We are going to have a double update this week, mostly because I think this is the only time I’m going to have time in all of December and I wanted to put something out for all of you who are still checking on how I’m doing. For the first week of December my family and I were in a completely different country and we were constantly travelling from one spot to another. The second week was when we traveled back home and immediately jumped back into work and trying to get all our Christmas decorations put up, so most of our free time was spent getting the house in festive spirits. This last week was the first time I had the time or energy to think about the blog, but I did get plenty of writing and even some knitting done on the trip, so you’ll get to see a bit of both in these updates. This post is going to be a very late First Friday fiction, which should have been up a while ago, but which I did not have the time or energy to get up after traveling half-way around the world in less than 24 hours.
So, inspired by my families own troubles, here is : Flight 203 is On Time
“Why are we here,” Rick asked, staring blankly up at the ceiling of the airport cafeteria.
“That is a question many have asked in the history of the human race,” Nick spoke in a purposefully annoying grandiose tone of voice. “Some say-”
“No, you Jerk.” Rick kicked at the back of Nick’s chair. “Why are we here. At the airport. At 1 PM.” he gestured aggressively at the sparsely filled airport cafeteria.
“Travel blogs advise that with the increase in holiday travel it is important to get to the airport sooner than one normally might to avoid time crunches and delays with security,” George muttered. He had yet to glance up from his textbook since they sat down.
“Five hours early?” Rick demanded, throwing his hands up in the air. Rick had a hard enough time getting himself and his brother Jack to the airport at the time George texted him. Getting there only to discover that the flight their cousin had bought tickets for didn’t leave until 6 in the evening had not made him any happier.
George hunched over his book a little more, muttering defensively. “The travel advisor made the suggestion.”
“I am going to die of boredom,” Jack flung himself across the cafeteria table, clearly determined to make his issue a group problem.
4 hours 30 minutes to departure
This was hell, and Nick was not about to be held responsible for what he was going to do to his younger cousin.
“63 bottles of pop on the wall, 63 bottles of pop! Take one down, pass it around, 62 bottles of pop on the wall!” Jack warbled, off-key, from where he was lying across three of the cafeteria chairs.
“Oh, for the love of all things still holy,” Nick grabbed his wallet out of his jeans pocket and slapped a 20-dollar bill across Jack’s face. “Go and get us drinks, or food, or something. Please, just go do anything else but sing.”
4 hours 15 minutes to departure
Rick returned from the bathroom to find the table one person short from when he had left. “Where is Jack?”
“Getting food.” Nick didn’t even bother to glance up from his phone.
“Unsupervised?!?” Rick could already feel his blood pressure rising.
“He’s 19, Rick.” Nick rolled his eyes. “No ones going to carry him off.” Then, in a slightly lower voice “not that I would mind if they did.”
Rick honestly wished it wasn’t just him and his cousins making this trip. Or at least that he wasn’t apparently the only one acting as the adult of the group. “Nick, do you not remember the incident at the state fair two years ago?”
Nick paused at that and even George glanced up from his textbook, all three of them remembering the Incident.
Nick swore.
4 hours 05 minutes to departure
They left George with the carry-on bags and promptly started searching the shops surrounding the concessions area since Jack was nowhere in sight. Jack wasn’t at the soft serve cart but that didn’t mean much – especially since Rick already knew there were at least two candy shops in this airport. After ten minutes of sprinting around the concourse shops, and getting looks from other passengers who were headed to their gates since they got to the airport at a normal time, they finally spot Jack heading in their direction.
As they neared, Jack grinned far too wide and thrust a plastic bag at them. “They carry fifteen different flavors of Hi-Chew here!”
With great trepidation Rick checked the bag. Inside was an empty soda bottle and far too many candy bags, all of which had been opened.
3 hours 30 minutes to departure
If Jack had been difficult to deal with before when the sugar from the drink and the candy finally hit he was going to be insufferable.
“What if I-”
“No, Jack, you are not riding any of our luggage down the escalator in any configuration. We will be kicked out of the airport, and then we will have been sitting here for two hours for nothing.” Rick scowled at George and Nick, as this whole situation is definitely their fault. Nick ignores him, phone out and earbuds in.
“We will also miss our flight to uncle John’s” George adds, decidedly not helping with the situation.
Rick has half a mind to say he doesn’t care, but holds his tongue.
“I don’t even know how he got that much candy,” Nick muttered. Apparently, he was still paying attention to the conversation despite the earbuds. “I just gave him a twenty. We’re in an airport. Everything costs double here.”
“I used my own money, duh. I have a job,” Jack rolled his eyes. Rick does know about the job. He doesn’t know how Jack has kept it so long when he takes every opportunity to act like a middle schooler. But maybe that has more to do with having grown up with Jack than with Jack’s own abilities at working a nine-to-five.
