Before Takeoff
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Sun Is Also a Star meets Jumanji when two teens meet and fall in love during a layover-gone-wrong at the Atlanta airport in this thrilling new novel from the author of Let's Get Lost!
James and Michelle find themselves in the Atlanta airport on a layover. They couldn't be more different, but seemingly interminable delays draw them both to a mysterious flashing green light--and each other.
Where James is passive, Michelle is anything but. And she quickly discovers that the flashing green light is actually... a button. Which she presses. Which may or may not unwittingly break the rules of the universe--at least as those rules apply to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.
Before they can figure up from down, strange, impossible things start happening: snowstorms form inside the B terminal; jungles sprout up in the C terminal; and earthquakes split the ground apart in between. And no matter how hard they try, it seems no one can find a way in or out of the airport. James and Michelle team up to find their families and either escape the airport, or put an end to its chaos--before it's too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Using an omniscient third-person narrator, Alsaid's (Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak) speculative airport adventure reimagines an ordinary layover in Atlanta. Sparks fly when Latinx-cued James, 16, meets French and Thai Michelle, 18, while passing the time by inspecting a mysterious blinking green button on the terminal wall. Unknown to James, Michelle curiously presses the button and, soon after, a power surge causes flight delays, putting travelers on edge. Waiting for their flights, the teens wander the airport in a pseudo–first date filled with philosophical conversation about imminent adulthood, past regrets, and future plans. Their initially lighthearted reaction to the disturbance ("I hope it lasts all night. Like one big slumber party") turns panicked when a second surge leaves the airport without power. Chaos ensues as people loot stores and form disgruntled mobs, and myriad surreal calamities, such as indoor blizzards and frightening earthquakes, begin surfacing across the terminals. The urgent external situations parallel the pair's internal fears and uncertainties while maneuvering disaster and searching for their families. Alsaid's ominous, high-stakes narrative steadily creeps toward a gripping resolution, balancing suspense, fantasy, drama, and cinematic romance for a multilayered read. Ages 12–up.
