Red

Cora didn't know how that little girl got her bike on the plane.

“Where’d you get that wound?”

Cora looks down at her abdomen, where blood is steadily trickling down her skirt before plip-plopping onto the carpet. It is a red as dark as her press-on nails.

She looks at the little girl standing before her. Her hair is choppy and short- a feathery blond that falls lightly over her thin brows. Her irises are each different colors. One blue, one a stark black. She has on a baseball cap, and her knees are scabbed and covered with Star Wars band-aids. There is a smear of dirt on her nose, and Cora feels the sudden need to lick her thumb and wipe it away.

The little girl has on rugged sneakers. Cora wishes she could wear shoes like that. She should be able to, what with being on her feet for hours on end. Her heels are pinching her pinky toes, which had gone numb.

Cora lifts a brow. “Where’d you get that bike?” she asks in return.

The little girl has her arm looped over the handlebars of a red bike. Bright red.

Dark red.

The little girl shrugs. Then wobbles. No- the plane wobbles. Outside the oval windows around them, a snowstorm is moaning.

Sobbing.

It is very cold. The little girl, Cora thinks, really shouldn’t be in gym shorts and a t-shirt.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be in that short skirt,” the little girl retorts.

Cora blinks. The girl does, too.

The passengers around them are idle, and they do not stir from their seats even as Cora’s blood continues to drip, forming a large puddle now.

“You should return to your seat,” she advises the girl. “Where are your parents?”

The little girl tilts her head. Her bike is pressed into her side. “Where are we right now?”

“Above the Pacific.”

The little girl smiles. Cora doesn’t like it. She looks like a statue.

“Then that’s where they are.”

Cora stalls. “You mean your parents are in the plane?”

“No. In the Pacific.”

“In it?”

“At the bottom of it, to be precise.”

“I don’t understand.”

The girl smiles, again. The plane wobbles, but neither of them jolt from the impact. They remain still.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

This is getting annoying, Cora decides. And she really needs to get some bandages for her wound. It’s starting to get unprofessional, bleeding all over the place. She would need a new uniform….

“Let me help you find your seat,” Cora insists.

“You don’t have to do that,” the girl replies.

“Oh. Do you know where it is?”

“No. I’m busy, I can’t stay long. I gotta get to my aunt’s house. She has something to tell me. She sounded scared. On the phone, I mean. I was at Ensley’s house when she called.”

“Ensley?”

“My best friend. She lives down the block.”

“Oh.”

The girl gives a nod, then. A dismissal. Her fingers take hold of the handlebars, dirty sneaker pressing onto the pedal to lift herself up. She stops and meets Cora’s eyes.

“Don’t forget the ginger ale.”

“Ginger ale?”

“And crackers. For my mom. You were about to get her some. It was something about her stomach… it was bothering her. She doesn’t like flying.”

“Yes... you’re right.”

The girl smiles her empty smile. She looks out the circle windows. Cora does, too.

Where did the passengers go? The seats are empty. The lights flicker.

“Why does winter last so long?” the girl asks.

“I’m not sure.”

The wind is howling, crying. Cora’s hair lifts around her head- a floating black mass that is finally released from the tight updo she’d put it in. Her hat is gone. Her feet don’t touch the floor, and her pinched toes are given a moment of relief.

“Maybe the earth is tired. I think it’s time to sleep.”

The girl’s hair stays flat against her head, tucked under her cap. It doesn’t float. Her feet remain on the floor.

The red bike is gone, and Cora looks out the windows, her eyes greeted with flames, her nose filling with smoke. She thinks she hears screams. But she’s weightless, and tired.

She closes her eyes.