Just Deserts (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

“
GET UP
.”

“What?” I mumbled. My eyes popped open. Captain Evans was standing over me.

“Get up, we're here.”

“We're in New York?”

“We've arrived at our destination,” he replied.

“Oh … good … I must have fallen asleep.”

“Fallen asleep inside a vodka bottle,” he said, holding up the half-empty container.

“I don't think I like your attitude,” I mumbled.

“Well I
know
I don't like yours.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Do you like your job?” I snapped. “I could fire you.”

He snorted. “Your father
could
fire me. But
would
is a whole different word and a different world. Sort of like you
could
have become such an outstanding young man instead of such a major disappointment.”

“I'm so sorry I disappointed you,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words.

“It's not me I'm talking about, it's your father. What a disappointment you've been to him.”

I was stunned into silence.

“I remember the first time he brought you aboard the plane. You weren't more than a few months old. He couldn't stop talking about you, held you in his arms the whole flight. He just went on and on about the hopes and dreams he had for you.” Captain Evans paused. “And none of them involved your being a sixteen-year-old drunk.”

“I'm not a drunk!” I snapped.

“And I'm not a pilot,” he said, and started to laugh.

“You think this is a joke? Wait until I tell my father what you said.”

“I'm pretty certain I'll be talking to him long before you do,” he said.

“It doesn't matter who speaks to him first, or what you tell him you said or didn't say. You can't lie your way out of this.”

“I'm not the liar here. I'll tell him exactly what I've said—not that I haven't told him the same things about you before. But really, if our stories are different, who do you think he's going to believe, you or me?”

I wanted to say me, but even
I
didn't really believe that.

“Name
one
person who trusts you to tell the truth!” he said.

I searched my mind, trying to come up with somebody, and I couldn't. I had the urge to make someone up, just throw out a name, but I couldn't even come up with a make-believe person.

“They say love is blind, and your father has been so blind for so long. I'm just glad his eyes have finally been opened, and he's going to do what he should have done long ago.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“You know,” I said, “it doesn't matter who he believes or what he believes. He only has one son and there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of pilots in the world. You're nothing but a glorified taxi driver.”

“Even if I was a real taxi driver, that would still put me a couple of notches above you on the food chain. Now, get off
my
plane.”

“It's not your plane, it's
my
father's.”

“He owns it, but I'm the captain, which according to international law means it's my plane, as long as there are still passengers on board.”

I jumped to my feet, and my legs almost buckled. I'd been sitting too long … or drinking too much. I regained my balance and brushed past Captain Evans and toward the gangway.

It was brilliantly bright outside and I held my hand up to protect my eyes from the blazing sunlight. I grabbed onto the railing and started down the stairs.
It was incredibly hot—was New York having a heat wave?

I looked up through the glaring light and couldn't believe what I saw—or rather, what I
didn't
see. There were no buildings in the background, or airport terminals, or other planes, or even a runway underneath me. It was dirt and scrub bush and nothing, absolutely nothing else in sight in any direction. What was going on here? Where was I? Stunned, dazed and drunk, I tumbled down the last few steps and landed at the bottom with a painful thud! I scrambled around in the dirt and, spinning and struggling, got back to my feet.

Captain Evans and the co-pilot were standing at the top of the gangway, both of them grinning.

“I know this isn't New York, but where is it?”

“You're in Tunisia.”

“Tunisia … that's … that's … where exactly?”

“It's sad to see that even the most privileged education didn't teach you anything about geography. I guess you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it learn. This is northern Africa.”

“But why am I here?”

“Because this is your destination. This is where you need to be.”

He tossed down a backpack and I caught it, almost knocked over by the weight and momentum of it.

“What is this?”

“What you'll need to survive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There's a note in the bag from your father. It'll explain everything.”

They started to pull the gangway up!

“What are you doing?” I screamed, clawing at the doorway, unable to stop it from rising.

“Wait! Wait!” I screamed, but the gangway tightly closed into the body of the plane.

This was insane, completely insane! I ran toward the front of the plane, toward the cockpit. I saw Captain Evans through the glass.

He opened up a small side window.

“You can't do this!” I screamed.

“Apparently I can.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” I yelled.

“The note is in your pack. Read it.”

“You can't just drop me off in the middle of … in the middle of nowhere.”

“It's not nowhere,” he said. “It's Tunisia, the desert.” “You can't drop me off in the desert!”

“If I had my way, I would have dropped you off from ten thousand feet
above
the desert, without a parachute!”

“You're insane if you think my father is going to let you get away with this!”

He laughed. “Who do you think thought of this? Who do you think had all this arranged?”

“My father,” I mumbled. “But why would he do that?”

“Read the letter,” Captain Evans said once more, gesturing behind me.

I looked back. The pack was lying in the dirt where I'd dropped it.

“I'd treat it with more respect than you usually show to people or things,” he said. “Your life depends on that pack.”

“My life.”

I looked all around. Other than the plane, there was only sand and shrubs and rocks, and nothing … absolutely nothing else. I suddenly realized that this was life and death.

“You can't just leave me out here with nothing!”

“You have a backpack.”

“You can't leave me with nothing but a backpack!”

“Oh … maybe you're right … hang on.”

He disappeared from view for a second and then returned. He reached an arm through the window.

“Here,” he said and tossed something at me. I caught it. It was an orange! Why would he toss me an orange?

“Eat it, jump up and down a few times, and all that vodka you've already drunk will mix together. I've heard that orange juice and vodka make a nice drink.”

He began to push the window shut. I reared back
and threw the orange, and it bounced off the window.

