Zaira
“Ladies and gentlemen, we warmly welcome you to Alicante. We hope you had a pleasant flight and wish you a wonderful time here. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened until we have reached our parking position.”
Pleasant flight.
I slowly opened my eyes, very carefully, as if I had seriously hoped I had simply misheard and that any second now someone would come over the speaker to correct it, saying that this had in truth been a failed experiment. My gaze stayed fixed straight ahead for a moment, my brain trying to place that statement into some kind of sensible category. Pleasant. Of course. Absolutely pleasant. If one called it pleasant that an airplane occasionally felt like a bad-tempered roller coaster that decided without warning to bring its guests a little closer to death, then yes, then this had been a dream vacation.
An audible breath escaped me, this time clear and touched with dramatic relief, my head sank against the seatback and my shoulders finally gave a little. If that had been pleasant, I truly did not want to know what counted as a bad flight in their definition. Probably free fall. Without a seat belt. With applause.
I hated flying. Truly. And this flight from Cancún to here had once again confirmed for me in a very convincing, almost aggressive way that nothing about that would change in the future either. Those turbulences had not felt like a little shaking, but more as if someone up there had decided to grab the plane properly and shake it around, just to test who would lose their nerve first and who would immediately begin reconsidering their life choices.
And somewhere up there in the cockpit sat someone who had seriously described all of this as pleasant. I wasn’t sure whether I should be impressed or concerned.
I blinked a few times, ran one hand over my face as if I could simply wipe away the last few hours, and closed my eyes for a brief moment, only to make sure we were actually still alive and had not already crashed, as if this were being sold to me as a particularly tasteless transition into the afterlife.
Pleasant.
Of course.
Beside me came a sound somewhere between an annoyed groan, quiet despair, and the noise of a person who had just internally decided never to voluntarily step onto a plane again. I did not even have to look to know who it was.
“Are we there now? I swear, Zaira, that was my last flight!” my cousin grumbled, his voice rough, sleepy, and carrying exactly that offended undertone, as if I had personally forced him to sit here and fear for his life.
I immediately bit my lip because I knew perfectly well that if I gave in even the slightest bit right now, I would start laughing and probably never stop again. Slowly I turned my head toward him, really slowly, as if giving myself one last chance to pull myself together.
And then I saw him.
And it was over.
His face was lightly creased from sleep, his hair stuck out in every possible direction as if it had started its own small rebellion during the turbulence, and as if all of that were not enough, he was still wearing my black sleep mask, which was far too big for him and hung crooked across his face as if it had decided to simply become part of his personality.
A quiet, betraying sound escaped me, although I had promised myself I would keep it together. It was simply too much. Far too much.
His hand still rested on the mask, as if he had completely forgotten it even existed, and only after a few seconds did it slowly seem to dawn on him that something was wrong. Very carefully, almost suspiciously, as if the mask might attack him, he pushed it upward until it finally got stuck somewhere in his hair, where it absolutely did not belong.
He blinked a few times, slow and heavy, as though he first had to readjust his eyes to reality, and I could practically watch his brain trying at a snail’s pace to sort through everything that had just happened. For one brief moment he looked as though he were still suspended somewhere between dream and reality, as if his body had understood that we had landed, but his mind had not quite caught up yet. Only after a few seconds did his gaze finally lift and land directly on me. Sleepy, slightly confused, and with exactly that expression that hovered somewhere between complete seriousness and total disorientation, he stared at me as if he were still desperately trying to understand where we actually were, why we were still alive, and why I was obviously seconds away from laughing at him with all my heart.
I leaned back a little in my seat, drew my legs up slightly, and let my head tip just a fraction to the side while I continued to study him and my grin spread wider and wider, without me making even the slightest attempt to truly hide it. This flight might have somehow survived both of us, but it had definitely broken him a little bit, at least internally, and I had to seriously pull myself together not to burst out laughing right that very second.
