"So, Cory, do you happen to know anything about this hotshot NTSB lead investigator?"
"I know of her," Cory Baxter replied as he drove Miley Stewart from her family house in Malibu back to Los Angeles International Airport, and the crash site of Cash Airlines Flight 4892. "Her name's Evans or something like that. Rumor has it that she was either once a wannabe actress, or she was already a small-time Broadway player before suddenly deciding that she actually wanted to know why planes went down and stuff like that. I'm not really sure about that, though? Have you heard of an actress named Evans who suddenly went out of the limelight?"
"A few people come to mind," Miley replied. "But I'm pretty sure that none of them are the one we're talking about right now. Some of them are so shallow, they can't think of anything else other than themselves."
"That was a bit harsh," Cory said. "Nobody could possibly be that shallow."
"You probably haven't met some of the actresses I've met, Cory," Miley said.
"Heads up, we're here," Cory said as he drove his car onto a field that had been converted, temporarily, into a parking lot. Most of the cars in the field were generic government cars like Ford sedans and Chevy vans. Cory's purple Voodoo was a great big spot of individuality amongst the seething mass of bureaucracy around them. Cory and Miley got out of the car and began walking towards the crash site, which was cordoned off from the public with yellow tape.
This was the first time that Miley had seen the crash site in person, and deep inside her she wondered how 328 people, herself included, had managed to survive it. The Boeing 747 appeared to have struck the ground at a very shallow angle. The tail had struck the ground first, followed by the left wing. The impact appeared to have torn off both parts of the plane, and led to the front part of the plane—the one with the cockpit and the 747's distinctive hump—corkscrewing violently and shearing off the other wing. The right wing struck the fuselage, and it was what had caused most of the casualties of the crash.
"My God," Miley muttered. "How did we survive that?"
"Well, I can't really say anything about that, since the investigation has only just begun," Cory replied.
Miley scoffed and walked away from Cory and towards the crash site. There she was met by a man with very bushy eyebrows wearing a jacket with NTSB in big yellow letters on the back over his suit. "I'm looking for the lead investigator," she told him.
"And who might you be?" he asked.
"I'm the captain, er, I was the captain of this plane."
"Oh. She's over by the cockpit." He pointed at the wreckage in question, even though Miley could plainly see it.
Miley walked over to the remains of the cockpit, where a blonde-haired woman wearing an NTSB jacket over her pantsuit was watching two men, also wearing NTSB jackets, poring over the cockpit instruments. She turned around when she heard footsteps behind her and asked, "Are you Captain Stewart?"
"Yeah," Miley replied. "At least I think I am."
"Sharon Evans," the blonde said, offering her hand. Miley took it, but as they shook hands, Evans gave Miley a closer look. "Have we met before?" she asked.
"I don't think so," Miley said. "I would remember meeting someone like you, because you've got hair as blindingly blonde as my friend Lilly's."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Evans said. "I'm sure you're aware of how we investigators want to talk to survivors of plane crashes, especially the flight crew—which means you—while the memories are still fresh in your mind. I want to know about everything that went on inside the cockpit from the moment you took off from Sao Paulo to the crash. Is that okay?"
"I don't know," Miley admitted. "I was in a coma for like fourteen days. I'm not sure if I'll be able to remember anything important for your investigation."
"Anything that you can tell us counts in the long run, Captain," Evans replied. "Shall we do this?"
"All right, I guess so."
"Okay. Would you mind if we did it in that tent?" Evans pointed at a small white tent erected just a couple of yards away from the wreckage of the cockpit. Miley suspected that the investigators used it as an office of some kind or other.
"Not at all," she said, and Evans led her inside. There were some tables and folding metal chairs inside the tent. Most of the tables were groaning under the weight of stacks upon stacks of paperwork, but there was also one table or two that had bits of wreckage that were considered important by the investigators, such as cockpit instruments that had been removed from the wreck and pieces of fuselage and engine. Evans cleared away some papers from a table at the very back of the tent, and she indicated to Miley to sit down on the chair in front of it.
"All right, captain, would you mind if we started from the very beginning?" Evans asked. When Miley shook her head, she continued, "Can you describe to me the takeoff?"
"We took off sometime after midnight," Miley said. "There was a small delay—not too much, just maybe three to five minutes—because the flight engineer that was supposed to be with us went down with some kind of disease that meant that we had to find another engineer."
"I see," Evans said, nodding her head as she began writing down notes. "What about this replacement flight engineer? How did you take to him?"
"Who, Sonny? I've worked with her on a couple dozen flights already. She knows her stuff. I actually think that she deserves at least one more stripe on her shoulders, but my mouth's just run off again. We're still talking about the crash, right?"
"Don't worry about that, Captain Stewart," Evans muttered, writing down more notes. "Now, how was the takeoff itself? Did you notice anything odd with your aircraft during takeoff or something along those lines?"
