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noticed how wide his mouth was before. It was like he had a stash of reserve lip length for when he wanted to lay on one of these seriously self-satisfied grins.
    Clio pulled out her sketchbook and shoved the bag into his arms. He put it in the bin and slammed it shut.
    “Will you take the window?” Elsa asked. “There’s no way I can watch.”
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    “Sure.”
    Clio stepped over and sat down in the window seat.
    “I’ve been on some bad flights,” Clio said. “The trick is to get distracted.”
    “How?”
    “Let’s just talk. School. Where do you go to school?”
    “I just left school myself on Thursday. I barely had time to get home before we were on our way here.”
    “You’re in college?” Clio said.
    “Public school,” she replied.
    Clio quickly did the mental conversion. In England public school actually meant boarding school. As the plane started puttering toward the runway, Clio kept Elsa talking with a constant series of questions. Elsa’s school was private but not too fancy. Languages were her strong suit. Next year she would be taking five A-level exams. She had to play one sport as part of the school curriculum, so she played field hockey, but she didn’t like it. She loved watching football (soccer, she clarified for Clio). She had a roommate named Jenny, whom everyone called Binkie. She was Elsa’s opposite—very skinny, dark-haired, brilliant at maths, bad at dancing, good at football. Binkie had once drunk twelve pints of beer and two toffee vodkas on a dare and ended up in the infirmary.
    Elsa delivered all of this information in one steady, breathless stream as they went past massive jets like the one Clio had just gotten off. Her own stomach flipped a little. This was a very small plane. Elsa tightened her seat belt until it couldn’t give any more.
    They were on the runway now. The propellers were going full speed.
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    “Can I hold your hand?” she asked.
    “Sure,” Clio said.
    “It might be kind of hard. Oh God!”
    The plane dragged itself forward. It didn’t have the speed and thrust of a jet as it went down the runway, so the takeoff was unexpected. The plane suddenly seemed to jump into the sky, throwing itself higher and higher in graceless little hops.
    Elsa started mumbling under her breath in a different language. It was too low to tell which one. Once they were in the air, it was a little hard to hear.
    “You must already think I’m insane,” Elsa said, squeezing the blood supply out of Clio’s hand. “It’s just planes. I’m not scared of anything else. At least not much. I took one of these planes in Sweden once. Going to see my dad. It was horrible.”
    “Your dad is Swedish?” Clio asked.
    “Yes. I’m half and half.”
    “Is that what you were just speaking?”
    “I pray in Swedish when I’m scared,” she said. “I’m still scared.”
    “So keep talking.”
    “I have photos,” Elsa said, carefully reaching for her purse under the seat. “Would you like to see?”
    “Sure,” Clio said.
    The plane bounced a bit as Elsa was reaching, causing her to bump her head on the seat in front. She snatched up her purse and clutched it to her chest, closing her eyes. Once the plane grew stable again, Elsa peeled them open and pulled the purse away from her chest. She reached inside and removed a book. She shook it, and a clump of photos fell into her lap. She passed them to Clio.
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    Three of them featured the same view: a massive, very green playing field and, in the background, a large building that looked like a Gothic church, with a dozen or more spiky spires bursting out along the roof. Different people stood in front of this view, all in similar uniforms—white shirts, red ties, gray blazers.
    Everyone in the pictures was laughing or making faces. A few other photos had obviously been taken at parties in small dorm rooms. There were various hot and sweaty guys, just after a soccer game.
    Elsa was in most of these pictures, usually at the