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“Who are you?” he asks.
His tone is more perplexed than rude, but I’m annoyed anyway. “I’m Azalea,” I say shortly. I bend to pull a book from my backpack, trying to appear busy.
“Are you new?”
“Mhm.”
“I’m Maverick.” At least he returns the favor, unlike the girl from earlier. “My friend Noah was supposed to be sitting there, but he got caught smoking weed under the bleachers.”
I guess Noah is the one whose spot I took. I don’t know this guy—Maverick—but for some reason, I’m surprised that he’s friends with a stoner. Maverick is cute in a stereotypical way. Tall, lean, short brown hair, strong jaw, slight smattering of freckles across his nose. I can’t tell whether his eyes are green or blue. His sweatshirt says “Hawks Baseball” and he has wireless earbuds jammed in his ears. When he reaches down to grab something from his backpack, the flex of his arm muscles catch my eye. I find myself staring, jaw slightly agape, for several seconds before I snap to my senses.
“Well, sorry you’re stuck with me,” I say.
Maverick looks up, a little taken aback, then smiles. “That’s alright. You smell a lot better than him.”
I wrinkle my nose and try to remember if I put on deodorant this morning. “Do I smell?”
“No,” Maverick clarifies. “I just meant...he tends to kind of carry the weed smell around with him. You know.”
“Oh.”
Unsure how else to respond, I turn and stare out the window. The sun is starting to rise, yellow and pink streaking across the sky. I don’t intend to carry on a conversation, but he continues: “So youjustmoved here?”
I tap my fingers against the cover of the book in my lap. “Yeah.”
“Where from?”
“Colorado.” I flip the book open, hoping he’ll take the hint. He doesn’t.
“Two months before graduation?”
This stranger’s words twist like a knife in my chest. My dad, a data analyst, spent close to two years gunning for a promotion. After fifteen years with the company, he expected to be a shoo-in. In the end, there were two identical positions. Somebody else was picked to manage the data analysis team at the Denver office, and he was assigned to Des Moines.
He pleaded with his bosses to let him stay in Denver for just a while longer so I could graduate with the people I’d gone to school with since kindergarten. He told them that he could be in Des Moines the day after graduation, if only he could delay the start date for his new role. They would not budge, and he wasn’t willing to turn down such a steep salary increase with college tuition looming on the horizon.
When he broke the news to me, he could barely get the words out, and there were tears on my part. The conversation eventually escalated into me shouting at him, something I hadneverdone before and still feel horrible about. We made up later that night. I told him that I understood the decision, and I did. I do.
My dad is the only thing I have in this world, and vice versa. If he believes that coming here was the right choice, then it was the right choice.
That’s what I tell myself when the sadness sets in.
I can feel myself getting emotional, and I clear my throat as I condense the whole melodrama into a single sentence. “My dad’s job transferred him here.”
“That sucks,” says Maverick.
It may not be eloquent, but it’s true. “Yeah.”
Maverick’s eyes move across my face. I’m not sure what he’s seeing that has him looking at me so intently, but I cross my arms, feeling exposed. “You look pale,” he says.
His words yank me from my ruminating over what brought me here to wherehereis—an airplane, my claustrophobic nightmare. The lead weight in my stomach is heavier because I’m alone; every other time I’ve flown, my dad has been right beside me. I’m so desperate and Maverick is looking at me with such concern that I’m tempted to tell him what’s going on. “I—”
“Dude!” A short, stout guy in a different variation of the “Hawks Baseball” shirt sticks his head in our row, interrupting me. “There you are!”
“Hey, Grant,” Maverick says, sounding a little subdued. They bump fists and launch into a conversation about sports. I pretend to read, fighting back my annoyance at being cut off.
Maverick is exactly the type of conventionally attractive, popular person who has never given me the time of day. That’s fine; I’m not exactly the life of the party, nor do I want to be. I read books for fun and use my study halls to study and don’t have a curfew because I’ve never evenwantedto stay out past ten. I mind my own business and follow the rules, and I’ve always been perfectly happy hanging out with my dad and the small group of friends I had in Colorado.
Except for when I’m lonely. And today, on this plane full of strangers, claustrophobia building into panic inside my chest, I am exceptionally lonely.
