I won’t scream, she told herself fiercely. I won’t scream and embarrass Aunt Vicky. I won’t scream and wake up all the ones who are asleep and scare all the ones who are awake and they’ll all come running and say look at the scared little girl, look at the scared little blind girl.
But now that radar sense — that part of her which evaluated all sorts of vague sensory input and which sometimes did seem to see through the eyes of others (no matter what Miss Lee said) — was adding to her fear rather than alleviating it.
Because that sense was telling her there was nobody within its circle of effectiveness.
Nobody at all.
4
Brian Engle was having a very bad dream. In it, he was once again piloting Flight 7 from Tokyo to LA, but this time the leak was much worse. There was a palpable feeling of doom in the cockpit; Steve Searles was weeping as he ate a Danish pastry.
If you’re so upset, how come you’re eating? Brian asked. A shrill, teakettle whistling had begun to fill the cockpit — the sound of the pressure leak, he reckoned. This was silly, of course — leaks were almost always silent until the blowout occurred — but he supposed in dreams anything was possible.
Because I love these things, and I’m never going to get to eat another one, Steve said, sobbing harder than ever.
Then, suddenly, the shrill whistling sound stopped. A smiling, relieved flight attendant — it was, in fact, Melanie Trevor — appeared to tell him the leak had been found and plugged. Brian got up and followed her through the plane to the main cabin, where Anne Quinlan Engle, his ex-wife, was standing in a little alcove from which the seats had been removed. Written over the window beside her was the cryptic and somehow ominous phrase SHOOTING STARS ONLY. It was written in red, the color of danger.