“The pilot just welcomed us to Alicante and hoped we had a pleasant flight,” I finally said, my voice calm, but with exactly that light undertone that gave away I did not mean any of it seriously. I watched him very closely while I said it, almost expectantly, because I knew perfectly well that his reaction was going to be the best part of the whole situation.
And that was exactly how it was.
It was as if someone invisibly flipped a switch.
His green eyes, which had been half closed and sleepy only moments ago, became clearer, more awake, and at the same time distinctly more horrified within seconds, as if I had just told him something completely outside the boundaries of his worldview. His brow drew together slightly, his lips parted a little, and for a moment he simply looked at me as if seriously trying to figure out whether I was lying to him or whether that had actually happened.
He stared at me. Truly stared. Long enough that for a second I had the feeling he was about to begin reconstructing the last minutes of his life.
“Was he high?” he finally asked, his voice still a little rough with sleep, but now clearly more awake, while he straightened up slightly and looked at me with that half suspicious, half horrified expression, as if I had just informed him that we had been flown here by a completely death-wishing pilot.
I lifted one eyebrow slightly, loosely folded my arms in front of me, and gave a short shake of my head, though inwardly I had to admit his question was not nearly as absurd as it should have been.
“I always thought Mexican pilots live like they’ve got seven lives when they’re high,” he continued grumbling, running one hand through his hair, which was still sticking in every direction as if it had collectively conspired against any form of order, “but damn… at least they’re honest.”
A quiet snort escaped me, my gaze sliding briefly to the side simply to gather myself again, but the small grin could no longer really be held back. It was that absolute conviction with which he spoke, combined with the complete nonsense of his statement, that made the whole thing unbelievably funny.
And somewhere, deep inside me, I knew that unfortunately he was right.
I will never forget the day we took a short flight and the pilot spoke to the passengers in a completely relaxed tone, as if all of this were the most normal thing in the world, and casually, without the slightest trace of doubt in his voice, mentioned that he had just taken the best drugs of his life.
A sudden noise tore me from my thoughts. Above us, one of the overhead compartments snapped open, shortly after that the next one followed, then another, and within seconds the cabin filled with that typical, slightly chaotic mixture of voices, movement, and people who had all decided at the exact same moment to stand up now and take out their things.
“Good thing we don’t have a single suitcase and were able to ship everything from Mexico to Spain,” my cousin muttered beside me and made a vague hand gesture toward the aisle, where by now a small crowd had formed that was obviously firmly convinced it would be allowed to leave the plane faster if it simply stood up early enough.
I followed his gaze, watched people push past one another, pull bags from the compartments, lightly bump into each other while looking as though their lives depended on it, and I could not stop myself from groaning inwardly.
“Can you please wake me when all this is over? I hate people. I hate crowded places, and I hate people,” my cousin said with a seriousness as if he were announcing a fundamental principle of life, then without any further explanation pulled my sleep mask back over his eyes and demonstratively sank deeper into his seat.
I blinked at him briefly. Then once more.
“You do realize it’ll take at most ten to fifteen minutes before we’re allowed to leave the plane?” I finally asked and leaned a little toward him while fixing my eyes on him as if I could stop him from actually falling asleep again through my stare alone.
I shook my head lightly, a soft laugh escaping me.
Quietly I turned my gaze away from him and moved my head toward the window. For a brief moment I simply sat there in silence and looked outside, letting my eyes drift across the clear blue of the sky that stretched seemingly endless before me. No clouds. Only that bright, almost blinding sun bathing everything in a calm, almost deceptive light, as if the last few hours had never happened.
Alicante.
The name rested quietly in my thoughts, unfamiliar and yet not entirely strange, as if it first had to slowly get used to me, just as I had to get used to it. I let it remain there without questioning it further and focused instead on what I could see. On the brightness, the warmth, that feeling of openness spreading out before me and pushing everything else into the background for one moment.
No new place.
But maybe a new beginning.
A quiet breath escaped me, my shoulders felt a little lighter, and I leaned my head against the window while I closed my eyes for one brief moment. Maybe that was exactly all I needed right now. No looking back, no analyzing. Just one step forward.
And that was exactly what I would do.