"I didn't notice anything odd, no," Miley replied, shaking her head. "Although to be honest, I don't remember much of what had happened then, because it seemed like just any other takeoff I've done. Well, sure, there was this one thing, but it wasn't even related to this."
"And what was that?"
"It's actually nothing, just something that popped up in our minds while we were waiting for the guys ahead of us to take off. It was a Varig 737 ahead of us, and then one of us had this crazy idea that if we were to somehow accidentally run over those guys, there would be little if anything left of them. Like I said, it was a crazy thought, but nothing related to the, uh, accident itself."
"Mm-hmm," Evans muttered, pen streaking long lines down the paper. "What about the flight itself?"
"You should probably ask the relief crew about that," Miley said. "They were the ones that flew the plane for the majority of the flight. Me, Alex and Sonny were only for the takeoff and landings since it was midnight when we took off."
"I see." Evans finally stopped writing and put down her pen and papers. "What about the landing?"
"What about the landing?" Miley repeated. "Well, to put a word on it, it was screwed up. First, there was a lot of shit going on in LAX, and the tower said that it could be down to anything from a riot to an earthquake. You know how California is. But we didn't mind that. We've all had our fair share of unexpected delays, and we thought that it was just gonna be one of those days.
"Things started to fall apart when this rainstorm came in over LAX and about an hour after we got into the holding pattern. When we entered the pattern, we were told that we were number fifteen to land. But then some other controller, not the first guy we talked to, came on and said that we had been bumped to number sixteen. We weren't pleased with that. I wasn't pleased with it. I was considering faking an emergency to get priority but then suddenly Sonny told us that our fuel was getting low. But then she also told us that the instruments were telling her that we had less fuel than we should, so then it was either we didn't have enough fuel, or the fuel gauges were malfunctioning. Either way, we got an actual emergency just as I was thinking about faking one."
"Wait a minute," Evans said, raising her hand. "You were saying that your flight engineer told you that you didn't have enough fuel, or did she say that your instruments were not working properly?"
"She said both, actually," Miley said. "First, Sonny said that we didn't have enough fuel. Then she did some maths and determined that it had to be the instruments that were faulty because they were saying that we only had ten minutes of fuel left when we should still have fifteen to twenty minutes. It's very confusing, really."
"I'll take your word for it, Captain," Evans said. "What happened just as you were about to land, captain? It looked like you were just about to make the runway before you crashed? Any explanation or thoughts about that?"
"I think it's strange, but not unexplainable-strange, if you know what I mean," Miley replied. "But there was something then that I still can't stop thinking about even until now. Just before we crashed, the engines all went quiet. That would mean that we really didn't have enough fuel to make it. But then even though we didn't have any fuel left, we should have been able to glide to the runway without any problem. Why did we end up crashing? I'm sorry if I sound like I'm rambling, but I really just can't get my mind off of those things."
"Interesting," the investigator muttered, writing furiously on her notebook once again. "Thank you for all of your answers, Captain Stewart. That will be all for now, but we will be wanting to talk to you once again in the next few days. I recommend not going out of town for the next few days, captain." Evans then shook Miley's hand, and then she led her out of the tent and back to the parking lot beside the crash site.
"So, how did it go?" Cory asked her as she walked back to where he had parked his car.
"Honestly?" Miley replied. "I don't know what to think or what to say."
"Well, what is there to say anyway?" Cory asked rhetorically. "She asked you questions, and you answered them. You did answer them, right?"
Miley shrugged off Cory's dig as they walked back to his car. As she got in, she said," You know, I think I have heard of Sharon Evans before, but last time I sort of met her, her name was Sharpay, not Sharon. Probably a stage name, and then when she went to the NTSB she decided to use her real name. I don't know for sure, though."
"I thought you would recognize her when you met her," Cory said as he drove out of the field-turned-parking lot. "Oh, and Beck's funeral is on Friday afternoon. Are you gonna come?"
"I don't know, Cory, I haven't decided yet," Miley admitted.
"Well, you should. It's probably the best thing that you can do for him now. Also, Alex and her brother are coming to Beck's funeral, and I'm going to pick them up from the hospital because that's also when Alex will finally be discharged. I know you don't got any wheels at the moment, so if you change your mind and want to come, you may want to carpool with us."
"I'll keep that in mind," Miley said. But deep inside, she knew that she would probably never be able to summon the courage to go to Beck Oliver's funeral. Not after what had happened to them all those days ago in Brazil, back when their biggest problem was bringing home hundreds of disappointed American soccer fans. And she also dreaded the possibility of meeting with Jade, Beck's girlfriend and practically common-law wife. Miley didn't even know if she had a face to show at the funeral.
The thoughts raced quickly through her mind, and she didn't know what to think of the various strands of thought drifting through her consciousness at that moment.
A/N: As always, dear readers, leave a review, a like or a favourite whether you like my story or not! - GR