Rating: T for now, mainly for the language I added in and some suggestive adult themes. Still deciding if I'll take it to M or let this one stay innocent.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hannah Montana. Based on the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

Note: Have any of you read the book? I did, back in like 4th grade, and it's always stuck with me even though this was…about 15 years ago. I decided to take on a challenge and make this a Liley instead of focusing on my own original story currently in the works. I'm following the book very closely, keeping the majority of the dialogue (which is little, to say the least) and basically rewriting each chapter my own way and adding in the Liley. Occasionally I keep some of the original writing because I can't seem to rewrite it better or in my own way (like the plane details, although my dad does have his pilot's license like I wrote Lilly's in the story and I have flown in the copilots seat in a small plane seating 8 – from Nantucket to Boston, MA – which is really awesome and only encouraged my outlandish idea of getting my pilots license someday), especially the first few chapters. Hope you like it.

alone: isolated, seperate, unique.

1

Lilly Truscott stared morosely out the window of the plane at the endless green northern wilderness below. Her best friend, Miley Stewart, was fast asleep behind her in the small plane, a Cessna 406 – a bush plane – and the engine was so loud, that Lilly was flabbergasted as to how Miley could sleep through it. Not that there was much else to do as the engine was so thundering and consuming that it ruined any chance for conversation.

Not that Lilly had much to say. She was 16 and the only other passenger on the plane besides her best friend was a pilot named Jake or something. He was in his mid-forties and had not said a single word to her or her friend as he worked to prepare the plane for take-off. In fact, since Lilly and Miley had flown into the airport in Seattle, Washington to meet the plane, the pilot had spoken ten words to them.

"Get in the copilots seat. You can take the back," he had grumbled as he pointed first to Lilly and then Miley. They glanced at one another, Miley raising a perfectly shaped brow, silently asking Lilly what had crawled up the pilot's ass. She then grinned, squeezed Lilly's hand that she had been holding, and crawled into the back of the plane as the pilot had instructed.

Lilly sullenly followed her friend, her hand feeling suddenly cold and empty as Miley had barely let go of it since they had started their journey. It had been calming yet energizing at the same time. There was something about Miley Stewart that she couldn't put her finger on, something special, and Lilly was glad to have her along on this trip. They had taken off shortly after, and that was the last of the conversation. Of course, there had been the initial excitement of sitting in the co-pilots seat. Lilly had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting with all the controls right in front of her was interesting and exciting. She had secretly always wanted to get her pilots license after learning her dad had earned his back in his late teens and early twenties. Back when he was dating her mother. Back when they were happy. She shook her thoughts away, her eyes greedily scanning the instruments as the plane gained altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest. The pilot remained stonily silent as he stared out the front of the plane into the vast expanse of nothing as the sea of green trees that lay before the plane's nose stretched out to the horizon as far as Lilly could see. The drone of the engine had been all that was left.

Now Lilly was left alone with only her thoughts as company as she stared out the window, not really seeing anything that passed below her. With the roar of the engine thundering in her ears, her thinking had started. Divorce. Custody battles. Fights and yelling and tears. And smarmy lawyers who sat with their greedy smiles, explaining to her in legal terms how her father was ruining her life. How he was breaking and shattering all of the solid things – her home, her life, her friends, Miley.

Her parents had been divorced since she was 8 and never once had her father expressed an interest in her living with him. It wasn't until he decided to leave California and take a job up north, and suddenly having custody of Lilly meant everything in the world to him.

Lilly felt her eyes beginning to burn with unshed tears and she tried with all her might to keep them in. She had already cried. She wouldn't cry anymore. But her eyes burned and the tears came anyway, the seeping tears that burned as they slid unwelcomed down her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away with a finger and glanced at the pilot out of the corner of her eye to make sure he hadn't noticed them. She was 16; she was too old to cry.

The pilot sat large, his hands lightly on the wheel, feet on the rudder pedals. He seemed more a machine than a man, an extension of the plane. On the dashboard in front of him Lilly saw the dials, switches, meters, knobs, levers, cranks, lights, handles that were wiggling and flickering, all indicating something. The pilot seemed the same way – part of the plane, not human, and nothing that Lilly understood.

When he saw Lilly glance at him, the pilot seemed to open up a bit and he smiled. "Ever fly in the copilot's seat before?" He leaned over and lifted the headset off his right ear and put it on his temple, yelling to overcome the sound of the engine.

Lilly shook her head. She had only been in large jets or in Hannah Montana's private plane. Never had she seen the cockpit of a plane except in films or television. It was loud and confusing. "First time."

