Leaving the city alongside my parents now that I knew as much as I did about their lives and what my family was really responsible for made me feel funny. Which was kind of odd, when I thought about it. Why should spending time with them outside of the city be any different than spending time with them inside it? Was it just because taking a private plane to stay in another state for vacation really helped hammer home just how much their secret business affected us? Was it easier for me to set those feelings aside when I could just leave the house and go do my own thing? That had to be part of it. The fact that we were about to go see the tournament that I had wanted to visit in person for so long should have made me happy. And, in a way, it did. I just couldn't entirely shake the feelings of guilt and uncertainty surrounding the whole situation.
But I had to push all that out of my mind. I couldn't keep thinking about the fact that we were only able to take this trip like this because of all the criminal things my family was responsible for. And I couldn't think about the fact that this whole trip was only happening in the first place because of everything that had happened over the past few weeks. My parents wanted to get out of town and spend some time with us because they had been incapacitated for so long specifically due to their secret lives.
So yeah, I couldn't think about that too much. Because if I did, both my mom and dad would've noticed that I wasn't as excited as I should've been. And that might make them start asking questions. Which was the last thing I needed right now. I had to push those thoughts out of my mind and just accept this trip the way I would’ve before I knew any of that other stuff. I had to pretend it was all fine.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, it wasn't exactly hard to pretend to be excited. It wasn't all pretending. I really did love this tournament to an absurd degree. It was amazing to watch on our big screen, and I could hardly even imagine how awesome it would be to actually be there in person to watch.
My parents knew just how much I loved those games, how much I had always wanted to see them. So, I may have turned the excitement up a notch to make sure they didn't think anything was wrong. As we reached the private airfield where the plane was waiting, I bounced out of the car and did a cartwheel. Then I did another one, that time a bit too quickly, and ended up falling over into a pile of old leaves and weeds that had been stacked up next to the curb.
“Oh good,” Simon murmured while going around to the front of the limo, “They were clean for all of five minutes, so they had to go jump into the nearest pile of dirt just before we get on the plane. Now we can spend the entire flight sneezing and coughing. That's just so perfect.”
Spitting out a few leaves and giving my body a vigorous shake in his direction, I started to retort before blinking at the sight of what my brother was taking off the front passenger seat, next to where Jefferson had been driving. It wasn't another suitcase like the ones being taken from the trunk.
“Uhh,” I started hesitantly while raising my hand to point that way, “is that a real cat?” He was holding a white carrier with windows on the sides and bars in the front. Through which I could very clearly see a gray cat meticulously cleaning herself while watching me rather intently.
As soon as I asked that, the cat gave a very pointed meow, as though retorting that of course she was a cat, why would I even ask such a silly and pointless question. I could have sworn I even saw her eyes roll a bit. Which was just evidence that I had too much dust in my own eyes. Or maybe I was just a little too paranoid after everything.
Simon, without missing a beat, lifted the cage to squint at the animal within. “No, it's really a bird in disguise.” He adopted a hushed tone, as though sharing a very important secret with me. “Just make sure you don't tell anybody. She's in the witness relocation program under an assumed identity and we don’t want the gang to find her.” He shuddered convincingly. “The things she’s seen, you really don’t wanna know.”
Lifting my chin, I shot back, “Well if they put her in your hands, she must’ve been part of that gang. Because I can’t think of any other reason they’d punish her so much.”
Before Simon could say anything to that, Mom made a soft noise of mixed amusement and chiding. “Okay, remember we’re going on vacation, hmm? Both of you should try to be nice to each other. Honestly, you managed to get through the past few weeks without killing one another, or even any serious maiming as far as the doctors have told us. Is that something you can only do when your father and I aren't around?”
“Well yeah,” I immediately confirmed without any hesitation, my head bobbing rapidly. “We can't let you actually see it or anything. Then you might expect it all the time. Do you have any idea how exhausting he is? Honestly, I’m pretty sure the cat’s gonna be the one taking care of him. She seems like the smart one and the cute one.” And yes, I was somewhat deliberately playing up the whole sibling teasing thing in my best attempt at making everything seem as normal as possible, both for them and myself.
Simon made a huffing sound before muttering something about me knowing who the exhausting one was. Then he held the cage up for me to see better. “Fine, this is Bailey. Say hi if you really want. But don't grab her, or yank her tail, or scare her. And don’t even think about trying to give her a bath in the sink. We know how that goes.”
Brushing myself off, I stepped that way, along with Izzy. We both took a closer look at the cat while I muttered, “You do remember that I’m sixteen, not eight anymore, right? Besides, I only tried to give your hamster a bath because he really stank after you took him with you on that field trip to the farm. And I still think he was pretty grateful for it. He definitely liked his cute little bow. You should’ve seen the way he preened with it.”
Simon shook his head. “All I know is that Apricot was never the same after all that soap. He was supposed to be intimidating, but we couldn’t get the smell of lilacs out of him. Nothing that smells like lilacs can ever be intimidating. He was a laughingstock.”
