It figures that this would happen a son as we're kind of getting used to living our lives a Dunia and Alicia, though. We just started working the Miami-DC route at the start of March, which looked like it would be pretty nice - it's the longest one we've had yet, so there aren't quite so many flights needed for a 40-hour week, and even though the schedule often sticks us with a two or three-hour layover, the other attendant's have pointed out that the airport is on a regular Metro line rather than so far away from the city center that you're fighting traffic on a bus (it'll be hilarious if I go back to South Dakota as someone who hates to drive, considering everything) and the food is supposedly fantastic, and all the museums at the Smithsonian are free, so you can kill time there pretty well. I've gotten pretty used to the job and all the girl stuff, and my Spanish has gotten to the point of almost being understandable (it was actually one of my best classes in high school, but when you consider that I learned it from textbooks that assumed you'd be going to Spain, and practiced with the mostly-Mexican migrants who worked on farms, Dunia's Cuban-American family sounds almost completely different!) although kind of quietly, while Lambert has started flirting with the pilots now that he's mostly over his fear of flying, saying that Alicia is on the wrong side of 30 and he's trying to give the next Alicia a head start.
Anyway, we were just getting off a pretty late flight when we were meet at the gate by a couple guys in suits and sunglasses, who flashed badges to identify themselves as the FBI, saying they had a few questions.
We actually didn't think it was Inn-related at first. Part of the training materials was actually about working with the Feds, especially air marshals, and how to spot potential hijackers or possible human traffickers, and another part said to immediately call a union lawyer in a situation like this. I guess flight attendant's get talked into helping smugglers a lot, because we can get past security with just a quick baggage check, and the salary is low enough for it to be tempting. But by the same token, cops often see young people who can be intimidated into saying we did something we didn't or held long enough to miss out next flight and disrupt a travel for a while bunch of people.
And on top of that, while I admit that Ma raised me to cooperate with police whenever asked, Dunia and her fellow dark-skinned Latina friends disagree.
So I clammed up until the union lawyer showed up, but he was only there long enough to tell me that since this wasn't work-related, he couldn't represent me, and advised me to find someone else. They let me call Dunia's father, who I figured must have a lawyer to handle the business aspects of his garage, and an hour later he showed up, and that's when they finally asked me if I knew Toby Watson and Lambert Allen.
We kind of had a plan for this - back in September, I texted Ma about this exciting opportunity to join the crew of this research boat in the South Seas, where phone and internet service would be kind of spotty. Since then, we've been following their progress on social media and occasionally reposting images with our own captions to keep the illusion up, answering our email, that sort of thing. It was kind of thin, but we kind of figured our parents wouldn't look too closely, because Lambert occasionally does things like this on a whim and Ma talks about me getting out of our dying hometown, and this looked pretty good to her.
Apparently, we weren't tracking it too closely, because there was some sort of emergency a few days ago where the ship had to get towed to port, and when my mother got an alert about it, she immediately contacted them to find out if I was okay, only they'd never heard of me. She got in touch with Lambert's dad, who was connected enough to get the FBI involved, and I guess my phone's GPS readings said it was near the Cortes house, and they had pictures from traffic cams showing "Alicia & Dunia" in Lambert's car, driving from Maine to Florida. Once they discovered we had stayed in the Inn, and so had Alicia and Dunia, they smelled a rat.
My instinct was to try and come up with an explanation on the spot, which I guess would have been pretty dumb, as I figured Lambert must be in the same situation and there was no way our explanations would match, but the lawyer pointed out that if there was anything there, they would have come to the house with a search warrant, and asked how I should know where Alicia got the car. Basically, he gave me every instruction he could to shut up, and I did, even as the agents said that they actually liked Alicia more for this, and if I would just tell them what she'd been up to, that would let them find Toby and Lambert faster and give everybody closure, and they'd remember who tried to help.
I guess that sort of stunned me into silence - does everybody, including Ma, think I'm dead? I wanted to protest, say I wasn't, but I knew I couldn't explain how I knew that and being so sure would just look suspicious. Of course, I must have looked suspicious anyway, because lying to the FBI and the lawyer Dunia's father sent down is not easy and I must have had every tell possible, but I guess that I was lucky that I froze in a "say nothing" way, instead of accidentally revealing too much.
They eventually let us go, and I kind of started getting paranoid about whether Lambert had clammed up the same way or if maybe he'd tried to throw suspicion away from himself/Alicia and onto me/Dunia. Dunia's father was really scared when I got home, but also hopping mad that when some gringos went missing in Maine, they immediately looked for the nearest brown folks to blame. I didn't mention the phone. I should probably find a way to get rid of it, I guess, but now I'm kind of worried that if I step out the door with it, somebody will grab me to prove I have it.
So there it is: I'm apparently a suspect in my own disappearance. It feels like this must happen every winter, but I've got no idea what to do. Anyone else been in this situation?
-Toby/Dunia
