Chapter #1The Way of the Dinosaur by: BeeJay   Hi. My name is Neve O'Brien, and this is the story. It's the story of what happened to me, my boyfriend, a couple dozen of our classmates, and everyone else on that flight.
I suppose I should tell you a little about me before we get too far into the big story. I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the only child of my parents. After school, I was a social media influencer. For those of you who, like my parents, don't know what that means: I went on social media, and I gave people tips on fashion and makeup. I had three million followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube; which made me kind of a big deal, but well short of the five million I needed to be an official celebrity. Yes, that was important to me, before... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The event that started our adventure was the senior class trip. We'd be going to Paris, flying from the CLE to the City of Lights non-stop. In addition to myself, there was my boyfriend, Kal Winston, star of the football team; my best friend, Tabitha Danforth; the class nerd, Hector Delgado; Ty Beuchler, another football player; four guys down the road from me, who were constantly brainstorming names for their garage band; and half the cheer squad. Mrs. Raye had been tapped to play chaperone on the trip. I expected to pose for awesome selfies at the major sites, enjoy some real French food, and see what effect that would have on my subscriber count.
It didn't work out that way.
******************************
There was absolutely nothing ominous before the flight: we got on the bus at 8:30, Saturday morning; arrived at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 9:00; went through screening; and had an hour to kill before boarding. No bad feelings about the flight; no ominous songs playing; even the horseplay got toned down after just a word. Honestly, the worst thing was when I tried to strike up a conversation with a woman, and she had no idea who I was. But I didn't know about her, either: she was Maya Warren, a champion archer, heading to Paris for a competition.
Oneworld Airlines Flight 912 took off, right on schedule. We expected to touch down at Orly, in Paris, that evening.
We didn't make it.
******************************
We were somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean when it happened.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. It looks like we're heading into some turbulence; it's going to rattle your teeth, but we should be alright. Nothing to worry about, and it'll be over before you know it. Thank you for flying Oneworld."
It rattled our teeth, alright; it rattled the whole plane. For a moment, I thought we had hit something, even though we were over the ocean, and there was nothing to hit.
But the first real indication that something strange was happening was the flickering. You see, it wasn't the lights on the plane that flickered; it was the sun in the sky.
That prompted me to look out the window, and I gasped. Instead of the ocean, we were now flying over land; mostly jungle, from the look of it.
I signaled for the flight attendant, hoping that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation, and I would be thanked for not trying to start a panic.
Before she could get to me, the captain came back on the speaker: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Something unusual seems to have happened: The instrumentation on this equipment is giving strange readings, and I can't seem to contact anyone. I'm going to take her in, as gently as I can; your flight attendants will guide you in the proper bracing positions for your section. Hopefully, we'll have this all sorted out soon. Thank you for flying Oneworld."
I knew what proper bracing positions meant: wherever we were landing, it wasn't at an airport.
As it turned out, that was the least of our problems. | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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