Free Nothing But the Truth by Justina Chen Page B

into keeping us alive? Obviously not, because Anne nudges my elbow away from her side, gently at first, but when I don’t budge, with more force.
    “It’s just turbulence,” says Anne, who looks annoyingly like she’s not at all bothered that the plane shudders with an uncontrollable fever.
    She couldn’t be more wrong.
    “Just turbulence” is how I feel when I think about Mark (which I try not to do). “Just turbulence” is knowing that the only Asian guy who’s made my palms sweat is sitting somewhere behind us on the plane, knows I wear a bra so padded it could double as protective gear for linebackers, and has an undefined relationship with Geek Girl next to me. “Just turbulence” is catching Mama’s eyes fill with tears before she barked one last order at me and then walked side-by-side with Abe away from me. “Just turbulence” is half-wanting to follow them back home.
    Let’s be clear. “Just turbulence” is
not
speeding toward Mother Earth’s hard embrace.
    I wait for Anne to whip out some fabulous fact about gravitational pull, wind drag and the expected time of impact. Instead, she asks, “Do you want a barf bag?” and reaches to the seat pocket in front of her. “You look pale.”
    “So?” I say, too sharply.
    “O-kayyy.” Anne drags out the last syllable as if it’s a hoe,raking through the intractable soil of my rudeness. While I’m starting to regret snapping at her, she bends her turtle-thick neck back down to her lap and opens her book, a romance with a cover of cascading hair (his) and buffed biceps (hers).
    Anne Wong, star student of Lincoln High, is engrossed in smut. Seeing Anne’s nose poked in something other than a literary masterpiece is enough for me to ignore the plane’s last angry bounce. Since I’m short on space with Mr. Big Man bulging into my seat, I lean over and read the words “hardened manhood” and “erect nipples.” Anne’s finger holds her place right above “thrust” and she lifts her eyes. “Do you mind?”
    “Well, I, uh… You read this stuff?”
    “It’s just sex, Patty.”
    Laughter, the kind that makes you cringe because you’re the butt of a joke, slaps me in the face. Anne is shaking like she’s an airplane caught in turbulence. “God, you should see your face,” she says, not bothering to muffle her snorts. She’s so loud, the toddler in front of me peers through the gap between the seats. Anne waves at him and says, “It’s research, OK?”
    “Research? For what?”
    Anne’s hands twitch on her closed book like confiding in me is a risk. “You have to promise that you won’t tell my mom or dad.” She twists her body until she can study my face full-on. “Promise.”
    “All right, all right.” Sheesh, reading a romance novel isn’t a matter of national security, but I could see how it would put a damper on potluck bragging. The only literary T & A worth dropping into conversation was how at just eight, Anne read Tolstoy and Austen.
    Anne breathes in like she’s at the end of a diving board, and then mutters so fast her words slide into each other in their haste to get out of her mouth: “Mrs. Meyers challenged me to write a romance novel. A literary epic, for teens.”
    “What? Why?”
    “College,” she says as if I’m denser than Mrs. Shang’s hard turnip cake. “I’ve always wanted to write one, and she thought it’d make me stand out in the applications.”
    I have to write a Truth Statement, and Anne gets to write True Fiction. The only Truth I see is that this sucks.
    “Well… aren’t you supposed to write what you know?” I ask.
    “Well… how do you know that I don’t know?”
    The shock jock of the wild blue yonder grins just as our cowboy-pilot gets back on the speaker and drawls, “All righty, folks. I’ve found us some smoother air. You can unfasten your seat belts and walk about the cabin.” Buckles release around me, but mine stays firmly in place, strapping me to the relative safety of