Desert Island

“And we also learn to stay away from the Bermuda Triangle!”

“We learn that in kindergarten,” I say with a sigh. “I’m leaving, so you can either hold on until I land in Bermuda or let go and get on with your day.”

She releases my plane, but she’s still looking worried. “Please come back.”

“I’ll be back tonight,” I promise. “We’ll have some drinks and karaoke, just like we planned.”

“And try to find boyfriends?” Her face turns from horrified to hopeful.

Mine turns from hopeful to horrified.

“We’ll see,” I say through gritted teeth.

She finally leaves and I get through my checklist as quickly as I can. I taxi over to the runway and wait for Lenny to wave me onto it.

He laughs as he places the orange baton on his crotch and dry humps the air with his tongue sticking out.

I shake my head at him. “Not funny,” I shout even though my window is closed and he has big noise-canceling headphones on.

Richard disagrees. He’s doubled over laughing.

I wait with my cheeks blushing until he waves me onto the runway and I take off with my horny inflatable passengers in the back.

It’s a beautiful day and an hour later, I’m soaring through the clouds, heading toward Bermuda and wondering if I’ll ever have a real guy to take a photo with.

Is that naked guy in the back the best I can do? Really?

It’s not like I don’t have options. Guys are always coming up to me and Emiko at the bar, but I don’t know… they don’t do anything for me. I just always want them to go away.

I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin. I’ve read a lot of romance books and they always describe meeting the man of your dreams and having a full bodily reaction. Shivers, heart pounding, tingles all over… The only kind of bodily reactions I’ve gotten from a man are sensations of disgust and discomfort.

I can’t just force it out. I can’t pretend that I’m interested when I’m not. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m giving up.

I’ll be single forever. I don’t care. Who needs a man anyway?

The plane suddenly jerks up and down and I gasp as I cling onto the yoke. What the hell was that?

I glance at the GPS and I’m still on track. I’m well past The Bahamas and deep into what Emiko calls the Bermuda Triangle.

More turbulence hits.

She’d be freaking out right now if she was sitting next to me. I smile, but that smile quickly fades when more violent turbulence smacks my plane around.

“What the hell?” I mutter when I look at my controls. The dials are spinning around like crazy. Nothing is making sense.

“No!” I gasp when my GPS flickers and then shuts off.

I turn it back on and wait for it to reboot. My plane is getting thrown around like a rag doll as I grip onto the yoke with my heart pounding.

Okay, this is not normal.

The artificial horizon says I’m flying upside down. My compass is spinning like crazy. My airspeed indicator says I’m stopped.

“This is impossible…”

My GPS screen lights up, but it says ‘temporarily unavailable.’

“What the fuck?”

I stare at the screen in shock as my plane bounces around. How the hell can GPS be unavailable?

“Oh no,” I gasp when my plane really starts moving. It’s being jerked and thrashed around even though the weather is as calm as can be.

I start losing altitude fast.

I’m nosediving toward the water and no matter how hard I pull on the yoke, my plane doesn’t level out.

“No!” I scream as the ocean comes closer and closer.

Was Emiko right? Is the Bermuda Triangle going to take me down? Am I going to die a twenty-four-year-old virgin who has never even been kissed?

Not on my watch!

I grab the yoke and pull it up with a savage grunt. The plane continues diving. My forearms burn, my shoulders ache, but I keep on pulling as hard as I can.

Seconds before I crash into the water, the nose of my plane begins to rise a little. It stops the nosedive, but not the plummeting.

I grit my teeth, squeeze the yoke, and brace myself for impact.

The belly of my plane smashes into the water and I skid across the surface, screaming as my left wing is torn right off.

I’m being whipped around inside as the plane bounces and spins on the water, flying across the ocean like a stone being skipped across a lake.

Skin-crawling crunches and rips tear through my ears. I don’t know what the noises are—my landing gear, the tail of my plane, the other wing—it could be all of them, but it doesn’t really matter. This plane is never getting into the air again.

I’m gasping for air and trying to keep my mind from spiraling as the plane lurches to a stop.