My Girlfriend Vanished at 30,000 Feet ,Then I SmiledChapter 1

I was bringing my girlfriend home to meet my parents for the holidays. After the plane took off, I went to use the restroom.

When I came back, she was gone from the seat beside me.

I flagged down a flight attendant. She told me I'd boarded alone.

I asked the other passengers. They all said there had never been anyone sitting next to me.

But I had boarded that plane with my girlfriend. I knew I had.

She'd just peeled an orange for me, told me it would be waiting when I got back from the restroom.

How could she simply vanish?

I stared at the peeled orange sitting on her seat and demanded they search the cargo hold and the cockpit.

My shouting forced an emergency landing at the nearest airport.

Airport police boarded the plane and tore it apart, top to bottom. They didn't find my girlfriend. They couldn't even find a record that she existed.

They contacted my parents. My parents said I'd always been single, that I'd never had a girlfriend at all.

In the end, I was locked in a psychiatric facility. The other patients beat me to death.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I was supposed to bring my girlfriend home to meet my parents.

——

"Ernest Fox, what are you spacing out for? It's boarding time. Come on, let's go."

Amy Pruitt waved two boarding passes in the air, smiling at me.

Looking at that warm, gentle smile, a violent shudder ripped through my body.

I'd been reborn.

I was twenty-seven. Amy and I had been together for three full years. I'd decided to use the holiday trip to bring her home and introduce her to my parents.

I never could have imagined that this one decision would make her vanish without a trace and cost me my life.

Going over everything that had happened in my previous life, I still couldn't make sense of any of it.

I couldn't understand how Amy, a living, breathing person, could simply disappear mid-flight.

I couldn't understand why the flight attendants and passengers, who had watched us board together with their own eyes, all insisted in unison that they'd never seen Amy.

I couldn't understand why my parents, who had always doted on me, who knew full well I'd been dating Amy for three years, told the police I'd never had a girlfriend.

"Ernest, you look terrible. Are you feeling okay?"

Amy was watching me, concern written all over her face.

My heart ached.