FLIGHT RISK

DAYS BEFORE I’M expected to fly, a familiar anxiety starts to churn in my gut. I get moody.

- Illustrations by Kyle Hilton

Then moodier still. As my departure creeps closer, I begin trying to figure out if I really have to travel, gaming the odds of canceling: Can the work be done without going to L.A.? How mad will my friends be if I don't make it? Will my niece cry if I blow off the family trip? The day before my flight, dread sets in, and instead of doing something useful, like packing, I’ll enact my own obsessive-compulsive-style protocol. I check Turbli, a turbulence-forecast website, and if moderate turbulence is predicted, I'll try to move my flight or, irrationally, incur credit-card debt to upgrade myself to first class so I can panic in peace.

At the airport, I look for omens. I call my mother to say “good-bye”—she has no idea I mean the big good-bye. By the time I get to my seat, my brain has gone full Final Destination. Suddenly, I’m Devon Sawa anticipating all the different means of disaster. I fixate on noises (What's that grinding?), smells (Is that gas?), and whether the person next to me seems particularly susceptible to succumbing to calamity (I didn’t say it made sense). I want to run down the aisle screaming “Get off the plane!” but instead I enter into a sort of trance state, unable to really speak or move, as I imagine, not death exactly, but some deathlike thing on the other side of a horrible unknown.