Scratch

Chapter 1: The Crash

LUCA:
        I hate this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I mean, my mom thinks I’ll forgive her for marrying that new guy from her work, after my dad died, if she pays a couple thousand dollars for me to go on a dumb trip across the world to explore a jungle in Peru? Yeah, it’s kinda cool but I wouldn’t let her know that, and money definitely won’t buy me back, no matter how much she spends. At least she could have gotten one of my friends to come with or something, because right now I’m stuck on this private jet with the guy from Mom’s work’s (I REFUSE to call him my dad – or even my step dad) friends daughter… named Purple. I don’t even know her, I mean I met her at the marriage about 3 weeks or a month ago, but I haven’t seen or talked to her since. I guess I sort of feel like the marriage won’t be permanent, so what’s the point in becoming friends with this random girl? She keeps trying to talk to me on this plane, maybe because we both are 14, but the first time she tried I pulled up the hood on my black sweatshirt and sort of turned away from her. Now I’m trying to ignore her but it’s like and robotic chipmunk just chattering away right in my ear. Even the annoying younger girls at my school thing aren’t this annoying, and that is definitely saying something. Maybe I’ll pretend to go to sleep just to get her to shut up.

PURPLE:
    This trip is so awesome! I can’t believe Robbie, my dad’s friend, got married! I am so excited for him, and now he has a son, so maybe we can become friends! His kid, Luca, is my age but he’s really weird. He goes to an expensive private school because his family’s rich or something, but he never talks. All he does is shut himself in his room all day, and wear all black clothes, according to Robbie. That kid freaks me out, but I’m sure this trip will make him much more likable. Anyways, Robbie is so much happier now that the marriage happened! His old wife was… well I didn’t like her. Robbie and his new wife Carol were so generous and nice to offer me this trip to Peru. It was awesome! I can’t wait until we get there! Even Luca won’t be able to ruin this for me!

LUCA:
    Purple… I’ll never get used to that name. Anyways, Purple finally shut up and moved to another isle in this plane. It’s weird because the plane had a couple of rows of seats, but it’s empty except for me and Purple, and our bags which we just dumped on the seats behind us. I laid across the two seats in my row and closed my eyes. I had my iPod on and my head was nodding my head back and forth a bit to the music of The Black Lips. After about half an hour I turned off my iPod and noticed it was kind of quiet. After closing up my bag, with my iPod in it, I looked around to see what Purple was doing. I couldn’t see her anywhere so I guessed she was in the bathroom. That’s when I smelled something a bit funny. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was smelling, but it smelled a little like smoke. I quickly dismissed the idea, because there could never be a fire in an airplane - and a private jet at that… right?

    I decided to get up and stretch my legs a little bit. First I went to the back of the plane where the bathrooms were to see if Purple was in one of them. When I saw that one of them was locked, I assumed that was the one she was in. The smell of smoke seemed stronger, but I thought it must have just been my imagination. I brushed my hair out of my eyes and tried to flatten it down a little, then peeked through the curtain to the little kitchen type place in the very back of the plane, expecting to see one of those hot stewardesses. The smell got much stronger at that point, but nobody was there. Slightly disappointed, I walked to the front of the plane and knocked on the door to where the pilots were. Just as I was about to knock again, the door opened and the stewardess brushed pass me and walked to where I had just left. I looked inside the room and was instantly amazing. The pilots were surrounded by millions of little buttons and knobs, and both were concentrating hard on flying the plane. Trying not to disturb them, I quietly shut the door and returned to my seat. Hopefully the flight wouldn’t be too much longer.

PURPLE:
    I gave up trying to talk to Luca because he was just ignoring me and it was a waste of time. I didn’t want to break my promise to Carol to become friends with Luca (apparently he doesn have many, though I can see why), but he was just being dumb. Anyways, for about half and hour I squirmed around my seat, reading and whatnot. Finally I was about to die of boredom so I went to the bathroom as an excuse to walk around the jet. When I got into the tiny bathroom I smelled this odd smell. Well, odd for being in an airplane. And it wasn’t a gross bathroom smell, though thinking back that smelled pretty bad as well. What I smelled was smoke. On a plane. I know, weird right? Well I assumed the people working on the plane had it all under control, but when I exited the lavatory, the smell was much stronger, and I swear I could see little wisps of smoke coming through the curtain leading into the stewardess place.

I ran back to where Luca was sitting. “THE PLANE’S ON FIRE!” I screamed to him, and ran up to where the pilots were, screaming the whole way even though Luca and I were the only passengers there. There was definitely more smoke, and as I ran it seemed a bit hazy. I could feel the plane shake as I screamed at the pilots, scaring them. They quickly straightened the plane, coughing from the smoke. I was coughing too, and I could hear Luca farther back in the plane. “Try and get as low to the ground as your can – away from the smoke,” one of the pilots instructed me, in a reassuring voice. I calmed down a bit and relayed the information to Luca. There was no sign of the stewardess. We curled up in the aisle next to each other.

Silence, except for the occasional cough from one of us.

I started to cry. “What if we don’t live, and the plane crashes and, and…” I sniffled, not being able to finish the sentence. A fresh load of salty tears came pouring out of my eyes. Embarresed, I tried to wipe them away, but they kept coming back. Luca hesitated, them put his arm around my back, pulling me closer to him. I rested my head against his sweater as he whispered, “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll be fine. The pilots will get the plane safely to someplace where we can get help, and we’ll go back home. It’ll be fine, don’t worry. Okay?” I nodded, but I think he could tell that I was still pretty worried. He hugged me tighter. It felt a little out of place because I’ve never really talked to him, and here we were in a burning plane and he was hugging me.

It started to get really hot after a couple minutes. I thought it was just me blushing, but I could see beads of sweat rolling down Luca’s neck. The plane was definitely on fire. Suddenly Luca got up. “What are you doing?” I asked, a little startled. He ignored me, as per usual. You could say I was getting used to it, but… whatever.