"It's not as complicated as it looks. Good plane like this almost flies itself." The pilot shrugged. "Makes my job easy." He took Lilly's left arm. "Here, put your hands on the controls, your feet in the rudder pedals, and I'll show you what I mean."

Lilly shook her head, afraid of having the powerful machine under her control. "I'd better not."

"Sure. Try it…"

Lilly reached out and took the wheel in a grip so tight her knuckles were white. She pushed her feet down on the pedals. The plane slewed suddenly to the right.

"Not so hard. Take her light, take her light."

Lilly eased off, relaxed her grip. The burning in her eyes was forgotten momentarily as the vibration of the plane came through the wheel and the pedals. It seemed almost alive.

"See?" The pilot let go of his wheel, raised his hands in the air and took his feet off the pedals to show Lilly she was actually flying the plane alone. "Simple. Now turn the wheel a little to the right and push on the right rudder pedal a small amount."

Lilly turned the wheel slightly and the plane immediately banked to the right, and when she pressed on the right rudder pedal the nose slid across the horizon to the right. She left off on the pressure and straightened the wheel and the plane righted itself.

"Now you can turn. Bring her back to the left a little."

Lilly turned the wheel left, pushed on the left pedal, and the plane came back around. "It's easy," she smiled. "At least this part."

The pilot nodded. "All of flying is easy. Just takes learning. Like everything else." He took the controls back, then reached up and rubbed his left shoulder. "Aches and pains – must be getting old."

Lilly let go of the controls and moved her feet away from the pedals as the pilot put his hands on the wheel. "Thank you…"

But the pilot had put his headset back on and the gratitude was lost in the engine noise. Lilly turned to look over her shoulder at Miley and found that the girl was awake, most likely jolted out of her slumber by Lilly's poor flying abilities, and was smiling at her. A big, toothy grin that lit up her eyes and made Lilly's heart skip a beat. "Good job!" she mouthed as she held up her thumb, silently congratulating Lilly. Lilly grinned back and mouthed "Thanks," but the drone of the engine prevented any further communication and things went back to Lilly staring out the window at the ocean of trees and lakes. The burning in her eyes did not come back, but memories did. Unwanted memories that she wished didn't exist.

She was brought back to being a little girl, watching as her parents fought and screamed, hearing their words of distrust and hate. The accusations, the lying, the divorce. Lilly hadn't understood at the time and her 8 year-old self could only curl up into the corner of her room and cry as her family was torn apart. She could still feel the fear and powerlessness she had felt back then.

Her mind was brought back to only a few months ago, when she once again felt the helplessness of being a minor stuck between two warring adults. Only this time she knew exactly what was going on, yet the fear was still just as great. The court had left her with her mother except for summers and what the judge called "visitation rights." So formal. Why not just call it her dad ruining her life. Lilly hated judges just as much as she hated lawyers. Judges that leaned over the bench and asked Lilly if she understood where she was to live and why. Judges with the caring look that meant nothing as lawyers said legal phrases that meant nothing.

In the summer Lilly would live with her father. During the school year she would live with her mother. That's what the judge had said after looking at the papers on his desk and listening to the lawyers jabber away.

Suddenly the plane lurched slightly to the right and Lilly looked at the pilot. He was rubbing his shoulder again and there was the sudden smell of body gas in the plane. Lilly turned away to avoid embarrassing the pilot, who was obviously in some discomfort. Must have stomach troubles.

So this summer, this first summer when she was supposed to have "visitation rights" with her father, Lilly was heading north. This was all unfair, and if it weren't for this new custody battle her dad had decided to initiate, she would still be in Malibu, spending her summer surfing and lying on the beach next to Miley. But instead, she was on her way to Alaska. Her dad was some sort of electrical engineer-slash-sales person who was being promoted to branch manager. Apparently he was very personable and who the company trusted most to nurse along and expand their new branch in the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska. Lilly had a feeling that he wanted a daughter around to appear more friendly and trustworthy. Lies. But she was still riding up with Miley from a connecting flight in Seattle with some drilling equipment needed in the area – it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing – that had to be specially made in the city, riding in the bush plane with the pilot named James or Jake or something who had turned out to be an all right guy, letting her fly and all.

Except for the smell. Now there was a constant odor, and Lilly took another look at the pilot, found him rubbing the shoulder and down the arm now, the left arm, letting go more gas and wincing. Probably something he ate, Lilly thought.

