Kelly Schuester had only been on a plane a few times in her life, but the first time was certainly the most memorable. She was 11 years old, and she was standing in the airport near the window in the boarding area with Rachel by her side, both girls eating licorice out of one bag. It was summer vacation, and the girls were going with Kelly's parents to another state where they would be visiting a famous theme park. Both girls were extremely giddy, having never been out of state before, nor to a real theme park. They'd of course been to local carnivals and such, but nothing on this grand a scale.
"Dad?" Kelly asked as he looked up from his book and over at them; she continued, "do planes crash a lot?" "No, I think it's pretty rare," her father, Allen, replied, sliding his bookmark in between the pages and getting up, walking to the girls and putting his hands on Kelly's shoulders, continuing, "I mean, it happens, but your chances of being involved in a life threatening crash I think are rather slim. Either way, if it happens, just shut your eyes. That way you're giving in instead of accepting it against your will." "Jesus Allen, don't tell them that," Kelly's mother, Carol, said as she came back with a styrofoam cup of coffee, sipping gingerly from the lid as it was piping hot, adding, "that's way too grim for little girls." "We're not little, we're almost teenagers," Rachel said. Carol smiled and patted Rachel on the head, before taking Allen back to the chairs and sat back down, Allen going back to his book as Carol drank her coffee and relaxed. Their flight wouldn't board for another hour at least, so the girls had a while to be excited about their first plane ride. As they stood there, Rachel took Kelly by the hand and squeezed tightly, making Kelly laugh. "Don't worry, if one of us is ever in a plane crash, we'll be there for eachother," Rachel said, smiling, and Kelly nodded. And lo and behold, she would hold Rachel to that promise 20 years later. *** Wyatt was pacing in the hallway on the first floor of his house, his fingers digging through his hair, his lips quivering. Kelly. Kelly. Kelly was on the plane. Jesus hell what was he going to do. What could he do, realistically? It wasn't like you could get a bomb squad to a flying plane, after all. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and screamed as he turned to see Rachel standing there, who also screamed in response and jumped back a little. "Sorry!" she shouted, putting her hands up, "Sorry, but...are you-" "No I'm very much not okay. How are YOU so calm? She's your best friend!" Wyatt said, leaning against the wall and groaning, shutting his eyes, "...fuck, I'm getting a migraine." "You need to calm down," Rachel said, approaching and rubbing his back. "How am I supposed to calm down? He's fucked us, you do realize that, right? This moral crusade he's taken up has now fucked us royally. There's no coming back from this, Rachel. They're going to look into this. You blow up one guy and somehow get away with it that's luck. Shit happens. But you blow up a plane? There's no walking away from that. He's no better than Leonard or Oliver or anyone else who hurt others now. He's on the same level." "That's not fair, there's tiers to monstrous behavior," Rachel said, massaging Wyatt's shoulders, "but you're not wrong, he's screwed us pretty good..." Wyatt pushed her off him gently and turned around, resting against the wall as she did the same on the opposite wall, both of them looking at one another. Wyatt took a long deep breath and shook his head. "A few weeks ago," he said, "Celia asked me what do we do if he loses it. She said he'd already blown a single man up, so what happens when he does something worse. How do we deal with him. That we need some kind of contingency plan. I should've listened. I was stupid. I told her I didn't see it happening, and now here we are. She was right." "So...what's the plan?" Rachel asked, folding her arms. "...I don't know," Wyatt said, chewing his lip and looking at the floor, exhaling, "...but I think...there might come a time when he needs to not be here anymore." *** Kelly woke from the turbulence and looked around. She must've dozed off for a bit, because she forgot where she was for a moment. She pulled her headphones down and let them hang around her neck as she looked at Leonard, who appeared very nervous. She tapped him on the arm and he very anxious glanced towards her, his fingers gripping the armrests tightly. "What's going on?" she asked, still clearly woozy. "Something in the cargo exploded, they think it's a bomb," Leonard said, "...we might...we might be going down." Kelly felt the pit of her stomach drop further somehow, as she leaned back against her seat. How was this happening? Had her father been wrong? People don't normally die in plane crashes, they're rare, aren't they? A million thoughts raced through her mind, and then she felt herself feel queasy. Leonard noticed and quickly grabbed the barf bag from beneath her chair and handed it to her, which she graciously took and vomited into. How ironic, she thought as she spewed, a weather girl dying in the clouds. *** Wyatt and Rachel were now in the kitchen as Wyatt uncapped some beers. Rachel was sitting at the kitchen island, the TV in the living room still going loudly as Celia and Calvin were sitting there watching. Wyatt stood on the opposite side of the island as he slid Rachel's beer across the tabletop to her before lifting his own to his lips and taking a long swig. