Minutes Before The Fall

         Lilith stares intensely out the plane's confining gray windows. I watch her tuck a choppy blonde strand of hair behind her ear, nodding her head along to the rhythm of whatever song she's listening to. She wears an oversized black hoodie, my hoodie, a year or two ago I would have yelled at her for taking it. Now... now I don't even know how to talk to her.
         I open my mouth, close it, and look past her out the window to the foggy clouds bleeding into the soft fabric of the sky. I twist my hands in my lap.
         "Lili-"
         Riles twists around his seat. "This trip is gonna be so sick man! I can already feel it!" He grins enthusiastically like a hyperactive puppy.
         I see his seatmate take a sigh of relief.
         "Hate to break it to you, but pretty sure your joy is from being on a plane and not from any trip."
         His grin widens, which is when I realize my fatal mistake of uttering the forbidden word 'plane/aircraft/anything that flies above ground' and he starts yapping about plane models. I didn't even try to keep up with what was spilling out of his mouth. Instead, I watch the other students and teachers on the trip chatter or scroll on their phones.
         A guy I recognize from school sits a few rows across from me. He runs track. I first noticed him at the start of this school year when waiting for someone to come pick me up because my father had forgotten about me... again.
         I was sitting on the bleachers, biting the nub of my pencil, back hunched over and numbly staring out across the field. I started lazily watching him counting the laps and equating those into miles. A band covered his braids, the ends whipping back in a ponytail as he ran. He ran a good three miles straight barely stopping, only to drink water, before someone finally came to pick me up. He'd run it in under fifteen minutes.
         After that I started seeing him more often and watched him from the bleachers whenever I got bored or was waiting around. Or sometimes I would just stay to watch him. I can't explain why I liked watching him run, it's not like I had something better to do, it's just sometimes I felt like I could feel the wind in my face and the panting in my chest that he must have felt.
         I don't know maybe I'm just crazy. It's not like I even know the guy's name. I've waved to him a few times from the bleachers but that's about it. He sort of keeps to himself in school and doesn't talk to anyone at least not from what I've seen, besides that weird Russian kid. Though it's not like I've attempted to talk to him either, he doesn't give off the vibe he wants anyone invading his personal space, he's like six feet and I don't like the idea of befriending someone who could pick me up with ease and throw me off a balcony.
         I scan the rest of the aisles, for people I know or find interesting. Most are just tourists or Europeans returning home, others are from my school but I either don't know them or don't care. I see a few of my friends laughing with each other, one waves at me smiling. I ignore them.
         Across from me, two Russian exchange students, sit talking in Russian. The girl Yelizaveta, I think, sits closest to me a perplexed expression on her face as that weird Russian kid says something back to her while playing with something in his lap.
         He's always struck me as... odd, maybe it's just his accent or the fact he's not from America, but he has this unsettling way about him. His light wavy brown hair falls into his eyes, as he talks distractedly. Perhaps it's his eyes that are off-putting, big almond-shaped eyes, dark but fading out softly near the edges. Staring into them is falling into the abyss but it's not cold like you'd think it be warm and comforting at times but also unnerving. His skin is a soft brownish tan like he's been out in the sun for a while, and he has full lips that make me think he has something other than Russian in him. Maybe Native blood? He has cheekbones, though they contrast with his otherwise soft face-shape. Filipino? His eyes sort of match. But then again, he was a ton of freckles angrily dotting his face and neck.
         Yelizaveta says something back to him in Russian and then turns away, he never takes his eyes off of whatever's in his lap. She catches me watching and frowns. I smile at her. She rolls her eyes and looks straight ahead crossing her arms.
         Well, that ruined my day, what does she have against me? Cause' she caught me staring? She's in a few of my classes, and I know her name, even worked with her a few times, yet she always rolls her eyes at me or gets frustrated at every little thing I do. She once spat out something in Russian, after I'd made some funny comment trying to get her to smile, that sounded like an insult or a curse on my whole bloodline. With it being Russian and all I really couldn't tell. I'm not sure why she hates me so much. I've tried multiple times to become her friend, but each time I do she acts like I'm the worst scum on planet earth. The more I try to make her smile the worse she despises my guts. Whatever, it's not like I need her approval anyway.
         I lean back in my seat, catching the last snippet of what Riles was rambling about before he takes a huge breath, the first he's probably taken since starting his rant.
         The turbulence has been getting increasingly worse by the minute. Thunder booms loudly over the sky, a few flashes of lightning lighting up the ever-growing dimmer sky.
         Riles tumbles onto his seatmate as a strong bit of turbulence rocks the plane. His seatmate grunts cursing. Riles springs up unbothered brushing lint off his jacket.
         A few people screamed at the lighting that had caught them off guard and the turbulence.
         Lilith for the first time all plane ride turns to us. "A storm. Do you think we'll crash? Never to be found again until decades later when a boat accidentally comes upon our wreckage. Then people will theorize about how we died and who we were, maybe even write books on us. But they'll never know the truth, of how terrifying our last moments were alive."
         Lilith scares me sometimes. She has this dark fascination with death, even as a child she was always talking about scary stories or the boogie man, but it got worse after the accident.
         "Nah," Riles cuts in. He knocks a fist against the plane's interior. "This plane is way too sturdy for that, it was made for storms. It is more likely to crash because somebody forgot to do a thorough inspection of it before we took off or some equipment malfunctioned."

(I never finished writing bc I'm currently not writing for this storyline except for some short stories to work out the characters also wrote this a while back so not my best writing and RIP my grammar and spelling - Perci)