Her mother had driven both her and Miley to the airport in Los Angeles, where their flight originated from. It had been a long drive in silence. Due to horrendous traffic, it was two hours of sitting in the car, staring out the window. Two hours of silence with only the feel of Miley's hand in hers as she rubbed her thumb across Lilly's knuckles in an attempt to quell her anger and soothe her frustrations. Miley. Lilly wasn't sure what she would do without her best friend, who would visit for a week before leaving her for the rest of the summer. Three long months with no contact with the rest of the world. Just the wilderness and her estranged father who had made no attempt at being a part of Lilly's life for almost ten years now.

Once, after an hour of silence, Lilly's mother turned to them and reached over the seat to bring up a paper sack. "I got something for you, for the trip."

Lilly took the sack and opened the top. Inside there was a hatchet, the kind with a steel handle and a rubber handgrip.

"I know it's not really your thing, Lilly." Her mother spoke now without looking at her. There were some farm trucks on the roads now and she had to weave through them and watch traffic. "The man at the store said you could use it. You know. In the woods with your father. Some bonding time."

Bonding time. Right. Like Lilly could ever bond with the man. As a sixteen year old girl with a hatchet. "Thanks. It's really nice." But the words sounded hollow, even to Lilly.

"Let me see," came Miley's deep soothing voice to her left. Lilly couldn't refuse her, even if she wanted to, and she handed over the hokey gift, feeling only slightly ridiculous. Miley smiled. "You're just like a boy scout," she chuckled. Then, in a whisper into her ear that made Lilly shiver with something foreign she had never felt for her best friend, "My boy scout." Lilly had blushed and turned away to look out the window, forgetting about the hatchet as she focused on the hand her best friend was holding that was suddenly tingling, and so arrived at the airport with a hatchet and strange feelings towards the girl she had called her best friend for the past 5 years.

More smell now. Bad. Lilly turned again to glance at the pilot who had both hands on his stomach and was grimacing in pain, reaching for the left shoulder again as Lilly watched.

"Don't know, kids…" The pilot's words were a hiss, barely audible. "Bad aches here. Bad aches. Thought it was something I ate but…"

He stopped as a fresh spasm of pain hit him, even Lily would see how bad it was – the pain drove the pilot back into the seat, back and down.

"I've never had anything like this…"

The pilot reached for the switch on his mike cord, his hand coming up in a small arc from his stomach, and he flipped the switch and said, "This is flight four six…"

And now a jolt took him like a hammer blow, so forcefully that he seemed to crush back into the seat, and Lilly reached for him, could not understand at first what it was, could not know.

And then she knew.

Lilly knew. The pilot's mouth went rigid; he swore and jerked a short series of slams into the seat, holding his shoulder now. Swore and hissed, "Chest! Oh God, my chest is coming apart!"

Lilly knew now.

The pilot was having a heart attack. Lilly had been in the shopping mall with Miley once when a man in front of them had suffered a heart attack. He had gone down and screamed about his chest. An old man. Much older than the pilot.

Lilly knew. Miley must know as well, as she faintly heard Miley scream her name from behind her.

The pilot was having a heart attack and even as the knowledge came to Lilly she saw the pilot slam into the seat one more time, one more awful time he slammed back into the seat and his right leg jerked, pulling the plane to the side in a sudden twist and his head fell forward and spit came. Spit came from the corners of his mouth and his legs contracted up, up into the seat, and his eyes rolled back in his head until there was only white.

Only white for his eyes and the smell became worse, filled the cockpit, and all of it so fast, so incredibly fast that Lilly's mind could not take it in at first. Could only see it in stages as she was dimly aware of Miley's screams in the background.

The pilot had been talking, just a moment ago complaining of the pain. He had been talking!

Then the jolts had come, and now there was a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming roar of the engine as both Lilly and Miley realized they were alone. Lilly was blank.

She was closed off. Her mind was void. She could not think past what she saw, what she felt. All was vacant. The very core of her, the very center of Lilly Truscott was stopped and stricken with a flash of horror. A terror so intense that her breathing, her thinking, and nearly her heart had stopped.

Stopped.

Seconds passed, seconds that became all of her life, and she began to know, began to understand, what she was seeing. And that was worse, so much worse, that she wanted to make her mind freeze again.

She was sitting in a bush plane with her terrified best friend, roaring six to seven thousand feet above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack and who was most likely dead or in something close to a coma and completely incapacitated. With no one to fly the plane.

The two of them were alone in the roaring plane. With no pilot, they were alone.

Questions, comments, or concerns? I'd say this chapter was 50/50 me and Gary Paulsen. I tried to rewrite as much as I could, but kept all the dialogue and scenarios intact. So what do you guys think? Is this intriguing enough for your avid reading minds?