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sighed. "...this doesn't feel real," Wyatt mumbled. "Did it feel real before?" Rachel asked, and he looked at her, furrowing his brow as she sipped her beer then added, "you know, with Grudin? When you and Calvin were in the car, did that feel real?" "...I tried to stop it," Wyatt whispered, and Rachel's eyes widened. She sat up straighter. "What? You never said that," she said. "Yeah. Yeah, we...were in the car and...and Grudin came out and I just...I couldn't do it. We fought over the control, I tried to stop him, but I pressed it by accident and the rest, as they say, is history. But it makes me sick thinking about it. I blew a man up. My wife knows nothing. My daughter thinks I'm the best daddy in the world. I'm stuck between two entirely different worlds, and I don't know how to manage either one." "I know what you mean, I feel the same way. Everything I tell Sun is a lie, and I fear one day she'll learn that and she'll leave and...I can't...I can't lose her," Rachel said, on the verge of tears as Wyatt reached across the table and took her hand, holding it tightly. "Whatever happens, you and me will find a way out of this, alright? Fuck Calvin. He's on his own now. We can't defend him anymore. But you and Celia and I, we'll manage, and we'll get out of this just fine. I'll make sure of it. So long as we stick together. We need to be a unit from now on, okay? So long as we do that, we'll be a-okay." Rachel nodded, smiling, wiping her eyes with her other arm. "You know," Rachel said as Wyatt let go of her hand, "in high school, the few times we interacted, I always thought you were kind of a pompous ass." "And now?" Wyatt asked. "Well, you still are, but there are definitely multitudes," Rachel said, the both of them laughing and clinking their beers together gently. Anything to lighten the mood was worth it right now. Rachel excused herself and headed back to the living room to see the news, as Wyatt stayed behind and looked around his kitchen. What had he done? How had things spiraled this far out of control? He was a murderer, now an unwilling accomplice to a potential terrorist, and he put his family in direct jeopardy with the law. Celia was right. He needed a contingency plan. Calvin needed to be dealt with somehow. Only then... ...only then would they be safe. And then his cell, sitting on the countertop, rang. *** Leonard couldn't believe this was how it would all end. After all that'd happened, after Oliver's death and his feud with Calvin, after all the time and effort he'd put into helping build this smut empire, he was going to be taken out by a pure random chance situation? Seemed almost comical. Maybe this was what people meant, he thought, when they spoke of karma. Maybe it existed after all. Leonard had to write a note. Something for someone who would be there to collect his things, whatever were left anyway. He reached under his chair and pulled his bag out, opening the flap and digging around for a pen and a notepad. Meanwhile, Kelly Schuester had never used an airplane phone before, and she couldn't believe it was the last thing she'd do before dying. She dialed quickly, with reckless abandon, hoping that the numbers she put in would actually connect to the number she'd hoped to reach. It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Then, during the fourth ring, it finally picked up, and Kelly felt an immense sense of relief, despite facing her seemingly impending demise. "I didn't know who else to call," she managed to squeak out, tears welling in her eyes, "I didn't...this is the only number I could think of." "It's okay, you're okay," Wyatt responded. "Where are you?" "In the kitchen, the TV is super loud," Wyatt said, "everyone screaming over one another. Kelly, just breath, okay? Just breath and everything will be okay." "I'm on a crashing plane, how will everything be okay?" Kelly asked, fighting back tears, "Wyatt, just...tell Rachel she's my best friend no matter what, okay? And...and that...and tell my parents, you can find them in the phonebook, tell them that I love them so much, please, and-" "Kelly, you're not going to die, okay?!" Wyatt shouted, "You're gonna be just fine!" "I can see the ground," Kelly said, "I can-" The phone went dead. The line clicked endlessly. Wyatt stood in the kitchen, staring at his cell, before he turned and threw his phone across the room and watched it shatter on the wall just as Calvin entered the room and their eyes met. Wyatt approached him and grabbed him by his