“If you’re not planning to use it, give it to me,” I tell him, rubbing my bare arms. Time and temperature seem to become irrelevant the second you get on a plane: It could be a perfect summer morning outside, but they’ll turn off the lights at random and turn the air-conditioning up to full blast until it feels closer to winter. “It’s way too cold in here.”

I expect him to refuse, just to annoy me, or to chuck the blanket at my face. But he rolls his eyes and drapes it over my legs.

“Have fun covering yourself with bacteria,” he says, already slathering his fingers with copious amounts of hand sanitizer.

“Have fun freezing,” I return under my breath, just quiet enough for him to miss it.

The plane soon jerks into motion—slowly at first, then building speed, the engines humming, the strange flaps on the wings opening up. All the trays and windows go up, the seats adjusted. A baby starts giggling at the jolting movement, at the same time that another baby in the first row starts bawling.

I try and fail to get comfortable, tugging the blanket higher up my legs, only to become acutely, annoyingly aware of the cheap fabric against my skin. How unwashed it feels, as though I can sense the presence of all the passengers who’ve come before me and wrapped this very same blanket around their bodies.

Covered in bacteria, Cyrus’s voice says in the back of my mind, even though the real Cyrus has stopped talking. He’s staring straight ahead, both hands gripping the thoroughly sanitized armrests.

Shut up, I command the voice. Get out of my head.

Never, Cyrus’s voice replies, with the same mocking laugh I remember so well from my childhood. Now anytime I do anything remotely embarrassing, that’s the only thing I hear, the only thing I can think about. I hate it.

Him.

I inhale as the plane takes off, my stomach swooping at the sudden loss of gravity, my muscles fighting for stability that isn’t there. Maybe, if I were my nine-year-old self, I could really pretend all this away. Pretend the plane is a ship, and the abrupt dips and tremors are just rushing currents, buoying us up, and the boy beside me is already gone.

Or I could play the other game. The one about closing my eyes for as long as possible and praying that, when I open them, I’ll magically end up in the right place.

CHAPTER FIVE

I wake up to the world falling.