He finally stops looking at me and starts flying the damn plane. It’s what I’m here for, after all, and when his eyes stop darting back to me at last I can finally relax a little, lean my head back against the seat and think about everything else that’s tearing me into tiny little nervous wreck pieces right now.

For example, I don’t even like flying on small commercial jets, and this plane is tiny. I feel like I should be pedaling something to make the engine run properly, and I’m supposed to be heading over the Canadian Rockies in this thing?

Or I could worry about the fact that I don’t have the fifteen thousand dollars I told Wilder I’d pay him, that he somehow didn’t demand up front. But then again, that kind of makes sense — for being the worst person I’ve ever met, for someone who chewed me up and spit me out before I was even eighteen, he’s always been oddly trusting.

When we get to Yellowknife, he’s gonna be pissed. But all we had was a handshake agreement. He can’t sue me, right?

Besides, before he knows it I’ll finally be off at the research station, just me, a couple other scientists and herd after herd of musk oxen to observe, and both of those species — scientists and musk oxen — tend not to be too loquacious.

Or, at least, scientists tend to skip the small talk, which is a blessing to someone like me who can never think of a single thing to say about the weather, even in the arctic.

What on earth am I supposed to say, anyway? Yes, it’s cold? That seems pointless.

Hey, the sun is shining, but it’s cold anyway? Why would you say that to someone who clearly already knows both of those things?

Scientists, on the other hand, are unlikely to discuss the weather but could tell me for hours about their paleoclimatology research breakthroughs, like what core ice samples and fossilized tree rings tell us about volcanic eruptions in pre-history.

That I’m interested in. That seems like information worth knowing and imparting.

“Buckle up!” Wilder shouts behind himself, over the roar of the engine.

I’m already buckled — have I mentioned that this tiny plane is making me so nervous that my hands are shaking? — but I double-check my harness, tugging it tight over my winter coat and the seventeen layers I’ve got underneath.

We taxi out of the hangar slowly, onto the runway. We’re pretty far from the commercial jets, but the Solaris airport is pretty tiny so we’re not that far.

Up front, Wilder’s flipping switches, checking dials, talking into a headset and guiding the plane’s steering apparatus all at once, doing everything with a natural, casual dexterity that… well, it suits him.

There’s something soothing about it, watching him do all this plane-flying-stuff like it’s second nature. And there’s something different, too, because back when I knew him even though he was the star of our high school football team — of course he was — he was still a teenaged guy, and graceful isn’t a term I’d use on him.

It is now, though. There’s an odd careless grace in the way he’s doing all this, his hands thicker and rougher than I remember them, a few small scars on the backs.

We turn. We taxi. I frantically, rhythmically, obsessively run through mental lists of everything I need, everything I have, everything I could possibly want. Just going somewhere on a weekend trip makes me anxious, and I’m headed off to four months in the Arctic where the only flights in or out will be for emergencies.

Everything about this feels strange, dreamlike. I can’t believe that I’m actually going to the Arctic for four months, where there will be hardly any other people. Even though I made about a thousand lists, I’m still certain that I forgot something, and the thought gives me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s not like the middle of nowhere has a drug store I can just run to.

Plus, I’m in a tiny plane — four seats and cargo — with Wilder Fucking Flint. That alone is more nightmare than dream, though at least he hasn’t said anything too horrible or nasty to me yet.

He will. I’m sure he will when he finds out I don’t have fifteen thousand dollars, not that the son of Solaris’s very own resort mogul needs a measly fifteen grand. I’m sure he drives a car that costs five times that much. He’s probably spent fifteen grand on skis or something and not even noticed.

“Roger that,” he says up front, speaking into a headset. “I’ve got visual confirmation that the secondary runway is clear for takeoff…”

I look out the window, pushing my glasses up my nose even though they’re already all the way up.

What if he’s taking me because he thought of another way to humiliate me?

The thought creeps into my head, unbidden. There’s a mirror on the dashboard and I can see his ocean-blue eyes scanning the ground in front of us, not paying me any attention at all.

That’s ridiculous, I tell myself. No one takes someone else on a plane flight just to do that. Right?

Wilder says something else into his headset, and then suddenly, he’s looking right at me in that mirror, his gaze oddly intense.

It was always oddly intense. Ten years ago, he used to look at me all the time, his gaze oddly intense just like this.

“Ready, Squeaks?” he asks, his voice low.

My heart drops into my stomach at the nickname, and I’m barely even aware of what he’s saying.

Squeaks. I haven’t heard that in years, and suddenly everything is rushing back, spinning wildly out of place, and I feel like I’m stuck in a waking dream that I can’t leave.

“No,” I say, my voice trembling and high-pitched.

He pushes a button, moves a lever.

“You know there’s only one answer to that question at this point, don’t you?” he says, his mouth forming itself into a cruel half-smile.

There’s a handle on the inside of the plane, next to me, and I grab it and pull, push, twist, but it’s just a handle. There’s no door.

“Let me out,” I say, my voice closer to normal. “I changed my mind. I don’t care about the fucking musk oxen any more, I can’t do this.”

The plane starts moving, rolling forward.

“Do what?” he asks, his voice controlled and casual.

“Be in this plane with you,” I say, my knuckles whitening on the handle as we go faster and faster. “Stop. Come on.”

The plane doesn’t stop. It’s going faster and faster, and even though for a split second I think about somehow getting to the front seat, opening the door and barrel rolling onto the runway, I know it’s a stupid thought and there’s no way I’d survive it.

“I thought you had important research,” he says, his eyes back on the runway as it slides by, disappearing underneath the plane. “Aren’t you going up there to save the world or some shit, Squeaks?”

