UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 243
SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE OCEAN
Tuesday, June 8
12:34 A.M.
Massie carefully lifted her purple satin Diva at Rest eye mask to peek at the ah-noyingly perky flight attendant tiptoeing through the aisle of the plane, passing out blankets and pillows to the passengers. The petite blonde had been on Massie's nerves ever since they had boarded their flight fourteen hours earlier. Announcing chirpily that her name was Nat, she had proceeded to flirt with each of the boys in their group, backing away quickly from Landon when she saw Massie's eyes shooting daggers at her. As Nat neared their seats, Massie hurriedly resumed her faux-sleep in an effort to avoid contact.
Even with her eyes covered, Massie knew where everyone was. The girls had originally sat next to their crushes, and it had been fun for the first few hours. But the girls soon realized that it was completely exhausting to be charming for such a long period of time! Massie's lip gloss began to fade, Kristen's hair began to frizz, Alicia had to pee, Dylan was running out of jokes and Claire was starting to bite her nails. Massie had quickly called for a seat-swap, and soon the boys were snickering over some dumb movie while the girls gave each other vacation beauty tips. They would have plenty of time to be with the boys once they landed.
Now Massie was surrounded by her sleeping friends, too paranoid that Landon, whose seat was diagonally behind hers, would see her do something totally embarrassing in her sleep, like drool or snore.
Not that I snore! Massie thought indignantly. But puh-lease, like I'm going to take that chance!
Instead of sleeping, Massie reclined in her seat and thought giddily about their coming adventures and beach time, pointedly ignoring the fact that the chaperones, who were sitting several rows ahead of them, would be accompanying them on every outing.
Hmmmm...Massie mused. We'll have to see what we can do about that...
Though she didn't know it, Massie wasn't the only one awake. Two seats away, Claire was faking sleep as well, afraid that if she opened her eyes, she wouldn't be able to stop looking nervously at Cam, like she had been doing for the past hour. The flight had started out great; she and Cam had shared a bag of gummies and looked excitedly out the window. But after the first hour, Cam had stopped laughing so sweetly at all of her stories. He seemed distracted and brooding, and Claire didn't know what went wrong. Now, as she pretended to snooze, she wished she could ask Massie for advice. But Massie, like everyone else, was fast asleep.
Claire sighed. Why was Cam making this so hard? Maybe I'm just imagining things, she thought. He's probably just trying to act cool in front of the other guys...But Cam was never afraid to be seen with her. Something's not quite right...Claire thought worriedly.