He opened the window a bit more. “Good arm. Shame the rest of you doesn't measure up.”

He slammed the window shut. Almost instantly the engines started up, and I was swallowed up by the roar. I was so close to it that I could feel the intake of air. I scrambled out of the way as the plane started forward, the tip of the wing passing just over my head.

The plane taxied down the runway. It wasn't really a runway. It was nothing but a flat, hard patch of dirt. I had the strangest urge to run after it, as if that made any sense. It continued to roll along, kicking up a trail of dust in its wake. Then it stopped and made a little turn so that it was coming back through the little dust storm it had created. It was rolling toward me. Maybe I could still stop it.

I walked right into the middle of the runway until I was standing between the two big sets of tire tracks the plane had made when it landed. If Captain Evans was going to take off, he was going to have to run me over. Leaving me was one thing, killing me might be another.

The plane kept coming, the space between us closing quickly as it gained speed. It got bigger and bigger and bigger until the sound of the engines was overwhelming. I tried to stand as tall as I could. I
reached my hands above my head to look even bigger— No wait, that was what you did in the event of a bear attack. Either way, though, it would make me more visible. He did see me, didn't he?

“He's going to slow down,” I said, under my breath. “He's going to stop.”

He was picking up speed and he was aiming straight for me! Now he was almost on top of me, and he probably couldn't have stopped even if he'd wanted to. He was going to hit me!

My mind froze as I tried to figure out if I should go left or right, and I realized that there wasn't time to go either way! I dropped to the ground as the fuselage brushed by me. I was engulfed by a roar of sound, a rush of air blowing back my hair and then a hail of sand and gravel pummelling my face and hands.

I turned around and watched as the plane quickly gained elevation. It continued to climb, getting higher and higher and becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, until I could barely see it at all, and then … then, it was gone.

I was lying on my belly, covered with dirt, in the middle of a makeshift runway, alone, in the middle of nowhere. No, worse, alone in a
desert
in the middle of nowhere.

I had only two thoughts: what now, and why hadn't I brought that half-full bottle of vodka with me?

CHAPTER FIVE

I GOT TO MY FEET
and brushed myself off. I was covered with sand and dirt and little gritty pieces of gravel that seemed to have settled into my lungs, eyes and hair. I shook my head and dust rained down.

Slowly I walked over to the backpack and sat down on top of it. I had to think. But think about what? I couldn't even begin to work this out because it wasn't real, wasn't possible. It was like a bad joke, or a strange dream, a nightmare. If I just pinched myself, I'd wake up. Instead I started coughing, trying to free up my lungs from the cloud of dust that I'd inhaled—and generally dreams, even alcohol-induced hazes, didn't include coughing fits.

Okay, I had to settle my thoughts down. Figure it all out. Slowly I looked around, doing a three-sixty survey of my surroundings. The makeshift runway stretched out in both directions, bordered closely on either side by high dunes. They were so high that I couldn't see over them. Who knew, maybe on the other side of one of those dunes was a hotel, or a whole city?

Maybe this was all just a bad joke my father was playing on me. He was merely trying to teach me a lesson, and in a couple of minutes somebody would drive up to get me, or maybe the plane would spin around and come pick me up. This was just a bad, misguided, cruel lesson. The only question now was how I was going to react to it, and what I was going to do to turn it all to my advantage.

There seemed to be two options. I could simply act as if I'd known about the whole thing from the very beginning. Get back on the plane or climb into the car, shake my head, and then be completely nonchalant. Upside: my pride would be salvaged. Downside: it might not work in my favour right now to appear either smug or superior.

Option two: when I did get to see my dad, I could act terribly upset, scared, nearly catatonic, unable to answer questions about what happened at school because I was so traumatized by being abandoned in the desert. I could even squeeze out a few tears, fake a little hyperventilation. Upside: I could make my father feel guilty, so guilty that he'd be the one trying to make things up to me. By taking the submissive role, I could actually get the upper hand. Ah, the art of war. All's fair in love and war … and business and family.

It was an easy choice. Besides, I
was
genuinely feeling pretty scared. All I needed now was for a
plane or a jeep to appear. It was just a matter of time, I was sure. Minutes, maybe an hour at most. Okay, a couple of hours might not be out of the question, but that was the upper range.

Speaking of which, if the plane was returning, then sitting in the middle of the landing strip was probably not the best place to be. I grabbed the bag. It had some heft to it. I wondered what was inside. That might be a good way to pass the time. Some food might be in there. I was suddenly feeling hungry and thirsty. Sitting out in the open with the sun beating down, bouncing off the dunes, I felt as if I were under some sort of gigantic magnifying glass. I looked around for some shade. That didn't seem to be an option.

I was surrounded by sand dunes and a few little shrubs, their faded green the only relief from the relentless brown. It was like being at a very, very wide beach resort, without the resort, the cabanas or the poolside drink service. It was overwhelmingly dull, devoid of colour—except for one little burst of orange, the orange that I'd tossed at the plane. It was still sitting where it had fallen, at the edge of the runway. I hoped I'd at least squirted a little juice on the pilot's windscreen.

I threw the pack onto my arm and over my back, and started to walk. The sand underneath my feet was solid, which of course made sense since Captain Evans
had landed a jet here. The treads of the tires were clearly visible, but the plane hadn't sunk in very far.

I bent down to pick up the orange. It seemed to have survived its impact with the glass and its subse-quent plummet to the ground. I hadn't had breakfast yet, and while fruit was not high on my list, it was possibly my
only
option right now—unless there was something to eat in the pack. Or something to drink.