11Author's Note: Heh. I love you, Hailey. Hopefully this sounds… kinda like how you think. Maybe. Kinda. But you asked for it. Damn you and your freakin' free range chickens. I'm pretty sure most of the conversations didn't happen or happened in reserve order or something, but whatever.
Special thanks to Jillian for helping me with the movies. Because I'm a dumb ass.
Eohwyn name explanation: …I honestly have no idea. But the Gaelic version of Owen is Eowyn (don't ask me how I know that). I just… made it more masculine? Hell if I know what I was on when I decided on THAT spelling. And same with Leigh. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't just spell it Lee. Maybe I was trying to make it more feminine? Hell, I have no idea.
Chapter 2- Completely Impossible
Requirement: Do not fall asleep on the long flight. Bonus points for REALLY not falling asleep instead of just telling everyone you didn't while actually sleeping while they were asleep.
Thank God I had an aisle seat. I looked over to Leigh, definitely not envying her for being stuck in the middle of the five seats. 'Course, she's about a foot shorter than the rest of us, so she probably doesn't need that much leg room, but it didn't look comfortable at all. Suzanne didn't look that comfortable either, but at least she wasn't exactly in the middle.
I looked around the plane, wondering where Katie and Lizzie were. I didn't see them, but I did see the billion other kids on the flight with us. This would be fun.
"I'm still really not that excited," Suzanne said calmly.
Leigh and I exchanged looks over here. How could you not be excited? We were going to freaking LONDON. "You'll get excited eventually," I said. "When we get there, probably. It'll hit you then." She shrugged, unconcerned. She had already been to Europe, Northern Ireland to be exact, so it wasn't like this was her first time like the rest of us.
"I didn't get that excited about Enniskillen either, though," Suzanne added. "It didn't hit me until after we got back."
"With Lizzy and Katie around, I kind of think you have to get excited," Leigh said. I had to agree with her there. The other two were going crazy. Lizzy especially. But, um… London? Yeah. "We're probably not even going to realize we're in London until we get back."
I was excited. Sitting still for seven hours was going to be hell. Or at least the little screen on the back of the seats said it would take seven hours. "It's 10: 52 in London right now," I announced.
"Thanks for the random fact of the day," Leigh said.
"You're welcome," I said cheerfully before unwrapping my headphones and plugging them into the armrest. The first radio station… was not the best. I went to the next one. Queen. Not too bad. Next one was Weezer, I flipped through a couple more before grinning. Ah, success. "Listen to station 14," I told the other two.
"What is it?" Leigh asked, pulling out her headphones as Suzanne went to it.
"Only the best band ever," I said. The Beatles, blasting in my ear on the way to London. Yep, this trip was going to be freaking awesome.
I was flipping through, trying to find something I could listen to, when I saw a kid walk by. His pants were pretty awesome, but I didn't get a look at his face. But, seriously, a guy with pants that cool had to be at least decent looking. I turned around to see if I could get a look at his face. He sat down near the back of the plane. Yep, definitely cute. Freakin' adorable, actually.
"Welcome to flight 7484, direct flight to London Heathrow," the flight attendant suddenly, cutting off the music in my ears. I frowned slightly. God, did we have to go over this again?
I pulled out the movie guide and started flipping through it, looking at the movies that we could watch during the flight. "Hey, these are pretty good." These weren't even out on video yet.
"Yeah, actually, they do," Suzanne said.
"Flight back's better," Leigh said. I looked at the list and nodded in agreement. They were all really good movies though.
"Is Stranger than Fiction good?" I asked.
"Yeah," Leigh said. "Well… It's not like his typical movies. But it's still pretty funny. You'd probably like it."
I opened my mouth to ask her something else, but the flight attendant cut through what I was going to say. "Once again, we would like to thank you for flying United Airlines, O'Hare to Heathrow. Please enjoy your flight. We will be taking off shortly and will start the movies soon after that." I wondered where Katie and Lizzy were. They were probably completely freaking out about the fake that we were almost on our way to London.
"Excuse me." I looked up at the flight attendant standing next to my seat. "We need you to move you bag out of the aisle. The flight attendants will be needing the aisles to move around, and we would rather them not be blocked." It sounded like she was trying to be polite, but it came out more bitchy than anything. And a little scary.
"Sorry," I said quickly, moving my bag out of the way. I didn't want to inflict the wrath of flight attendants. They can be scary in that professional, I-can-make-your-eight-hour-flight-a-living-hell type of way.
We took off and started watching the movies (some of which definitely were not as good as I thought they were going to be), and after a while, they started handing out dinner.
"What would you like for dinner?" I looked up. The bitchy flight attendant! "We have chicken or pasta. What would you like?"
"Are those free range chickens?" I asked.
"Excuse me?" the flight attendant asked, looking at me. Technically, she had been talking to Suzanne, but it was an important fact that I needed to know. I had a feeling Leigh and Suzanne were giving me looks like I was crazy. Okay, I'm a bit of a hippy (when you're named after a natural landform, you kind of have to be). But still, have you seen what they do to those chickens? If not, you need to look at PETA. That'll explain everything.
"Are those free range chickens?" I repeated.
"Does it make a difference in the taste?" the flight attendant asked. I wanted to roll my eyes. Free range chickens have nothing to do with the taste. They have everything to do with the chickens being… free range.
"No, I just want to make sure my food wasn't tortured to become my food," I said calmly. Other people were beginning to look at me like I was a freak. Which I am, but I'm a cool, hippy kind of freak.
Stop looking at me like that.
"I wouldn't know," she said coolly. "If that is a necessity, I would suggest you stay with the pasta."