“Don’t call me that,” I say through gritted teeth.

“You used to like it.”

“I don’t anymore.”

One single flash of memory: the hot tub in one of the Flint Resorts. It was outdoors, drizzling, the cold air a contrast to the steaming water as Wilder Flint hovered over me, fingers sliding up my thigh, lips against my ear.

Come on, Squeaks.

“It was a good nickname,” he says, and the plane lifts from the ground.

There’s a single moment where I feel weightless, between the takeoff in the tiny plane and the fact that I feel like I’m dreaming, hallucinating, experiencing some night terror or something where Wilder’s back in my life and calling me Squeaks and we’re alone together while he torments me.

The plane rises, and I turn my head to the window, closing my eyes as we fight gravity. I hate this part of flying in a real plane, and this tiny thing makes me feel like we’re dangling on a string, likely to be dropped at any moment.

“You know the most dangerous part of flying, don’t you?” Wilder asks.

“Yes.”

“Takeoff and landing,” he goes on, like I didn’t say anything.

I breathe deep, eyes still closed, feeling every single bump and lift and drop as the plane rises and rises.

“I know,” I say, because of course I know that. Everyone knows that.

“But especially takeoff,” he goes on, casually. “It’s so easy to climb too slow, ram into something, climb too fast and stall out…”

“Fly the damn plane and stop talking to me,” I snap.

I swear to God the plane wobbles in response, and my stomach clenches.

“Whoops,” he says. “Better stay buckled, there might be some turbulence.”

“Don’t do that,” I say through gritted teeth, sheer terror winning out over shyness for once.

“I didn’t make the crosswind,” he says, voice still cool as can be. “Flying’s dangerous, you know. If humans were meant to fly we’d have wings.”

He looks back at me in that mirror, eyes the color of an alpine lake and just as cold. I don’t think alpine lakes are generally wicked, though. Bodies of water don’t tend to have moral attributes.

“It’s dangerous because you’re making it wobble in the air and you’re likely to get us both killed just to prove some stupid point,” I say, my mouth running faster than my brain.

“That’s the most you’ve said all day, Squeaks,” he says, eyes ahead again, darting between the windshield and the vast array of instruments on the plane’s dashboard. “I’d say it’s the most noise I’ve ever heard you make, only…”

I don’t take the bait. Even if I haven’t seen Wilder “World’s Biggest Fucking Asshole” Flint in ten years, I’m not stupid and I know what he’s doing.

“Just fly and quit fucking around before you tear a wing off or something,” I say, my heart a drum line in my chest, thudding and thumping and stuttering.

“It takes a little more than a bad crosswind to tear the wings off an airplane,” Wilder says.

The plane wobbles again, and I grip the handle even harder. He’s not looking at me, but I can see his eyes flash in that stupid mirror, the barest hint of a smirk across his face, and I know he did it on purpose.

“Hell, I’ve done barrel rolls in this baby before,” he says. “Maybe once we get out of radar range I’ll get you up here and teach you how to get out of a nosedive if you ever need to.”

I know he’s just messing with me, but the thought of being in a plane as it dives, intentional or not, makes my chest tighten until I feel like I can’t breathe.

“What do you mean, out of radar range?” I ask, just to distract myself from the thought of plummeting like a rock toward the earth.

“I mean the dead air between one control tower and another,” he says.

I frown, because I don’t like that either. I know I’m going way, way, way up there in Canada, but I figured that at least until Yellowknife we’d be in constant communication with… well, someone.

“There are towns between here and Yellowknife,” I point out.

“Not that many.”

“But there are.”

His eyes flick back to me.

“You nervous about being all alone with me on this tiny little plane?” he asks, his voice sharp and mocking. “You used to like being alone with me, Squeaks.”

My hands go cold, and my face goes hot. I turn my head away, looking out the window of the airplane. It’s streaked with water droplets as he heads through a cloud, everything bouncing more than I’d like.

Wilder’s even making the weather cry, I think. It’s a stupid thought. The weather obviously has no emotions and would be unlikely to care about the actions of one human even if it did have them.

“No,” I lie.

I force my voice to be still, calm, and I keep staring out the window for a long moment as I figure out what I’m going to say next.

The moment stretches out, gets longer. It’s not like talking has ever been my strong point and neither has Wilder.

Don’t let him get to you. He’s always known what buttons to push, how to get you to react. Mom always said he had a blood instinct, like a mountain lion or something else ruthless.

Mom says a lot of things. She believes in astrology and spirit animals. She refuses to do anything important when Mercury goes into retrograde, so when I was in school I always had to explain to teachers why her student-teacher conferences couldn’t be the same week as everyone else’s.

But she’s right sometimes. Like about Wilder.

Suddenly, I realize that I haven’t said anything in a couple of minutes. I’ve just been staring out the window, thinking, practicing for when I finally do say something.

“You know—”

I scrunch my toes in my boots for bravery, then cut Wilder off.

“I’d appreciate it if you could simply make the plane flight I’m paying you to make and stop harassing me,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “I really just want to get to Yellowknife so that I can go about my research, and if that means I have to be in this plane with you for hours on end, so be it, but I’d prefer that we not discuss anything in the meantime.”

Wilder looks at me in that mirror. Just looks, his eyes flicking back and forth between me, the instrument panels, and the windshield which is light gray and still streaked with rain.

“Do you think people can change?” he asks, his voice low and quiet.

I’m not even sure I heard him right over the roar of the engine, but he watches me until I answer.

“Not really,” I say, meeting his gaze.

“Yeah, me either,” he says, and looks dead ahead. “I’ll tell you when we’re approaching our first fuel stop.”

Just like that, our conversation is over.