Taking a couple of the suitcases out of the back, Dad stepped over and explained, “We told Simon he could have a reward for taking care of things for so long. He said he wanted a new pet. So here we are. She's coming on the trip with us, because they're still in the bonding process. And, well, apparently she's a feisty one and we don't pay our housekeepers enough to try to deal with that the whole time we're gone. Not to mention your mother happens to be a pretty big fan of the idea of all her curtains being in one piece when we get back home.” He added that bit with a wink over his shoulder toward Mom, who had been watching all of that with a soft smile, despite (or maybe at least partially because of) our light bickering. It really did make everything feel more like it had before all this other stuff. It felt like we were the same old family, even though we had one more member (two more counting the cat), and Izzy and I knew so much more than we were supposed to. Sure, there were complications, to say the least. But this was still a vacation, and we were going to do our best to really enjoy it.
To that end, I straightened up and smiled at my brother. “Well, I guess you did a few things right. You did take care of things while all that was going on. And now you chose a cool cat for a pet. So I guess you don’t make all the wrong decisions.”
Bailey yawned at that, giving me a brief, curious look before laying down and curling up to go back to sleep. Which seemed to be the sum total of her contribution to the situation. If she was curious about who we were or what was going on, it apparently didn’t outweigh her desire to ignore us and take a nap. Yeah, she was definitely a cat.
And, come to think of it, she seemed kind of familiar. Was that weird? I couldn't think of where I could possibly have seen-- okay, she was a cat. It wasn't exactly hard to believe that I had seen another small gray cat who happened to look like this one before. They weren't super-rare or anything. I was definitely just being weird about it. There was no reason to think that I somehow recognized this particular cat.
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Shaking that out of my mind, I looked at my brother and raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you're ready to take care of another pet? I mean, you do remember that animals need food and water, right? I seem to recall that time you accidentally let a cactus die.”
Simon scoffed at that. “First of all, that was a fluke and you know it. The cactus was some weird species that needed extra stuff and no one told me. I've kept plenty of plants since then. And second of all, I kept you and Izzy alive all that time, didn't I?”
With a grin so he would know I was just teasing, I made a noise of understanding. “Ohhhh, I get it. You can have the entire staff keep your cat alive. That does help a bit, yup.” After a brief pause, I added, “And if I understand anything about cats, this will be the first one to be waited on hand and foot as much as she thinks she should be.”
Simon muttered something about me not knowing the half of it, then straightened up. “Well, come on already, let’s go find the plane. You wanna get to these races you love so much, right? Or would you rather just vacation here at the airport for a week?”
Picking up my bag, I looked around before offering a small shrug. “I guess it wouldn't be so bad. There's plenty of room to skate around here, and we could probably get some wicked air off a couple of those hangars over there. Plus, bonus, I'm pretty sure there isn't a girl your age within like five miles of this place, so we wouldn't be subjected to your horrifying attempts at flirting.” I let that hang for a second before grimacing. “But on the other hand, it would also mean not being there for those races. So never mind, we’ll just have to warn all the girls in that immediate area to evacuate.”
Bailey the cat made a noise in her cage before turning to yawn at me. I supposed the look was supposed to chide me for talking while she was trying to get some sleep. How terribly rude of me. She did, however, give my finger a curious sniff and lick when I put my hand close to the bars. And she purred as I used my other hand to scratch behind her ears. It was a sound that made me smile, even as I again pushed down the feeling that I knew this cat from somewhere. I still couldn't figure that one out, or why the insistent thought kept poking at my brain no matter how much I tried to ignore it.
Finally, between all of us, two of the airfield mechanics, and Jefferson, we had our bags loaded onto a nearby hovering cart and started to make our way to the plane itself. It was one of three that my family technically owned, though my parents tended to rent out two of the three at any given moment. It wasn’t like they could use all three of them at the same time. Well, usually. There had been one time when my dad had to use three of them at staggered points to get to this meeting in Hong Kong. I wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t just used teleportation at that point if the meeting was so important, but it had something to do with needing to carry a sensitive piece of equipment that couldn’t handle that sort of transportation. Either way, still a rarity.
This one was the smallest of the planes, since we weren't actually carrying much cargo. Even then, there were enough seats for fifteen people to recline comfortably, individual video game systems, televisions, and so on for each person, a kitchen area with a full stove, fridge, microwave, espresso machine, and more, a stocked bar with all the stuff my parents liked, and a six-person Jacuzzi at the rear. So yeah, in all, it wasn’t a terrible way to spend the few hours it was going to take to get to Arizona. Even if I did have to push those intrusive guilty thoughts out of my mind yet again.
Once our bags were stored, I took Izzy to find our seats and buckle up. She was already staring around with wide eyes, looking almost comically small in the large leather seat. It was more like a full-sized reclining armchair than the sort of seat you might find on a regular passenger airplane. Izzy almost disappeared in the thing. Not that I could talk when it came to that, since I wasn't exactly any bigger than she was. We probably could have both sat in the same seat together through takeoff if it hadn't been very much against the rules. Everyone had to have their own seat and seatbelt.