How could she not know?! Did she not understand that non-free range chickens were tortured for days before they were killed? Did she not know that the animals that provide our food daily are greatly abused before they become our food? Did she not—
"Well?" she asked impatiently.
I sighed. She was a bitch. Trying to explain it to her would only take a lot of time and energy, and she probably wouldn't give a damn anyway. "Pasta," I said.
"Aren't you a vegetarian anyway?" Leigh asked after the flight attendant walked on to the next row.
"She's a chickaturkaterian," Suzanne said, grinning.
"A what?" Leigh asked, obviously confused.
"A chickaturkaterian," I said. "It means I eat chicken and turkey but not any other kind of meat."
"Okay," she said slowly. "Why?"
"Because… I like chicken and turkey, but I don't like any other kind of meat. So it's just easier to tell people that than try and explain why."
"Okay then," she said, shrugging.
After everyone ate, they started to settle down and go to sleep. Go to sleep? When we were on our way to London? Yeah right.
"I have to pee," Leigh announced unceremoniously.
"Yeah, I do too," I agreed, standing up. I waited for her to climb over Suzanne before the two of us joined the line for the bathrooms. The kid in front of us had glasses and really curly hair. And then I looked at his pants. The kid from earlier with the pretty amazing pants!
"Hey," he said, grinning at us. "Are you guys doing an EF tour too?"
"Yeah," I said, slightly surprised. How did he know that?
"The bags kind of gave it away," he said easily.
"They do kind of stand out, don't they?" Leigh said. "Everyone in our group brought theirs."
"Really?" he asked. "I don't think anyone in our group brought them."
I shrugged. "I think they told us we had to bring them or something."
He nodded, grinning. "So where are you guys from?"
"Nashville," I said.
"Closer than us then," he said. "We're from Oklahoma. Most of our group is on a different flight though." He might've said something else, but it was his turn to use the bathroom, so he obviously didn't.
As soon as he closed the door behind him, I turned to Leigh. "He's cute, I'm not gonna lie."
"Yeah, I was about say that," Leigh agreed.
"Hey, there's your guy," I said, pointing to the upperclass economy section. Whatever that section's called. The only reason I even noticed him was because he was standing in the middle of the aisle, and the bitchy flight attendant wasn't saying anything to him. "Oscar or whatever his name is?"
"Eohwyn," she corrected, looking for herself. "Should I go say hi or something?"
"That depends on how badly you have to pee," I said cheerfully, pointing to show her that it was her turn. She rolled her eyes and went to the bathroom.
When I got finished, I went back to my seat. "Where's Leigh?" Suzanne asked.
"Talking to the guy from earlier, I think," I said easily, slipping my headphones back on. The guy across the aisle from me was asleep. How the hell could he be asleep? It was kinda noisy for one thing, and for another it's completely impossible to get comfortable in those seats. Leigh eventually came back and we all settled into our own little worlds for a little while.
Finally, after hearing "Fergilious" for the second time, I got fed up and took off my headphones. "We should talk," I announced decidedly.
Suzanne and Leigh looked at me oddly. "About what?" Suzanne asked.
"I dunno," I said. "Anything. I'm bored." So we talked about what girls generally talk about when in a group and they have nothing better to talk about: boys.
"So," I prompted.
"So we've had two conversations and I will probably never talk to him again," Leigh said. "Even though he's hot."
"You think so?" Suzanne asked, making a face.
"You idea of attractive is different than everyone else's," I said easily. Which is true. It is. Very different. She shrugged without arguing. I wondered for a second if she would think the kid with the cool pants was cute. Probably not. Suddenly, I realized. "Hey, the kid we were talking to earlier looks like Weezer's lead singer."
Both of them looked at me again. I'm not that strange, swear. "What are you talking about?"
"The kid we were talking to while we were waiting in line for the bathroom. He looks kinda like Rivers Cuomo."
"If you say so," Leigh said shrugging.
"Does your mom know you're going to prom yet?" Suzanne asked me suddenly.
I made a face. "Yeah, she does. Derrick told her. Dumb ass." Derrick is a friend of my brother's that lives in our house. We take in random friends of my brother's all the time.
"Who are you going to prom with?" Leigh asked.
"I'm not going to our prom, I'm going to Independence's," I said easily. "And his name's Jason." And I'd managed not to think about him so far on the trip. Damn. Oh well. "Derrick announced it the other night at dinner. We were sitting there eating, and all the sudden he goes, 'So has River told you where she's going yet?' And no one knew what he was talking about, so he said it rhymed with quam. And my mom just goes 'Whaaaaaaaaatttt?' No one had any idea what he was talking about. They got it eventually, but my dad and my brother both thought it was something else. I wanted to hit him. Actually, I did hit him. Multiple times."
All three of us laughed. It was kind of embarrassing at the time, but it was a really funny story.
We spent the next couple of hours going between telling funny stories, listening to music, trying to watch the movie, and trying to sleep (have I mentioned how completely impossible it is to sleep in those seats?).
Suddenly, someone down the aisle exclaimed, "Shit!" I looked down to where the noise came from and laughed. Loudly. Leigh had somehow managed to spill Sprite all over her pants. "I guess you weren't kidding when you said someone else would embarrass herself soon."
"Shut up and give me your napkin."
I laughed and handed it down to her. She attempted to clean it up, but there's only so much you can do sitting down while in a plane. Temporary entertainment over, I went back to the plane's music. If I have to listen to Fergilious one more time—
"The flight attendants will be handing out breakfast soon, and we will be landing soon after that. Thank you for flying with us."
The airplane touched down, and a couple of people in the back started cheering. I looked at the other two and grinned. "Guys, we're officially in London."