Post by Rosa on Sept 6, 2006 9:46:57 GMT -5
Chapter 1
It was Autumn of 2007 and I was riding on a passenger jet airliner headed for Australia to visit my pen pal for a vacation. I was looking forward to seeing Australia for my first time, but felt a twinge of sadness as the plane plunged through a fantasy world of clouds. I wanted more than anything in the world to have my sister, Lydia, who was two years younger than me sitting by my side as it had been on any other trip that we had ever been on. But this time I was going alone and I had to leave her behind in Hollister, Missouri at the College of the Ozarks where she was going to do her schooling for pre vet. She was 18 and had already finished her Associate of Arts Degree at North Arkansas College of Harrison, which was about 12 miles away from our home in the edge of Newton County. We had graduated together with Associate of Arts degrees in the spring but now that she had transferred to College of the Ozarks, there was a terrible ache following me around wherever I went. I thought that perhaps taking a trip to Australia would help, but now here it was again. I was lonely, troubled, and restless. We had grown up together and formed a friendship that was more intricate than any tapestry and it was the first time that either of us had been separated for more than a few days at a time. Nothing was going to be the same anymore. She was going to college to be a vet and she had a serious boy friend so I knew that the day she left for college in Missouri, we would never live together again.
I leaned my forehead against the glass of the window and watched the sky and clouds smear together in a kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns. I envied my sister for knowing exactly what she wanted and where she was going in life. I stopped in college with just the Associate of Arts degree because I could never figure out what to do. I loved artwork, music, and writing, but had been told that I couldn’t make a living on doing artwork alone or even music, or writing and that those fields would never pay very well unless I became famous somehow, which no one could depend on. Now if I would transfer to a big college or university, I could maybe get a doctors degree in music and then there would be many good job opportunities and I could do my artwork and writing on the side. But I didn’t want to go to any huge colleges or universities. I wanted to stay home and write and illustrate books and publish them. I had a few cleaning jobs that paid twelve dollars and hour and I had recently begun teaching violin and piano to about thirteen different students and was paid about seven dollars for each half hour lesson. Even though I was twenty, my parents didn’t mind that I was still living with them and told me that I could stay there forever, but I knew that someday I would need to learn to get along on my own.
Alone. The word brought tears to my eyes and my throat began to ache. Here I was now, alone on the biggest adventure of my life with no one to share anything with. If only I could just close my eyes and open them again to find myself there in Australia and never have to endure the long flight there. I had thought about striking up a friendly conversation with the woman that sat in the seat next to me, but her face looked so cold and forbidding that I only found myself concentrating on keeping as much distance between us as possible. It seemed to be what the woman wanted anyway. I leaned my head against the seat and kept my face turned to the window so that no one could see the occasional silent tears that escaped from my burning eyes. I fell asleep that way and dreamed of my home back in the rolling hills of northern Arkansas.
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I awoke with a start at hearing the screams of people in panic. The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was the sky through the window. It was dark and muddy with an ugly mixture of blacks, browns, and grays. Lightening blinked and cast a spooky red glow among the clouds. It looked like the sky above Mordor in the third movie of the Lord of the Rings and I began to shiver in fright. I looked around to see that there was chaos among the passengers. Attendants were trying to calm them, but it did no good. As I stared into the confusion, I learned that there was more to the people’s panic than the storm. We were being hijacked. There was a fight going on up at the front of the plane, but I couldn’t see what was going on for all the people in the way. The plane began to lurch crazily from side to side as the elements threatened to pull it out of control. I pulled the cell phone from the pocket of my jacket and with shaking fingers began to dial my parent’s number, paying no heed to the no service signal. But then suddenly the plane jerked so violently that it threw me out of my chair and sent me sprawling onto the floor in between my seat and the seats in front of me. The cell phone slipped from my hand and slid out of my reach into the center isle. I tried to crawl forward to it, but upon doing so, I accidentally kicked a backpack that was on the floor. Someone pulled me up by the hood of my jacket and shoved me back onto the seat. Alarmed, I looked up into the hard faced woman that had been sitting next to me throughout the plane ride. She grabbed my shirt near my throat and brought her face so close to mine that I could smell her stale breath as she shouted a string of filthy language at me. Then she leaped to her feet and disappeared into the crowded front of the plane. It dawned on me as I watched her go that she was on the side of the hijackers. The sheer wickedness that gleamed in her eyes had told it all.
I remained sprawled on the seat and clung to the sides for dear life as the plane tipped crazily from side to side dipping and weaving with more wild twists and turns than any roller coaster I had ever ridden. I heard gunshots going off and I wondered how anyone had managed to get past the security guards and aboard the plane with such weapons. A bullet suddenly shattered through the window near me and I threw my hands over my head for protection. Upon doing so, I fell off of the seat again. The plane was tilting downward at a sharp angle and I knew that we would crash in a matter of seconds. We would drown in the ocean, I knew because we had been flying over the huge expanse when I fell asleep and it was too soon for us to have reached Australia. The idea of being trapped inside the plane panicked me and in desperation, I swung my backpack against the window where the bullet had weakened the glass. I beat at the glass with all my strength and it began to fall away in shards and a sudden blast of wind broke the open space.
In the next instant, the plane hit the ocean and water poured in so fast that all I could hear was a magnificent roar as my body was slammed forward into something hard, then it felt as if something were dragging me face down against a rough surface which I figured was the plane floor. I jolted to a stop as my head hit something, causing stars to explode before my eyes. Somehow, I remembered to open my eyes and through the confused blur of water, I saw the broken window to my right. I swam forward and pushed myself through the opening, too desperate to get to the surface for air to notice how the glass sliced at the flesh of my hands and arms. I swam up and up and up, but couldn’t seem to find the surface. My lungs were throbbing and I struggled in panic. Dark spots were forming before my eyes before I finally broke through the water and sucked in the air so fast that I choked violently.
I swam through the choppy water, sometimes pushing with all my strength and sometimes only slowly moving my arms and legs just enough to keep myself floating. I had no idea where I was going, but I was convinced that as long as there was life, there was hope.
It seemed that I had been out there in the choppy water for hours on end, but at one point, I caught hold of something that kept me afloat—something from the shambles of the plane I thought at first, but my piece of flotsam proved to be alive and moved through the water. I was clinging to a dolphin and soon they had me surrounded, chirping excitedly and nudging me from time to time with their bottle shaped noses. I don’t remember feeling fear, but rather, relief. I had read a story once called “The Music of the Dolphins” that was about a girl who had lived with dolphins for part of her life. It was a fiction story, but still powerful enough to cause me to be fascinated with the dolphin world and have very little fear of them. As a result, I clung to one of them for what seemed to be a very long time before my feet touched solid ground beneath the water. I released the dolphin and stumbled forward. The forceful waves shoved me roughly onto shore and from there I crawled forward until my body was completely free of the water.
*full of mistakes, I know, but will fix later. For now I just want to get the ideas out*
I am very small and petite. Being small boned makes me more lightweight also, making me weigh around 100 lbs. I have narrow shoulders and my height is 5'2". Thanks for pointing that out about how fitting through a plane window wouldn't be very believable if I didn't put a little more information on the main character's build. 
I've never been on a big jet plane before so that explains my ignorance. 
The only plane I've ever rode in is a little plane that's the same size as the one that Karl and David Scott (dinotopia movie) were flying in.