Before Takeoff

Autorentext

Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He's now back in Mexico City, where he writes, coaches basketball, and makes every dish he eats as spicy as possible. In addition to Mexico, he's lived in Tel Aviv, Las Vegas and Monterey, California. His previous YA books include Let's Get Lost, Never Always Sometimes, North of Happy, Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak, and We Didn't Ask for This.

Klappentext

The Sun Is Also a Star meets Jumanji when two teens meet and fall in love during a layover-gone-wrong at the Atlanta airport in this thrilling new novel from the author of Let's Get Lost!

James and Michelle find themselves in the Atlanta airport on a layover. They couldn't be more different, but seemingly interminable delays draw them both to a mysterious flashing green light--and each other.

Where James is passive, Michelle is anything but. And she quickly discovers that the flashing green light is actually... a button. Which she presses. Which may or may not unwittingly break the rules of the universe--at least as those rules apply to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.

Before they can figure up from down, strange, impossible things start happening: snowstorms form inside the B terminal; jungles sprout up in the C terminal; and earthquakes split the ground apart in between. And no matter how hard they try, it seems no one can find a way in or out of the airport. James and Michelle team up to find their families and either escape the airport, or put an end to its chaos--before it's too late.

Leseprobe

ONE

In Concourse B of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, in between a bookstore that consistently miscategorizes its books and a franchise restaurant whose staff consistently ranks as the happiest in the annual airport-wide employee survey, there’s a blinking green light that will soon cause all hell to break loose. It’s on a wall with no signage to indicate what it could possibly be.

The only person who seems to notice it is James Herrera.

He’s got his big headphones on, listening to music that drowns out the sounds of the airport. We would list all these sounds, except the music is loud for us too, and we’re as interested in the blinking light as our new friend James is. There seems to be no particular rhythm to the light, although at the moment it kind of syncs up with the music in a cool way. James looks for the cracks of a hidden door, or a camera keeping its eye on the light. A woman walking by accidentally bumps James’s leg with her rolling suitcase, then turns to give him a mean look.

James shakes his head, hooking his thumbs through the straps of his backpack. He scans the passersby, waiting for the authority figure who will tell him to move along, maybe blame him for putting the light there. James is brown-skinned and sixteen, and he’s used to hearing the bizarre accusations the world throws his way. Used to it the way you get used to a toothache, or someone’s stench on the bus.

Families walk by all in a row, oblivious to their slow-moving obstruction of the hallway. Lethargic but annoyed airport employees driving carts yell for people to get out of the way. Cute girls, backpackers he feels a pang of jealousy toward, suits on their phones.

Back at gate B36, his family waits for their flight, fast-food leftovers at their feet, eyes on the monitor announcing their delay, daring it to push back takeoff again, complaints already on the tips of their tongues. James stares at the light, thinks about returning to school, junior year continuing on, leading inexorably toward the future, a familiar flutter of fear in his chest. Only a matter of time, the flutter says, until it’s your turn. Can’t escape bad luck forever.

“What do you think it is?” the girl we haven’t yet met says. We can hear this, but James can’t, though he does pick up on the presence of someone else nearby, either watching him or watching the light. He feels her at the edge of his periphery, and his senses immediately call out: Girl! He turns a little to confirm, but real cool about it, obviously.

Then he notices she’s talking, and he pulls his headphones down so they loop around his neck. “Sorry,” he says, and then tries to explain further, but his voice trails off, like it knows he has no idea what to say and it will have no part of the inter?action.

“What do you think it is?” she says again, this time audibly to all parties involved. There’s a hint of a foreign accent that James can’t place. Which, come on, James, it’s been a sentence. Give it a second.

James just shrugs, hating himself for not being instantly funny or smooth.

“It’s an American thing, no? See something, say something. Should we be saying something?”

James looks at their surroundings, presumably to find someone to say something to, because what if it really is a thing that could cause harm? But also to get a better look at the girl. Except he forgets--miraculously--the first part and focuses on the second. Dark hair, light brown eyes, nose ring, lips that would make you not pay attention for a whole semester if she was sitting anywhere near you in the classroom. And, of course, the girl notices that he’s not looking around for anyone, just flat out staring at her.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, when he notices her noticing.

“Sorry about what?”

“I, like, looked at you. Too long. I don’t know why I couldn’t just stand here and look at the green light and shoot the shit with you about it without having to look at you. I’m sorry. It sucks I did that.”

The girl smirks and looks at him curiously. We know this, but James doesn’t, because his embarrassment has caused him to look away. “I don’t mind. People look at each other, it’s a thing we do.”

James nods, feels the urge to say something intelligent in response, resists the desire to look at her again. Behind them, a collective groan emanates from gate B17 as the airline representative announces that the 5:30 p.m. flight to Kansas City will now be departing at 9:00 p.m. The green light blinks on, then off.

James and the girl stare silently for a while. A flutter--a different one this time--in James’s chest tells him this is a moment he will always remember. Or maybe that he still gets nervous around girls. The cheerful voice of a waitress at the nearby restaurant cuts through the din of the airport. She offers a businesswoman the chance to make her margarita a double for an extra dollar fifty.

“It’s gotta be a camera, right?” James says. “Some sort of security thing?”

The girl chuckles. “I wonder how much footage they have of people just staring at it, wondering what the hell it is.” She takes a step closer, reaching her hand out to it. She’s got her sleeves rolled up to her forearm, and he notices her arm. Not any specific thing about it (delicate wrist, barely noticeable hairs, a single freckle like the stray mark of a pen), just the fact that it’s there. That she’s got skin and muscle and bone, and all of it is very close to him.

“Don’t touch it, man! What if you’re not supposed to?”

“Oh please,” she says, but her hand slows its approach, lingering just far enough away so that the glow of the light reaches back out and brushes her fingers. The light, too, seems somehow excited by her proximity. It starts blinking almost imperceptibly faster, matching its rhythm to James’s accelerating heartbeat.

She looks over at James, raising an eyebrow, grinning. James can’t handle that look on her face, and he starts to come up with an escape plan. This is t…