I awoke gasping for breath, and put my hand on my chest upon feeling how strongly my heart was pounding inside it. This affirmation that I was alive was further helped by the sight I caught immediately afterward of another jet parked outside, and the airport personnel driving one of those luggage carts around, and the unseen roar of other jets passing by overhead.

A loud beeping sound startled me, but the voice that followed didn't. "Welcome to Los Angeles," a stewardess said, as dozens of passengers, including the boy sitting next to me, all unbuckled their seatbelts in unison.

"It was all a dream," I said out loud, primarily to myself.

"Yeah," the boy replied. "Sleeping tends to do that to people."

"The plane didn't crash. We're all still alive."

"I probably would've remembered if we weren't."

"I'm not talking to you."

"If that means I can listen to all the Nickelback I want, I'm okay with that."

The two of us begrudgingly made peace as we waited for our row to be cued to leave the plane, and on the way out to the terminal I sighed and smiled as the warm sun of California, of home, shined down onto me through windows and vents. Upon arriving at the baggage claim area, my joy was doubled when I saw that my parents weren't the only ones waiting for me there; Holly was with them, too. It was hard for me to decide whom to hug first, but someone had to get the shorter end of the stick, and it ended up being Mom and Dad.

"No offense," I remarked to them while my arms were wrapped around Holly. "I mean, I see you every day, right?"

"Not me," Dad said. The bright blue NASA logo on the breast of his shirt served as a flashy reminder of the astronaut studliness that had ended up being the undoing of their marriage and thus the catalyst of our separation across states.

I hugged Dad next to make up for this slight, and then Mom last.

"You have no idea what I've been through this past week," I told them as we began walking to the conveyer belt to pick up my suitcase.

"You gained psychic powers," Holly replied. Mom and Dad did a double take when they heard this. "Well, it sure seemed that way when we talked on the phone."

"How's that bruise doing?" I asked.

As she bended her arm to look at said bruise, Holly said, "Bruisy."

"And how's that reconciliation going?" I continued, this time directing my question towards Mom and Dad, who cleared their throats a little. "Am I coming home to a clean house, or should I start panicking?"

"You can always move in with me," Holly said.

"Nothing's changed, Claire," Mom answered. "Wally's going back to Houston soon, and won't be back again until Thanksgiving, as always."

I suddenly spotted my suitcase moving on the conveyer belt, and rushed to grab it while Mom continued talking.

"I know you want us to get back together, and sometimes we'd like that, too, but the fact of the matter is, it's probably never going to happen."

"At least you two still see each other occasionally," Holly said. "I've still yet to have an experience where my Mom and Dad even talk to each other that didn't turn out to be a dream."

"I thought you and Mark hated Pam," Dad said, as we left the baggage claim and stepped outside on our way to the parking lot. "And I mean hated."

"We do," Holly said. "And she deserves whatever she has coming to her."

"Considering this is Pam we're talking about," Dad muttered under his breath, mostly to Mom but still just loud enough for Holly and I hear, "she probably has a lot coming to her…" Mom nudged him in the side to shut him up, but the doubling of his entendre was not lost on us: we were twelve. We'd seen and heard worse things, after all—in my case, unimaginably worse things.

While we waited for the light to change so we could cross the street, I watched the cars and shuttles zooming by, and having lived through that escape from the hospital and subsequently the cops, I found myself reliving in my head the horror of the ordeal. I'd learned that a vehicle enclosed in metal casing traveling at several tens of miles per hour could protect you, or kill you, depending on the circumstances.

"But if I could go back in time and change things," Holly said just as the light changed from red to green, signaling us to cross, "I would."