What I usually get is a seat further back in the plane. If I’m lucky, it’s a window seat near the middle. Even with all the padding around it, I always worry about my violin getting wrecked. I tuck it under the seat ahead of me, along with my backpack. With no one to talk to, all I’ve got to do on a flight is look at my phone, in airplane mode of course. Or study a music score on my laptop. Or watch a movie.

  Or listen to music on my phone.

  Which is what I’ll probably be doing, for hours and hours as we fly west, right after I go use the toilet.

  I’m sitting in the cubicle, doing what you do there, when I hear two women talking. One of them is loud and kind of shrieky. The other has a lower voice. Almost like a man’s. And the strange thing is, they’re speaking French.

  But it’s not the French I know. The words are all sort of flat and it’s as if they’ve got colds, or something. And there’s a bunch of words I don’t know. They have the same accent in French as Mr. Cadeau.

  One of them sounds younger than the other. The older one has that gravelly sound of someone who smokes cigarettes. A lot.

  The younger one is whiny.

  “I’m sure I saw that Asian kid come in here,” smoker-voice says. “Her with the fancy leather backpack. Might be designer. Knock-off, maybe.”

  “It’s the real thing! Me, I have not one single doubt,” the younger woman says. She sounds excited.

  So, they’ve followed me into the washroom.

  “Merde, you crazy bitch,” smoking-voice woman says. “As if. Who’d give a kid a bag like that? Gotta be fake. Come on, go pee or whatever you’ve gotta do and we get the hell out of here!”

  There’s the sound of something spraying. Then the smell of something like a cleaning product. Or maybe it’s hairspray.

  Then splashing in the sink. “But a rich kid probably has plastic, or something…”

  The hand dryer, which sounds like a plane taking off, means I don’t hear the rest of what they say.

  Then there are sounds of other people. But I can’t hear those two.

  Have they gone? Is it safe to come out?

  What if they’re waiting, outside?

  But why would they be? They’ve likely already decided I won’t have anything worth stealing.

  And there’s no way they know I understood what they’re talking about.

  I can’t stay in here forever.

  As I’m coming out of the ladies’, there’s a voice over the loudspeaker. Female this time and young, with a strange accent.

  “Paging passengers Coquette Taylor-Abeya, Muhammed Farook Muhammed, Luc Bonneheure and Park Sam Hae. This is your final boarding call for Flight 207 to Honolulu via Los Angeles leaving from Gate 22F. Repeat, this is your FINAL boarding call. Please report to your gate for immediate boarding and departure!”

  Two people rush past. A businessman and a teenage girl.

  Then I notice that just about all the plastic seats that were full before have emptied.

  No doubt, by now my mother and two hundred or so other people are on the plane.

  The airline person at the desk, where you’re supposed to show your boarding pass and then walk through, seems to be shutting down her computer.

  The two people I saw running past have hurried by that desk and vanished, down the bendy hallway that attaches at one end to the terminal and at the other to the door into the plane.

  I feel frozen, colder than I’ve ever felt. It’s like my body is a block of ice and I can’t move any part of it. Like I’m that Christmas turkey, frozen stiff. I can’t move. I just have to wait until the ice melts.

  And the plane is about to leave.

  And I’m not on it.

  eight

  I watch as the little tractor pushes the plane away from the terminal. They’re leaving without me. But I feel nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  My body is frozen solid.

  So is my brain.

  I can’t just stand here, watching the plane back up, get disconnected from the tractor, turn.

  Leave.

  I can’t do anything else.

  I know my mother won’t be looking out the window. Won’t see me, still here in the terminal, as if my feet have become tree roots.

  By now, she’ll have taken another of her little pills, the ones that help with air sickness, she says. But I know what they’re really for.

  She’ll play on her phone until they ask people to switch to airplane mode.

  She’ll drink a glass of wine and ask for another.

  She’ll pull on her eye mask and settle down to ignore the take-off.

  She’ll fall asleep.

  It will be hours before she even notices I’m not on that plane. Maybe not until tomorrow, wherever she is by then.

  It occurs to me that I have to do something. I’m trying to remember what it is.

  Breathe. That’s it.

  Breathe in slowly, saying to myself, “I am here.”

  Breathe out slowly, saying to myself, “I am calm.”

  It’s something Anton taught me to do before a performance. He says it helps get oxygen to your brain.

  I am here.

  I am calm.

  I am here.

  I am calm.

  I say this to myself, over and over. Finally, it feels like I could take a step. I do.

  Towards the chairs. I slump into a seat.

  I’m here. Alone.

  I am calm.

  No I’m not.

  The plane has left.

  Margaret is gone, back to Mexico. She’s not coming back, at least not back to Seabright and our home. That home is gone. It’s sold to strangers who are going to move in soon. Maybe they already have.

  My friends, my school, my favourite teachers like Mr. Cadeau and Anton and Sonja, they’re all back in Seabright.

  Everyone is there except for Madame Boulanger. She might still be in New York. I don’t know. I try to remember where I put the card she gave me with her numbers, but can’t.

  I’m here alone.

  Alone.

  The thought terrifies me.

  Except for when I’m practicing, I’ve never been alone in my life.

