A SCREAM TEARS from my throat, and Marisol presses her shaking fingers to my lips.

"Shh, shh, shh, be quiet, it's okay! There's nothing to worry about! We're gonna be fine!" She's near hysterics.

Across the aisle Ezra and Dahlia shoot us a glance, though they both seem nearly as frazzled.

"What's wrong?" asks Dahlia.

"Are y'all okay?" asks Ezra.

Marisol and I are clinging to each other. She's in tears, shaking so hard I fear she might break apart. Her face is completely white. She's hyperventilating, each breath coming as a frantic gasp. And yet she's the one comforting me.

Other than never having been in a plane before, what do I have to be afraid of? Absolutely nothing. Marisol has everything to be afraid of. The last time she was in one of these strange flying chariots, it nearly killed her.

I should be the one that's comforting her.

"Marisol, take a deep breath." I brush her hair down with my fingers, trying to be as soothing as my mother was to me, when I was a child. "I won't let anything happen to you. If this plane tries to crash, I'll pull my sword on it."

A small burst of laughter bubbles forth out of her tears—not nervous laughter, but real, genuine laughter; a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. "Please tell me you don't still have one on you."

A woman has appeared in the aisle beside us. "Girls, are you alright? We heard a scream."

Marisol waves her away, brushing away tears. "Yes, yes. We're just nervous flyers. Sorry 'bout that."

The woman nods. "Let me know if there's anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable." Then she disappears.

We spend the rest of the flight like that, clutching one another, petting each other's hair and mumbling words of comfort. When we touch down in Istanbul—Dahlia and Ezra singing the song again, though this time Marisol doesn't join them—separating myself from her feels like removing a fifth limb. I remember that my legs exist, and can move, as we gather our bags and leave the airplane.

If I didn't know any better, I would not believe that we had moved anywhere at all. The Istanbul airport looks nearly identical to the one in Athens, with the addition of many Turkish (or so I'd assume) signs. But there is something different here that I don't know how to explain—the unexplainable, the nuances. The air here lays different on my tongue. The way that the people are walking is different. The way the human chatter blends together sounds different in my ears. The very molecules that surround me rub different against my skin.

For three hours we're stuck in the Istanbul Ataturk Airport while we wait for our plane to arrive. During this time, we get food and browse the shops. Eventually we find our gate and settle in. As Marisol, Dahlia, and Ezra teach me more about pop culture, I watch the planes out the windows, and the arid land beyond.

Once the three hours are up, we get back onto the plane, which looks the same, and smells the same, and, for all intents and purposes, is the same. Marisol and I sit together again, with Dahlia and Ezra at the two window seats and us in the middle. She seems calmer as she adjusts herself, opening up the complementary blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders.

"This is gonna be a long-ass flight," she tells me. "Eleven hours. Get comfy. I'm gonna show you so many movies."

"What's a movie?"

I place the packet from my seat on my lap, running my hand over the smooth, see-through cover. I pull at it and it tears, easy and jagged. Inside there is a scratchy blue blanket like Marisol's, a small white pillow, a strange black thing, and a smaller packet made of the same material as the first—this one contains two round black blobs.

"They're like plays, but for TV," Marisol explains. "It's, like, recorded, so the actors don't have to reenact it every time someone wants to watch it. And we can all watch it, anywhere in the world at any time, however many times we want, all at the same time."

"How does that work?"

"I dunno."

I show her the strange black thing and the two black blobs. "What are these?"

"That is an eye mask. You put it around your face—like this." She grabs hold of it, and slides it over my eyes. While it blots out most of the world, I can still see slivers of light around the edges. I don't like it. I rip it off and hand it to her to keep. "So you can sleep when the lights are still on. And these are earplugs. You put them in your ears and they block out most of the noise. So if there's a baby crying, or people talking real loud, you can block all that out."

I hand her those as well. If there's a baby crying, I want to try to help the parents; if there are people talking loudly, something might be wrong, and I want to be able to listen in.

"I have another question," I say.

"Of course you do."

"What were you doing in Greece?"

"My parents and Dahlia's bought us—and my older brother, Kennedy, to chaperone, 'cause even though we're both eighteen my mom still thinks we're little kids—the tickets as a graduation present."

"Oh." I wait for her to say more, to say what they graduated from, to answer the Big Question so that I don't have to ask it. But she doesn't. So I try to prompt her. "Your brother, is he...?"

From her expression alone I know the answer to my unasked question. Except, blinking tears from her eyes, she tells me no, he isn't, he couldn't be.

"How—? Was he not in the crash?"

"He was, but—he just isn't, okay? Because if he was I would know. I would—I would feel something. I'm a little bit psychic. I'd know if he was dead. I wouldn't just feel—nothing. There would be something. I would know."

I watched my best friend die.

I was standing back-to-back with him, protecting the parts of him he could not see. It was a mock battle; we were fighting our own, all fellow students. A spear to the chest was all it took. Since it wasn't even actual war, his grave isn't marked. Only those who fall in combat—or childbirth—are deserving of marked graves.

Sometimes I still do not realize that he is dead. Once, recently, I woke up from a dream about him and ran to what used to be his home, eager to tell him about it. I did not realize my mistake until his mother answered the door. She broke into tears when she saw me.

Nothing that anyone has ever said to me even began to fill the hole his death left in my chest. What was it that I would have wanted them to tell me?

"You'll see him again," I promise her. "One day. You'll reunite in Hades with everyone you've lost and everyone you'll lose."

"But he's not dead."

"Then maybe he isn't and you'll see him again next Tuesday."

"Not maybe. He isn't."

As we talked, the plane has started to move. Now, as Marisol speaks, it lifts off the ground. For me, this second time is not nearly as frightening as the first. I know what to expect, and therefore don't fear it.

Maybe Marisol is the same way, as she's calmer now, much calmer. Or maybe she's gotten so focused on her brother she doesn't have time to remember why she was so afraid.

I need to keep her occupied, to keep her mind off this eleven-hour flight.

"You say you're a little bit psychic. Why do you think so?"

"Oh, I... sometimes I can tell when things are going to happen. Like, I just get this gut feeling, you know? I can always figure out who's gonna get cast as who the night before the cast list goes up. And, like, with the crash I just got this terrible feeling beforehand, all this dread shooting through my stomach. I also—I swear to God—I literally predicted Charles Manson's death. I swear, I have the receipts to back it up and everything. I was texting Dahlia about it the night before he died."

"If you lived on Apollonisi, we'd call you a witch."

"Oh, no, not me. I think I can just read vibes really well or something. If anyone's a witch, it's Dahlia. She, like, does tarot readings and believes in, like, crystals and, like, all that. But do you wanna see something witchy?"

Could Marisol be Apollo's child? Does she already have the gift of prophecy? But how can I ignore Ezra's self-healing wounds? And what about Dahlia, and how even Marisol, her best friend, thinks she's a witch? Couldn't that be a sign?

I turn to Marisol, half-expecting her to predict my death. Then, to my surprise, she shows me the little people in the screen again.

"Did you trap them in there? Marisol, how do we—?"

"No, honey, no. It's TV, it's a movie, see? Captain Marvel. Here, put one of my earbuds in. Come watch it with me."