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right wing disappeared below and their bodies followed. All the passengers were unwillingly linked on this wild ride and they moaned together in dismay…
    The right wing reappeared with a sickening jolt and then continued past the horizon, rising to the heavens. The seesaw now pulled everything the opposite way, tilting down to the left, and Max was unnerved to see the ground pass vertically, as if the floor he wanted in a department store had just gone by, lost forever, and he tried to cry out, to tell everyone— I’m sorry we aren’t going to live anymore. I’m sorry we don’t have time to change —but no sound came out of his mouth into the horrible roar…
    And they were abruptly level, everyone’s stomachs arriving late, jarring into place.
    The teenager threw up on the pink boot which he still hadn’t gotten off.
    “He’s doing it, Max,” Jeff’s voice said faintly. The engines were screaming at this point, howling with pain as the jet descended in jerks, as if they were bumping down a flight of stairs on their ass.
    Max checked what he could through the windows. The plane did seem lined up properly with the runway and it was close to touching down, moving fast at the ground. But they were rushing to an earth that wouldn’t forgive airborne clumsiness.
    Max unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m going to sit with the boy,” he said to Jeff, more sure than ever, after that awkward maneuver with the wings, that they were going to crash. He expected Jeff to plead, to beg him to stay.
    “What?” Jeff called, bewildered instead. Max had no time to answer. He was frightened to be up and walking on the breakable floor. He stumbled his way forward three aisles, found the boy seated alone, waved a casual goodbye to his partner, and fell into the empty seat.
    “Hi,” he said and buckled himself in. He put his hand on the boy’s neck. “Head in your lap.” The child obeyed, dutiful, concealing his loneliness and fright to the last. Max thought of how proud this child’s parents would be of their son’s bravery and he wanted to weep.
    Max bent over as well, turning his head so he could look at the boy. “What’s your name?” he shouted.
    “Byron,” he said, also placing his head sideways to see Max. There was something comforting about their huddled position, as if they were lying in a bed and chatting intimately. As recently as a year ago Max used to do that with his son at bedtime, listening to stories of boyhood quarrels and contests, providing advice that only a child would think wise.
    Max thought he had misheard. “What did you say?”
    “Byron,” he repeated. “Like the poet.”
    There was a sudden lull, the engines cutting as they were about to touch ground. Max had succeeded in distracting Byron for a second; unfortunately the change in sound refocused the boy on his terror.
    “Everything is wonderful,” Max said into Byron’s worried face. “Are you scared?”
    Byron nodded; with that admission his lips trembled.
    They were floating just above the earth, gliding in their big ungainly airship. The back wheels touched pavement—
    Max gently pushed Byron’s head flush to his knees. “We made it,” he said, lying.
    On the right they banged into something. Max felt the error. All the passengers did, as if they had stretched their nervous systems to the machine, growing into the skin of the plane. Fear flashed in Byron’s eyes and Max tried to comfort him before the roar of impact reached them:
    “It’ll be over—”
    But he never finished that sentence. Everything was on the move: their seats, the floor, he saw something black and heavy spin into a part of a person, he thought he was sideways and he shut his eyes and he melted to nothing except for his eyes, he was alive inside his blinded eyes until the crash engulfed him and Max was alone in his brain, cornered.
    Goodbye , he whispered to life.

4
    Carla dodged her bobbing son’s head to keep what she could see of the airport in sight.