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CHAPTER 1

Brittney

My grandfather died in a plane crash. They said he didn’t feel a thing, that the impact and fiery explosion was so great he was annihilated instantly. Burnt to a crisp like a piece of fried chicken.

They didn’t use those words exactly, but they may as well have.

My grandpa had this little piece of shit plane that sounded like a lawn mower. He’d wear earbuds and blast the Beastie Boys, joyriding over the Long Island Sound. When he flew low enough, you could see his mouth moving as he screamed the lyrics. If I closed my eyes, I could still see his mouth gaping wide as he belted out, “Sabotage!”

He was infamous in White Plains, New York. People would pull over on the side of the road to watch the “crazy old man” do his loops and low passes. Sometimes he would purposely wave the wings. Somebody always called the cops, but nothing ever came of it.

Being the smart individual that I was, I never let him take me for a ride. My mother would have killed him—provided we both made it back in one piece so she could finish him off.

My grandpa and I bonded over checkers and dominos, and his nasty habit of sneaking me boxes of Nerds candy when my mom wasn’t looking. But it was more than just that.

Our love of what we called, “old stuff,” knickknacks and sentimental items, ensured we always had things to talk about and that we were always on the hunt for the next cool find to show off to the other.

I had a jar of two-dollar bills and Indian head nickels stashed on my bookcase, remnants of our friendly competition over who would find the most pristine specimen. I had lots of cool stuff to reminisce over and remember the hours we spent together.

But most importantly, my grandpa left me his wedding ring and a gold herringbone chain. It was in his will that the items were to be given to me when he died. He never took them off. As a child, I’d sit on his lap playing with that necklace for hours while he fed me primary-colored candy like I was a baby bird. My mother whipped him with a towel once, smacking me right in the eyeball. To this day, I can still remember the sting.

She never did that again, but he was much more discreet with his illicit candy missions.

As I traipsed through the woods, the box of tiny candy pieces jangled in my pocket, sounding like a container of beads. It couldn’t have been very loud, but the noise was the only thing I heard above the chattering squirrels and squawking grackles. A box of rainbow-colored candy came with me every time I ventured out here, as important to me as my GPS.

The crash site was a very large area, spanning several thousand acres. You wouldn’t think such a small plane could make as big of an impact as it did. I’d gotten a lot of exercise, trekking all over the place through the forest with a metal detector, searching. Now, these woods were as well known to me as my own apartment.

The necklace and ring weren’t on his body when they recovered it. As a rule, when someone was cremated, they removed jewelry and any other metal objects before sticking your corpse in the furnace. Someone would have put them to the side for family, that’s how it was supposed to work. Granted, my grandfather showed up pre-crisped, but the process was the same.

I stopped slugging metal detecting devices around and started relying solely on my eyes, shifting dirt around with my feet, or glancing up at tree branches. What if grandpa’s stuff was just dangling from a branch for years? Nobody ever looks up. It was so easy to miss things if you didn’t pay enough attention.

My friends used to come on my searches with me, Sam and Sophia, before they got tired of all the hiking. Now I just wandered around alone, whenever I had the time. Monday through Thursday, I spent answering phones for a propane company, with an occasional jaunt if I left work early like I had today. But on Fridays and weekends, if I wasn’t sleeping, I was almost always out here.

It’d become my favorite thing to do. It was peaceful, quiet, and sometimes I came across cool things like the foundation of a house or the skeletal remains of a deserted car. At this point, I’d pretty much given up hope of ever finding what I was looking for.

There was nothing left. My friends had abandoned me due to my “obsession,” and I really wasn’t great at making new ones. Ordering my morning coffee at the drive-thru and listening to customer complaints over the cost of propane made up the extent of my socializing. Didn’t most thirty-year-olds have more friends? They tended to have boyfriends or husbands, too.

If I was to meet someone, he’d either have to visit a propane company, carjack me, home invade me or randomly bump into me in the woods. And he’d have to accept that I considered pizza a complete food group, never mind my penchant for wearing all black, all of the time.

My parents were the crunchy granola type that didn’t allow artificial flavors or coloring in the house and got pissed off if you weren’t “happy.” Can’t have any negative vibes getting you down or polluting the atmosphere.

So, naturally, I turned my childhood bedroom into a funeral parlor. I insisted everyone call me Wednesday while I tossed my braids around. That stopped when I was twelve and realized how ridiculous it was.

When I was nineteen, they moved to Australia to simultaneously “find themselves” and save the kangaroos. I hadn’t heard from them since. And I wouldn’t since we weren’t on the same “frequency,” according to mom.

My mind strayed to the past every time I was out here. It was probably the fresh air and quiet that helped me process my emotions. I always felt great afterwards; renewed and refreshed.

Today, I’d gone a different way, one I hadn’t explored and this time, I found something promising to investigate.

The chunk of metal looked like it had been white at one point in time. It was covered with smears of dirt and the material was yellowing. It had some green stains and rust as well. I was no expert but after looking at tons of online photos and finding the few shreds of the plane that I had, I would have bet large sums of money this came directly from Grandpa Daniel’s plane.

Placing the small sheet to the side, I rooted around in the debris, shining my phone’s flashlight on the ground. I used a stick to loosen the soil and dig in, but all I found were some angry worms. They twisted and coiled, trying desperately to get away from the overzealous human that had the nerve to destroy their home.

The jewelry wasn’t there, but I did find a mouse skeleton. Well, part of one. I collected the bones and put them in a plastic pouch, tucking them in my bag. They would go with the rest of the random bones I collected, after I washed and cleaned them.

Resting against a tree trunk, I shucked my backpack off and retrieved my water bottle. I took several long swigs and set my head against the bark before I looked up. There was a shit ton of crows perched in the branches, all of them watching me.

“Did I take your food?” I asked them. “There was nothing left. Just bones.”