Passengers | Edited Version

Chapter One

ONE

I knew that there was something that I forgot to do yesterday.

The feeling had followed me like a shadow all day long, but by the time that I went to bed, I thought it was just some paranoia left over from finally finishing high school and being done with exams for the next year. Now that I'm two steps away from Miss Mariam's back gate, however, I suddenly realize exactly what I was supposed to do.

I was supposed to drop off that pie to the new neighbor.

It's all coming back to me now, even though it's a bit too late for me to actually be able to do anything about it. When I was running late to catch curfew two nights ago, Miss Mariam had caught me for a hurried second with a pie in her hand and told me to bring it to the new girl that rented out the old spot near the water first thing in the morning. Two mornings later and it's still sitting on the top shelf in the fridge, cute little welcome note and all. Well, shit.

Knowing just how Miss Mariam would react if she found out that I didn't do as she said, I start to turn around back towards my house, but my honorary aunt has already spotted me. Smiling, but with her eyes narrow, she says, "Eleanora! What are you doing over there and not in here?"

She makes her way towards me, rising from her former stance of kneeling over her prized flower beds and I can't help but notice the amount of dirt on her hands. She's always been such a messiest gardener in the world. Ever since she first got into the hobby when I was real little, everyone could always tell when she had been tending to her garden; she'd leave a trail of dirt everywhere she walked and piles of weeds would be scattered all around the backyard for days on end before she cleaned it all up. Even after all these years, she hasn't changed her ways.

"Nothing!" I say the words too quickly and I know that my cover is blown in less than the five seconds that it takes me to get the words out because Miss Mariam narrows her dark eyes at me. "I'm just coming over to help you out with the gardening like I always do on Saturday afternoons. I just had to tie my shoe. Everything is completely fine!"

"Uh huh," she says. She doesn't mean it, but she doesn't seem to want to particularly press the issue any further.

The two of us head to her backyard and out of the corner of my eye, I see her quickly glance at me with her head tilted slightly. From this angle, her age isn't as apparent as it normally is. She would hate for me to even mention it out loud, but she's more than thirty years my senior and the constantly exhaustion of her busy life makes the fact obvious. The South Carolina summer heat causes a little bit of sweat to pool at various places on her aging face, creating a hazy effect on the familiar age and laughter lines. Oddly enough, the wrinkles there are what makes Miss Mariam look as good as she does. Friendlier perhaps is a better word. It's a visual sign of the number of years that she's been on this planet and the amount of wisdom those years have given her.

I don't say it out loud, instead choosing to focus on shielding my eyes from the violent sun and noting where the latest round of weeds have started to make their debut around the edges of the barbed fence. Even though I help her tend to her garden every week on the dot, the greenery never fails to come back with a vengeance and today is no different.

"What do you even feed your lawn? This amount of upkeep up can't be normal." I mumble the words as I start to make my rounds of ripping the little nuances out of the ground, but I've never been good at lowering my voice on any occasion, so Miss Mariam shoots me a glare.

"Miracle-Go," she proudly says. "And do you not remember my tomatoes from last spring? And my blue wild indigos! They were that big for a reason, darling. Weeds are just the price to pay for the size of my plants. You'll understand when you get to be my age and gardening is the only thing you have left to enjoy."