  Never not had my mother telling me what to do. Or Tia looking after me.

  Never not known where I belong.

  I try to make my brain do some thinking. I could go to the airline desk and tell them I missed my plane and can I get another ticket for the next plane to Hawaii?

  But I don’t have the money to pay for it. I know a ticket from here to Hawaii costs a lot. Umma was saying that. I do have some money. There’s the money Eira gave me, and some I saved up, hidden in my backpack. I can’t get it out and count it here. But I’m sure it’s not enough to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii.

  Where I don’t want to go.

  And I can’t buy a plane ticket to anywhere I do want to go, either. They’d think it was odd, a kid buying her own plane ticket. They’d probably call the airport security or the police or something.

  But there must be other ways to get home. To Seabright.

  Is there a train? That could work. Nobody notices a kid travelling on the train.

  Or the bus.

  I see kids on the bus all the time, back home.

  I get out my laptop and check.

  I could take a taxi from the airport into the city. But it costs $75. Plus tip. That’s too much to spend, when I don’t know how much the train or the bus is going to cost.

  Also, you might get a nosey driver who wants to know all about you and who you are and why you’re travelling. One who notices people. And gets suspicious about a kid travelling alone.

  The bus, or the train, will be much better. People just about always ignore kids on public transportation.

  I find out I could take the A train from JFK airport to Howard Beach Station. It takes 10 minutes and costs $5. And they take cash. I find a $5 bill and that’s what I do. From there, I could go to the train station. But the train ticket to Boston will cost $100. That’s a lot more than taking the bus.

  Then I get another train that costs $2.75 and takes me to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That takes an hour. It feels very strange. The whole time, I’m telling myself to just breathe. This is just another performance. Just the same.

  Even though I know it’s not.

  I send an email to Jayden and to Morley when I get there. Telling them what time I’ll be in Boston.

  They don’t answer.

  I can buy a bus ticket to Boston for $16.60. When I get up to the front of the line, the ticket seller man says, “What’s a kid like you doing travelling alone?”

  “I’m not,” I say, pointing sort of behind me. “My mom sent me over to buy our tickets. I need two. One kid and one adult.”

  “You’re under 12?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. “Eleven.”

  Luckily for me, there’s a woman with a little fussy baby sitting more or less where I pointed to. The baby is starting to cry. “Yeah, OK,” the man says. I hand him my credit card.

  I use it to tap the little box but it doesn’t work. “Sorry, kid. Got anything else?”

  I pull out a $50 bill and hand it over. He gives me the change and two tickets.

  “Your bus will be leaving from platform A. It’s A7. Have a good trip,” he says, turning to the next person.

  It’s still an hour and a half before the bus leaves. And then it will be four and a half hours on the bus to get to Boston. Where I hope Eira and Dom will be waiting to pick me up. That is, if they haven’t already left for their ski trip.

  They have to be there. They have to. I need them to help me figure out what to do.

  I can’t think of who else to ask.

  I go sit near the woman with the baby. But not too close.

  I send another email.

  By now, they must have seen it.

  No answer.

  I phone Jayden. Leave a message.

  It looks like Morley has blocked my messages.

  I’m ghosted. By my best girl friend.

  It hurts. I guess she’s pretty angry.

  I phone Eira. Leave a message.

  Then I go looking for something to eat. I mooch around the little store in the bus station. It has lots of magazines and books and touristy stuff. I stand in front of the cooler, looking for something I want to eat, taking an egg salad sandwich and a chocolate milk, and am trying to decide what kind of chips I want when a woman bumps into me, hard. She stomps on my foot.

  “OW,” I shout. “Watch where you’re…”

  “Got you!” a man says, grabbing my backpack straps.

  “But that woman ran into ME,” I say. “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Save it for the police!” the man says. “I know what I saw you do! The pair of you. Don’t try playing all innocent with me! I saw what you did!”

  The man won’t let go of me. The other woman is saying, in a really fake-y Spanish accent “She steal! I saw her! You find things in her bag! I try stop her, but no good!”

  Two police officers, a man and a woman, tell me and the woman that we must go with them for questioning.

  They ask my name. Where I am going. And why. And why I stole things from the bus station store. And where I got the fancy backpack. Did I steal it, too?

  I say I didn’t steal anything. I was lining up to pay for my sandwich, drink and chocolate bar when the woman stepped on me and bumped me, hard.

  The woman says I’m a thief and she was just trying to stop me stealing things.

  I say I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.

  The man police officer says that both of us and our bags will be searched. The woman officer takes me to a room and says I have to take off everything except my underwear. While I do, she will search my backpack.

  I must hand her my clothing so she can go through it. To find stolen goods. Or drugs.

  I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to do. She’s standing in front of the door. I can’t escape.

  I do what she says.

  She hands back my clothes and tells me to put them on. When I come out, she is putting things back in my backpack. My other pair of jeans, two tops, the ugly sweater, my circle scarf that Morley gave me, two pairs of underwear, my laptop, phone, charger cables, and my kit bag with hairbrush, toothbrush and my kid-sized chopsticks in their case.

