I woke up inside a jumbo jet with my face pressed all up against a window. I wanted to move, but could only twitch a little. I looked down at the clouds. Then up. I’d been all the way up in the purple part of the sky earlier today.
Until the accident.
I sat up, trying to shake the heavy sleepiness out of my hands and head. The jet was mostly empty. There were some people in suits up in first class, and then I saw four other faces I recognized all in the back with me. The children of the ticket winners I’d gone up in the rocketship with. Most of them were sleeping, faces against windows like I had been.
Were they drugged, too?
Catherine stood near the end of the aisle. She caught my eye, and the panic that swelled up in me as I saw her. She’d kidnapped me!
No. My parents had been talking to me and acted like they knew something.
I tried to calm down as she walked over. “Kadie, I have to explain something to you, something very important.”
She kept her a good distance back from me, kneeling on one of the chairs a couple rows away and talking at me over the blue fabric of the chair backs. I shrank back from her. Behind her I saw a tall man with a phone up to his ear in the first class section. He saw me looking and pulled the curtain shut.
“Your parents have granted Yggdrasil legal guardianship.” Catherine’s words were precise, clean, flat and American Midwest-sounding. All CNN broadcast style. Her hair was unbrushed and her eyes puffy. Like she’d not gotten any sleep in the last twenty-four hours. She still wore the same clothes I’d seen her in last, and they were wrinkled.
“Guardianship?”
She held up a stapled together document. “When you agreed to enter the program, we had your family sign documents. In the event that they were hurt, we are responsible for you…”
I interrupted her. “You’re not my parents.”
“Of course not.” Catherine rubbed her eyes. “We could never replace your parents. We understand that. But we talked to your parents, we made the arrangements. They think this is what you would want. We have the resources to get you out of trouble, and to claim that ticket of yours.”
“You drugged me,” I said. “Why couldn’t you let me go talk to my mom and dad?”
“We’re in the middle of an emergency here,” she said carefully. “This morning, the All Tree announced it was taking all its passengers today. It forces us to rush everything.”
“You kidnapped me! You drugged me!”
“Please understand, Kadie. This is so important! We didn’t kidnap you. You wanted to go, your parents wanted you to still make it, even though they were hurt.”
I looked out the window again, and saw nothing but clouds. “How bad they hurt?”
“There was a fire, but it got put out. There is smoke inhalation, some minor burns. We thought we could wait for them to heal and it would still work out for you to go as a family. But the All Tree is taking people up now. Your parents will still get the money we promised, and medical care. But if you want to go, now is the time, Kadie. Now is the time for an adventure of a life time, and the chance to help your country.”
“But it won’t be with my family.” I looked out the window.
“No. But you must understand, the All Tree, the chance to get people aboard it. This is big. This is history-changing big. And it means we have to stop thinking about ourselves and think about the larger picture. Just… look at this like going to boarding school. You will see them again.”
In two years.
Two years was a long time.
They would be safe from Just Rahim, though.
“Would you like to meet your foster parents?” Catherine asked.
I didn’t. But I took a deep breath. “Okay, I think I’m ready for this.”
My two new caretakers stepped around the first class curtain.
“This is Alan,” Catherine said.
Alan looked nothing like my dad. Dad, he was lean and lanky, dark from the island sun; much darker than this man. This man was squat, muscular. Like a bodyguard. His curly hair was shaved tight to his skull. He stepped forward, moving like a panther, his muscles bunching under his red polo. A military man, or just someone trained to fight. Even as the plane shuddered from turbulence he didn’t lose his step.
“And here is Maddy.”
Maddy, like Alan, walked like some dangerous animal. Her hair was shaved tight, too. My auntie Lynn once told me: you don’t judge no man by just his appearance. But I felt these two were all wrong the moment I laid my eyes upon them.
But maybe I was just fighting the idea. Maybe I needed to think of them as my teachers, or a principal. I relaxed.
“I know this is going to be hard,” Alan said in a deep, confident voice. “We’re about to land in Ecuador soon, so we’re making this up quickly as we go along.” In Mitad Del Mundo, like the message had told me. Mitad Del Mundo was in Ecuador. Just north of Quito and it was where we would get to the All Tree.
I’d been asleep for hours and hours.
“Kadie, already the All Tree has given us technologies, and knowledge, but we all know that there is much more to be found in it. We need to crack it open. There are resources there, resources the likes of which we can’t even imagine. That’s why all this is so important. It is for a greater cause. What you’re doing, is nothing short of amazing,” Maddy told me. “We’re looking forward to working with you.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
“He’s been through enough,” Alan said. “Give him his space. You know that this is a lot. Come on.”
I watched him and Maddy retreat behind the curtain with relief.
“I want to talk to my mom and dad again,” I asked.
“I’m so sorry,” Catherine said gently. “We’re not able to make calls on this plane.”
I opened my mouth. She was lying!
Then I closed it. I was trapped on the plane with them. And maybe my instincts about Alan and Maddy had been right.
They’d lied to me about phones, what else were they lying about?