collar, lifting him up a bit, his eyes burning with hatred. "What did you do?" Wyatt asked through gritted teeth. "I did what someone had to do," Calvin responded meekly, "what nobody else would." "You just murdered god knows how many innocent people!" Wyatt shouted. "How many of them were innocent, Wyatt?! Most of the people on the plane belonged to The Evergreens, those pseudo environmentalist lunatics launching a crusade in the name of a misguided savior! The only person really innocent was Kelly, and...and I'm sorry but...you made my sister go away, so maybe now we're even." Wyatt couldn't take it, he balled his hand into a fist and punched Calvin in the jaw, just as Rachel and Celia pulled the men apart. As Rachel dragged Wyatt away, he was still kicking wildly, his eyes burning at Calvin, who was now doubled over, massaging his jaw as Celia grabbed him an icepack from the nearby freezer. "I'm going to kill you!" Wyatt screamed, "I'm going to kill you, Calvin! You son of a bitch!" "Guys, now is NOT the time!" Celia shouted, "Everyone just chill out!" But there was no chilling. This was the end of whatever partnership Wyatt and Calvin had forged up until this point, and there was no going back anymore. All that was left, really, was to find a way to dissolve it. Calvin felt bad, but he also felt he'd done the right thing. He'd taken out not just a monster, but people who worshipped a monster. He'd saved however many other kids from being hurt, at least for the time being, and stopped those Evergreen idiots from spreading their beliefs surrounding their martyr Oliver Brighton. He felt bad about Kelly, and the other few innocents on the plane, sure...but he was certain he'd done the right thing. Wyatt, however, had never hated someone more than Calvin at this exact moment. Wyatt had dealt with his sister in school, but he'd only interacted with Calvin a number of times, and he's always found him weird but nice enough. But now? Now Wyatt saw Calvin for what he truly was. A dangerous man, willing to do dangerous things to take out who he considered more dangerous men, and Wyatt knew he had to do something to stop him, no matter the cost. If Calvin had put Kelly's life in peril, potentially killing her, who's to say he wouldn't do the same to Rachel next? No. Wyatt couldn't let anyone else fall prey to Calvin's intense misguided heroism, and he'd find a way to put a stop to him one way or another. *** Angie Dickinson felt like she'd witnessed a miracle. A sign. Something that had shown her the light. Sitting on the couch with her parents on either side of her, all of them glued to visually to the TV screen with the news of the plane crash flashing before them, she'd never felt such a sense of simultaneous relief and belief. She tapped her fingernails nervously on her glass and chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. After a moment she got up and headed into her bedroom upstairs. Once inside, she loaded up her desktop and looked up Wyatt's store, finding publicity photos of him. She printed out her favorite headshot and then, climbing onto her bedroom floor, glued it into her notebook, pulling the lid off a felt pen and writing beneath it: "Hero" Then she sat back upright against her bed and held the notebook up to her face, smiling. This man had saved her life, inadvertently so but regardless, and she intended to somehow pay him back. She didn't know how or when, but she'd find a way. The funny thing is, this was the last thing Wyatt needed. A fan club. *** Right before the plane crashed, as Leonard scrambled to find some notepad paper to write on, screaming all around him and smoke filling the cabin, he finally felt his fingers reach around a spiraled notebook and tugged it free from his satchel. As he clicked the pen so he could write, and opened the notebook, he was surprised when something slid out of it and landed in his lap. He dropped the notebook and the pen and picked up the small folded piece of paper, then unfolded it and read the words. Having had Calvin work for him for a bit, and having been his teacher, the handwriting was unmistakable and immediately identifiable. He must've slipped it in when he'd gone to the bathroom that night he came over, Leonard thought. His eyes scanned the paper again and again, unable to truly believe what it was he saw. Calvin had written one single thing. "You were a great teacher. And a terrible human being." Leonard shut his eyes and exhaled as the plane approached the ground. Leonard laughed to himself weakly, reaching up and stroking his mustache. "God damn son of a-" he mumbled. And then everything went black.
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A group of former high school classmates reunite at their 10 year reunion, and discover they each want something different, many with someone else there. What ensues is a labyrinthian relationship amongst them involving crime, murder, romance and, in one particular case, terrorism. Archives
May 2024
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