2 hours 57 minutes to departure
Jack is starting to twitch and Rick has to brace himself. In only a matter of minutes before Jack’s energy reaches critical mass, and then there is no saying what will happen. Having grown up with Jack he’s learned that so long as Jack is doing something, as annoying as it can get, then he’s using up all the excess energy that’s constantly running through his system. When Jack gets quiet and fidgety then it means all that energy is getting bottled up and there will be some sort of chaos unleashed.
Their cousins know it too. George is still nose deep in his textbook, but the pen he was writing with is now twirling at a rapid pace in his hand. Nick is tense in his seat, mindlessly scrolling his phone but clearly not paying attention. Every few minutes Nick will glance over at Jack for just a few seconds, then go back to his phone. It’s a waiting game to see what Jack will do now.
2 hours 41 minutes to departure
Rick took his eyes off his brother for one minute and he’s gone. It was so inevitable he can’t even be mad about it, Jack’s vibrating had been getting so intense it was nearly visible. He hopes, he prays, that Jack’s just going to the bathroom because of chugging a 20 Oz bottle of soda but he already knows it’s not true.
I did my best, he thinks to no one in particular before tugging a baseball cap out of his carry-on and then pulling it low over his eyes in the hopes that it will make it difficult to tell that he and Jack are related.
1 hour 33 minutes to departure
“I need your hat.”
Jack was hiding behind a large tropical fern display among the seats next to the toilets.
“Jack, I swear to God if you are being hunted down by security I will turn you in myself.” Rick hadn’t even needed to use the bathroom, he’d just needed to stretch his legs and wandered down the hallway to avoid having to talk to the cashiers in the concourse stores. He took a brief moment to thank whatever higher power was listening that at least he had found his brother, rather than getting a call that he’d been thrown out of the airport.
“No, of course not,” Jack answered immediately, then rapidly continued “but they may be hunting for an unaccompanied minor with curly blond hair so if you could give me your hat, and if George will lend me his extra textbook that he smuggled along to study, I’d really like to leave the potted plants.”
“The plants annoyed with you too?” Rick asked waspishly as he pulled off his hat and tousled his own blond curls before begrudgingly handing the hat over. Jack pulled it on as he stood up, showing that he had already removed the sweater he had been wearing earlier and wrapped it around his waist.
“Don’t talk like that, Fred thinks I’m delightful.”
“You really need to stop naming inanimate objects,” Rick caught the brim of the baseball cap and tugged it down, causing Jack to yelp. “Makes you sound more like 9 than 19.”
“You only say that to make fun of my height,” Jack blew a raspberry at him, which really made him look young. Jack always made any age jokes about the fact that he stood barely past 5 foot one. Rick would maintain to his dying breath that it had much more to do with his maturity. “That’s short people prejudice.”
“Watch it,” Rick warned as they started making their way back to the seating area. “I can still take my hat back.”
58 minutes to departure
With less than an hour left they had made their way over to the gate their flight was leaving from, leaving their old table at the cafeteria behind. Now sitting in new seats, this time without a table, they all waited for the call to board. Nick glanced up as the intercom crackled and the PA called that another flight was ready to depart.
“Is that-”
“No, we’re flight 203 to Northport, that isn’t even close,” George glared at Nick. “Have you even read the boarding pass?
“Even I know our plane number,” Jack offers unhelpfully from where he’s lying on the floor and Nick glares at him.
“I’ve been busy. Besides, you didn’t even know which airport you were going to.”
“Eh,” Jack waved that off like things like addresses and how to get to the right airport were minor issues. “I’ve got Rick for that stuff. Right?” Jack grinned over at him.
“I wish mom and dad had left you at the hospital lost and found when you were born.”
Jack just laughs.
35 minutes to departure
When their boarding group was finally called to get on the plane Rick sighed heavily and grabbed his things, barely paying attention as he shuffled his way through the line, scanned his boarding pass, and then shuffled his way onto the plane.
Jack hoped to get his carry-on into the overhead bin. “Looks like they have videos on the flight. Think there’s any good movies?”
“I would literally watch a documentary on rocks if it means I don’t have to listen to the rest of you for the rest of our flight.” Nick slid into his own seat, pulling up the screen information on the seat back in front of him to sync his headphones with the terminal.
“You are studying to be a geologist, that’s not much of an insult.”
“Doesn’t mean they know how to make documentaries about rocks more interesting.”
“Maybe next time we fly we don’t need to go quite so early,” George admitted.
“I don’t care when you go.” Rick pulled his noise-canceling earmuffs out of his bag and settled into his seat. “Next time you guys fly, I’m driving.”
