7
Sasha
When they call boarding for my flight, I feel the same rush as when I’m about to step onstage. I stand in line clutching my ticket and ID. My body is unlearning the panic of people seeing my face. It’s getting drawn out of me. My hands are shaking.
I’m tensed from years of moments when someone would yell.
“It’s Admirer!”
and suddenly Augustus and I would get swarmed. People screaming and pressing toward us. Augustus and I trying to be charming while trying not to get crushed. We would sign things and take pictures while our security struggled to get us out of there.
I was hidden behind the helmet’s reflective visor then, playing a part. I don’t know how I’d survive it if I was out in the open.
But the man checks my ID like it’s boring and moves on to the next person in line. The name Alexander Moore isn’t as famous as Alexander Ash, thank god.
I settle into a window seat in the second-last row. Right before we start taxiing out, this lanky guy whose look screams strung-out middle-aged rocker sits next to me, knees against the seat in front of him. His white T-shirt has the badly stitched edges of something very expensive.
He introduces himself with a pair of names like they’re always said together. He says he’s an actor, but he hasn’t been in anything I would have seen. That’s how it is out here.
“I’m Sasha,”
I say. I’ll have to think of a last name.
“Loved flying when I was a kid,”
he says as he tries to stretch out.
“Now you know they keep moving these fucking seats closer together. Acclimatizing us until it’s standing room only. Screwing over people like me and you.”
Admirer has a private jet.
I realize this is a chance to test-run my stories. He’ll bluff his fame and I’ll bluff my lack of it.
“So what’s got you flying from paradise to nowhere?”
he asks. He doesn’t know that once we land, I’m going even farther, taking a bus ride to a small city in case the Channel manages to track where I flew.
“My family just moved,”
I lie, then balance it with truth.
“I’m going to finish high school.”