Ellie J is leaving home. Not because she has something to prove but because her heart has been broken. What a simple, almost delicate phrase for such a gory event. More accurately, her heart has been ripped out through her nostrils, peeled like an apple and fed to a starving bear in the woods. The bloodshed of the break feels physical, and data driven. Like she can count the pieces left behind, dark and weeping and sad.
Blindsided, naïve, gullible, ashamed. These are the newest descriptors Ellie has added to her internal dialogue and they are decidedly unhealthy. If things are going to get better, she must do something, and that something must be drastic.
Flying. To say Ellie J is afraid of flying is like saying the sky is blue or sunflowers are tall. It sounds simple, mundane. Yet there is nothing simple or mundane about her fear of flying. This fear is alive. It breaths fire, has an army of tiny mutant soldiers and attacks the minute she so much as thinks of flying. So what happens next is unimaginable to those that know and love Ellie.
She, Elliot James Hallowell is becoming... a flight attendant. That's right. She's going to fly in airplanes. Above the ground. In the sky. In a tube. For a living. The only place in the universe she can imagine existing where it will be impossible to think about him.
With the help of new friends and the possibility of new love, Ellie J. begins an adventure that will send her down the path of new memories, self-exploration and maybe even forgiveness.