889300
Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
Published: 2015-08-05T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

Luckily, the runway was clear and the temperature in the thirties the next morning. In the plane it was a nippy forty-five degrees, but as much as I hated the cold, I couldn’t have been happier. Jack put Snowflake’s kennel in the backseat, and when Ava suggested that she ride up front as a first-timer in a Skyhawk, he told her that he was putting me in shotgun so he could hold my hand. Which he did, off and on, for most of the three‑and‑a‑half‑hour flight. My arm actually got tired from holding it up to reach his, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have cared if I had to flap my arms to get us there. I was that happy.

White blanketed the landscape below us most of the way, but the sky was clear and a vivid blue, like the Caribbean Sea around Ava’s home island, St. Marcos. It matched my buoyant mood. As we began our descent over the Sierra Blancas toward the tiny strip on Wrong Turn Ranch, however, the clouds grew thicker. Soon we were cruising along above an endless blanket of gray cotton balls. Jack had to let go of my hand, and his face was intense, his eyes locked onto the instrument panel. My head started to ache.

The pitch of the engine changed and we started descending. In seconds, we’d bumped and bounced into the pit of gray cotton balls, and they clung to us, obscuring our vision. The ground could be coming up on us fast, or a mountain peak could be right in front of us. Despite the temperature in the plane, a cold sweat ran down my back. I snuck a look at Jack, and saw he was sweating, too. The gray cottony clouds seemed to go on forever, but finally we slipped out the bottom of them. Then I saw a mountaintop poking through another layer of gray cotton below. These were ominous, darker, more like mounds of ash. I put my head down and started whispering a prayer: “Dear God, if you could help us land safely, I promise to be nicer to my mother.”

Before I got to amen, a hand tapping my shoulder startled me. I whipped around. It was Ava. I leaned toward her as far as I could, as she leaned toward me. Her dark skin seemed to have a gray-green undertone. I couldn’t hear her, but I read her lips.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

I gave her a thumbs-up sign. Just then, everything around us went dark. The Skyhawk bounced as it hurtled across the sky and toward the earth. I turned back around and clutched the armrests. The turbulence shook us so hard that I lost my sensation of up and down and sideways, with the only light coming from the instrument panel inside the plane. I could barely see Jack, only enough to know he was keeping his eyes on the dashboard controls. Nausea came over me, and my mouth went dry. The plane bucked violently, and my seatbelt cut into my lap as we dropped straight down.

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