While we were waiting a minute to take off, Izzy leaned over my way and whispered softly, “How come we didn't just take one of the regular flights from the big airport?”
Before I could respond, it was Simon who spoke up from behind us. He had the cat carrier strapped down in the seat next to him. “Are you kidding? Have you seen how full the flights out of town are? It doesn't matter where the jet’s going, every single flight is booked all the way through next week. Everyone wants to get out of Detroit now that the quarantine is over. We would've had to kick other people off a flight.”
From the opposite side of the plane, Mom turned to nod our way after buckling herself in next to Dad. “That's correct. It would've caused much more of a disturbance for us to take the, ahh, regular flight, as you put it. Not only because we would have been taking seats away from others who bought them first, but the security we would have needed to bring, the fuss they always make when we arrive, all of it would have made everyone’s day at that airport just a little more complicated than it already would be. And a day at the airport is complicated enough without our family barging in and adding more to that.” She offered a reassuring smile. “I know this can seem like too much sometimes, but it is the less obtrusive and problematic way to travel, for multiple reasons. Especially given that the plane itself is one of Dennis Caoul’s designs.”
Caoul, I explained to Izzy while our parents spoke to the pilot for a minute, was a Tech-Touched without any sort of secret identity, whose focus was on creating engines and other forms of vehicular motion. Sort of like Wren’s movement specialty (I didn’t say that part), but specifically for various types of engines. He had created several that gave off zero or near-zero emissions/pollution and ran off things like solar energy. The materials and process used to make them were too prohibitively expensive to mass produce so far, and his engines didn’t work very well with the full-sized passenger jets, but they were working on all that. And that sort of thing wasn’t exactly a deterrent for our parents, so all our private planes used his designs. We polluted the air less during a three hour flight on this thing than a regular moped taking a ride around the block.
Plus, as my mother had put it, paying Caoul the outrageous fees he needed for designing our planes meant he would have the funds he needed to work on fixing the size, material cost, and intensive work requirements for future designs. With any luck, he’d be able to help make larger-scale planes that were even more energy efficient.
Finally, the plane took off. I relaxed back in the seat. Or rather, tried to. Obviously, I had been on flights like this pretty often throughout my entire life. We took a plane at least several times per year to various places. I was very accustomed to the entire process. So accustomed that I could normally sleep through both takeoff and landing.
And yet, this time something was… wrong. As soon as we were in the air, I felt my stomach lurch. Which was odd enough, but suddenly it felt like I was falling--no, like I was floating? Like I was drifting through the air with nothing around me. Which just made my stomach lurch again. I was gripping the armrest tightly, struggling to even figure out why my body was reacting like this. It felt so wrong right then. This was bad.
Obviously noticing my reaction to all that, and the expression on my face as the plane continued to climb, Izzy put one hand on mine and squeezed it. She kept her voice in a very low whisper so she wouldn’t be heard by my parents on the other side of the plane, or by Simon behind us (though he already had his earbuds in with his music blaring so she probably could’ve spoken in a normal tone of voice without disturbing him), “Hey, are you okay? I thought this was all completely normal stuff for you.”
Swallowing audibly despite myself as my face turned a little more green, I struggled to keep it under control. “It sh-should be,” I managed somewhat weakly. “I think--hang on.” I didn’t want to say anything out loud, no matter how quietly we were talking. Instead, I used my phone, texting the other girl. Which actually turned out to be a mistake, given how much my stomach swam while looking at my screen. I think that extra power I have for sensing colors and shapes around me is having a fit right now because we’re so far in the air. The only real color and shape is the plane around us, and the rest is just empty air. There’s no ground, nothing else for it to feel. It’s… it’s really messing me up.
After reading all that, Izzy grimaced before squeezing my hand once more. She used her other hand to text back, Can you last for three hours like this?
The reminder of how long this was going to take made me feel even more queasy, but I pushed that down with a quick glance toward the provided barf bag. I thought about telling my parents I couldn’t do this, but dismissed that immediately. They knew I was fine on airplanes. I’d been on them often enough without any issue that suddenly having a problem immediately after we took off would’ve made them curious, to say the least. They would’ve wanted to have me checked out, which I couldn’t afford.
So, with some effort, I straightened a little in my seat and offered a weak smile that way. “I’m okay,” I whispered out loud. “Just need a little distraction, I guess.”
Izzy still looked uncertain, but nodded before reaching out to grab a couple of the nearby game controllers. We booted up the system and settled in to play something together.
It helped a bit, being distracted. But I never did fully relax through the entire flight, no matter how much I tried. My paint-sense or whatever just kept insisting something was terribly wrong because it couldn’t pick out any shapes around us. Which, combined with my general unease about my entire family situation just made the entire flight that much more uncomfortable.
But hey, at least we were only going to Arizona. I had no idea what I would’ve done if the tournament had been overseas.