  But there are also some things that aren’t mine. A couple of books and magazines and some chocolate bars. And some other things, in envelopes and boxes. I don’t know what they are. I tell her that she’s putting stuff in plastic bags that isn’t mine. She says be quiet. She and her colleague will take a full statement later.

  Then, I go back out and the man officer says sit here and wait. The woman officer goes off with the woman. They come back soon and the two police officers say that the woman, the one who ran into me, can go. They have no reason to hold her, but I must stay. A Children’s Protection Officer will be here soon to take custody of me.

  The woman smirks in my direction and walks off. I’m sure she’s stolen something, but can’t figure out how she hid it, if she got the same kind of search that I did.

  Then they say they are taking my statement. I have to tell them, all over again, what happened. I tell them I bought my bus ticket.

  “What with?” they say.

  I say my credit card.

  “You have to hand it over,” the man says.

  Reluctantly, I do.

  “Keep talking,” the woman officer says. “Why were you here?”

  Waiting for the bus. Got hungry. Went to buy some food. Woman hit me and stepped on my foot. Man grabbed me and called police.

  “OK, little thief,” the woman officer says. “We’ve established that you are not the daughter of that woman. So, who are you? And who are your parents?”

  I tell them both again that I am Sam Park. My mother has just gone away, on business. To Hawaii. I don’t know where my father is. My mother has sent me to my aunt’s. She will meet me in Boston. I give them Umma’s phone number, knowing her new phone will be turned off. She must still be on the plane.

  I say I don’t know my father’s number. Or email address. Even though I do.

  I give them Eira’s phone number. And email address.

  I ask them to get in touch with Eira. My aunt.

  I’ve said this so often now, even I’m starting to believe it.

  Then a really tall, skinny woman with a huge Afro turns up and says she’s with the City Children’s Authority and I must come with her. She signs a paper and says to follow her. I tell her I have a bus ticket and my bus is leaving soon. I’m going to my aunt’s.

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “The store owner is sick of petty thieves like you. He’s pressing charges! You’ll have a date tomorrow morning. In youth court. The police will inform your parents or guardians.”

  “But my aunt is coming to get me at Boston South Station. I messaged her. She’ll be there. And I didn’t take anything. I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Shut up!” the woman says roughly, grabbing my jacket and walking towards the car park. “Enough lies.”

  “But I can’t leave. I’ll miss my bus!”

  “That’s the first truthful thing you’ve said, isn’t it?” the woman says. “Because you’re a runaway. And a thief.” Then she tells me to get into her car and buckle up. It’s old and has a lot of rust. I wonder if she’s a good driver. She’s a stranger, and it’s not safe, ever, to get in a car with a stranger. I say this.

  She grabs me and shoves me in the car. She turns on the radio, some sort of awful shouty music with a lot of swearing. She says nothing else until we park in front of a big house with peeling dark green paint. There’s a broken swing set and an overflowing trash container in the front yard. One of the downstairs windows is covered with cardboard.

  At the door, a big woman holding a stinky baby answers the door. There’s a lot of shouting and screaming going on behind her.

  “Here’s the one I called about, Doreen,” the Children’s Agency woman, who never told me her name, says.

  “Yeah, right. Get yourself in here, kid,” she says.

  “Um, hello,” I say, holding out my hand. “My name is Sam Park. And you are?”

  “Kid, I don’t give a damn who you are. You won’t be here long enough for me to care. Get in here! You’re letting in the cold!” The agency woman is already driving away. It isn’t much warmer inside.

  “Dinner at 6. The other kids will show you where your bed is. Lights out at 10. You’ll be gone tomorrow. Don’t bother trying to make friends.”

  “Is there a piano?” I ask, hoping so. My hands ache to play.

  “No there isn’t, smart-ass. And no indoor pool or home movie theatre, either. This ain’t no resort. You’re in trouble. So shut up, behave yourself and we’ll get along just fine!” She waddles down the hall with the baby.

  I look around. I don’t want to touch anything. Don’t even want the bottom of my shoes to touch anything here. It looks dirty and smells like cabbage. And pee. And cigarette smoke.

  I go in the front room, which doesn’t have very much in it except a ratty old couch, a worn-down carpet, an old-fashioned TV and some cardboard packing boxes. I pull out my phone to see what time it is.

  Two hours until dinner. I guess I’ll just sit here and wait. I don’t know what else to do.

  Then I get a text.

  It’s Eira.

  nine

  Eira: Sam, explain. Why aren’t you with your mother?

  Me: She got on plane 2 Hawaii. I missed plane.

  Eira: Go to the airline’s desk! Tell them what happened. They’ll put you on the next plane to join your mother.

  Me: Can’t.

  Eira: I don’t understand.

  Me: Can’t go 2 Hawaii. Just. Can’t.

  Eira: So you’re at the airport now?

  Me: No. At a foster home. Afraid. Need your help. Please come and get me, Eira. Please.

  Eira: OK. OK. Tell me exactly where you are.

  Me: In New York City somewhere.

  Eira: Ask the people there the name of the street. The address. What part of city – like the Bronx or Brooklyn or Manhattan or whatever. Dom and I are on way to airport now. We will be there as soon as…

 

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