They boarded. Theo went up first, counting the steps out loud, all six of them, and then again from the top. Celeste went up last. She took one of the two seats at the back of the cabin. She always took the back now. She liked to see where they'd been.
Before he went forward, Walt Ferris stopped in the aisle beside her, stooping under the low ceiling, with Theo's spiral logbook in one hand.
"He's added a section," Walt said. "Started it after the surgery. Asked me to fill it in." He opened the notebook and turned it so she could see.
It was a page ruled into columns in Theo's careful hand. FLIGHT. DATE. CAPTAIN. FIRST OFFICER. PASSENGERS. And at the far right, a narrow column, headed in capitals: BEHAVIOR.
On the line for Flight 4, in the passenger column, someone had written Celeste. And under BEHAVIOR, in Walt's square, upright hand: Unsatisfactory.
Below it was a fresh line. FLIGHT 7—Theo's favorite number, she thought, and wondered whether Walt had arranged that or the universe had. Today's date. CAPTAIN WALT. FIRST OFFICER DANA. FIRST OFFICER THEO. Passengers: Marcus. Celeste.
The behavior column on her line was empty.
"We'll see," Walt said. He took a pen from his shirt pocket, clipped it inside the cover, and went forward into the cockpit.
The door came up. The engines came up, filling the cabin with the sound of the inside of a seashell. Through the open curtain Celeste could see Theo in the front seat nearest the cockpit, leaning toward the pilots, blue headphones pushed back off one ear, both hands free, reciting the before-takeoff checklist in a high clear voice while Walt said "Check" after every item. She could see the back of Marcus's head in the club seat, turned toward the cockpit, his shoulders loose.
The jet turned onto the runway. Held. Leaned forward and ran.
Celeste held the blue folder flat on her knees with both hands. As the wheels left the ground and the earth fell away beneath them into the clean bright morning, she found that she was humming, low and steady, under the engines. And up front, through the open curtain, a small voice found the same note, and held it, all the way up.