Cecy Grace

The plane home drops a little somewhere over the South China Sea. 

Not too much. Only enough for the stomach to rise into the throat. For the woman beside Amelie to grip the armrest. For the plastic cup on the tray to tremble in its little circle of water.

Amelie thinks: He would have liked this.

Not the turbulence. The fear. He liked proof. Proof that something was happening. Proof that she was alive. Proof that she could still be frightened. 

She closes her eyes. The plane climbs again. She counts backwards from ten.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

At seven, she remembers his hands on her cheeks.

At six, the ring.

At five, the way he had looked at her when she said yes.

At four, the fact that she had not meant it.

Three.

Two.

One. She opens her eyes. Outside the window, the clouds are white and endless. It is August, and she is twenty-seven years old, and she is flying from Singapore to Seoul because her boyfriend is dead.

Her boyfriend is dead. The words seem to belong to another tense. Her boyfriend had died. Her boyfriend was no longer alive. Her boyfriend had been found in his apartment. Her boyfriend had — 

The plane drops, then rises. The seatbelt sign illuminates above her. She lays her arm flat against the armrest, although she knows this will do nothing. There is something humiliating about the instinct to hold on. 

***

The woman beside her exhales sharply as the plane steadies. “Okay,” she whispers.

Amelie looks at her. The woman is perhaps fifty, perhaps sixty. Her hair is dyed a reddish brown. She has a gold wedding band and a paperback open on her lap, though she has not read a word since take-off.

“You okay?” Amelie asks. The woman nods. 

The announcement comes. Over the intercom, the captain apologises for the turbulence. The voice is mellow and male. The usual phrases: weather, seatbelts, inconvenience. 

Amelie watches the woman return to her book and wonders whether his voice would sound different, whether there would be a moment when professionalism breaks and something animal enters the microphone. 

The pilot’s voice is steady enough to believe. Amelie hates that.

Her boyfriend had sounded like that when he was angry.

Not loud. Never loud at first. Quiet. Careful. Almost gentle. 

It's okay. That was what he said afterwards. 

I'm sorry.

Then, when she was still crying: You know I would never hurt you. 

He always sounded most certain when she was most afraid. The captain finishes speaking. Around her, people settle. Someone laughs. A child asks for water. Everything is fine. That is the trick. 

Maybe that’s what frightens her most now. Not that the plane might fall.

But that, if someone tells her everything is fine, some part of her will still want to believe them.

***

The woman beside her has drifted into a tentative sleep, fuelled by the anti-anxiety medication Amelie saw her pop shortly after they’d taken off. Her mouth is slightly open. Her paperback has fallen against her chest. Amelie looks at the sleeping woman's hand. The wedding ring is still there.

She wonders how long it has been there. Twenty years. Thirty. Perhaps the ring has become invisible to her. Perhaps one day Amelie's ring will become invisible too.

Amelie removes it. For the first time, it comes away easily. She holds it in her left palm; the stone is warm, and briefly, she considers putting it in the seat pocket. Considers throwing it into the toilet. Considers giving it to the crew.

Instead, she closes her fingers around it.

The plane judders violently. The seatbelt sign comes on again. This time the plane does not climb. It drops. A little farther. The cups tremble. The overhead compartments creak. A baby screams at the back. The ring cuts into her palm. Amelie feels the familiar lifting sensation in her stomach. 

The clouds outside have disappeared, and there is only darkness. For a moment she thinks it is night. Then she realises they are below the cloud cover. The sea is beneath them, black, unbroken, beautiful.

She presses her right palm against the window, thinking of her destination. Home. Her mother's kitchen. She thinks of Seoul, of the ring in her fist. She thinks of the sentence he wrote. I think I have made you into someone who cannot leave me. The plane drops again.

She thinks of the way he used to sleep. One hand beneath his cheek. The other searching for her. Even unconscious, he had always reached for her. She used to think this was proof of love. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was proof of need. Perhaps there had never been a difference.

She thinks of the first time she met him. 3 March 2022, Korea. He had been standing outside a convenience store in Hongdae, holding two coffees.

“You're late,” he had said.

“I know.”

“I waited twenty minutes. You should apologise.”

She had looked at him. He had smiled. She had smiled too.

And because she was twenty-three then, a foreign university student on exchange, and tired, and lonely, and because the evening was cold, and because someone was offering her something warm to hold, she had taken the coffee.

***

The plane shudders. Water spills. The woman beside Amelie lurches against her seatbelt, awoken by the turbulence. Amelie does not sleep. Hasn’t slept in a while.  

Then the plane drops beneath the last layer of cloud, and there is no revelation. No forgiveness. She has no idea what will happen next. 

Perhaps the plane will recover. Perhaps the engines will roar and the nose will lift and everyone will be secretly embarrassed by their own relief. Perhaps the plane will strike the sea. Perhaps there will be water. Perhaps there will be fire. Perhaps there will be nothing at all.

The woman beside her presses her eyes shut, taking deep breaths. Amelie looks at her. “Are you okay?”

“No,” the woman says shakily. 

Amelie almost laughs. “Me neither.”

The woman opens her reddened eyes. For some reason, she smiles tentatively.

Then the plane tilts again. The woman cries out, reaching out instinctively for Amelie’s hand. Amelie, without judgement, without fear, takes it. 

For a moment she believes she sees land. A thin strip of green beneath the clouds. It might be an island. It might be an iceberg.

The plane continues downward.

And in the final seconds before the world becomes either land or water, Amelie feels the smallest, strangest absence inside herself. That for one brief moment she is responsible for nothing except the hand she is holding.

She holds it. It is something warm to hold. 

The world comes towards her. And somewhere, somehow, she feels something loosen — not disappear, not heal, not become beautiful, but loosen.

Just enough — just for a second.