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“Ma’am, I can’t–”
“Please,” Julia pleaded. “I know this is odd, but it’s important. Do you know anything?”
Julia slumped even further against the window, her butt reaching the dirty floor. With trembling hands, she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward away the headache creeping in.
“Ma’am,” she sighed.
“Please,” Julia begged again, her voice breaking before even finishing the word. There was a long silence that stretched between space. “Please.”
“Please, hold.”
And Julia did. She gripped the phone against her ear, the skin turning pink as her fingertips tingle from the pressure. She stood and paced back and forth as seconds turned to minutes.
“I’m sorry,” a voice came alive on the other side, “we don’t carry personal flight plans.”
“You don’t know your employee’s flight plans?” she asked, pure frustrated astonishment tainting her voice.
“At the last minute, Ms. Calanis rescheduled her flight that was supposed to depart next Monday.” She paused. “She never sent us her updated itinerary.”
Julia dropped her phone to her side, the voice echoing past the faded noise as it fell further from her ears. Her head flurried in an angsty storm–the migraine fighting through with the full force of a baseball bat. Her vision wavered as her head grew light. She leaned against the wall even more for support, pressing her hands into her eyes again to see anything other than the spinning room.
“No, no, no, no,” she whispered, crumbling to the floor in a heap.
Julia - 11:26 a.m.
Erin, don’t get on that plane.
Julia - 11:27 a.m.
I just want you to hear me out. I’m begging you.
“Ma’am?” a voice called before her. Julia looked up at a blurry image of an airport receptionist standing in front of her. “Ma’am, are you okay?” Julia couldn’t answer, her thoughts jumbling faster than her heart chords could untangle. “You were asking about flights to Virginia?” she asked. Julia nodded as she pressed her forehead against her knees. “There’s only one flight departing here for Virginia today.”
Julia looked up towards her concerned face. “When?”
“It’s actually leaving right now–”
“How can I get through that gate?”
“Well, it’s boarding now. So, you would have to purchase a ticket.”
“Please, sell me a ticket,” Julia pleaded, her breath irregular and ragged.
And she did. The woman sold her one of the two last tickets to the only flight leaving for Richmond, Virginia. There was the tugging feeling within Julia again–that indescribable feeling of needing to be where she was–of knowing she would always find her in the end.
“It’s boarding now!” the woman shouted as Julia ran to the security line.
Julia pushed past those in line, squeezing between enormous luggage bags and screaming children. She made it through the checkpoint, rushing past coffee and food restaurants with lines piling into the walkway. She raced past each gate, wondering why such a small airport needed so many terminals.
But she made it. Gate 19.
As she pulled the green scarf out of her bag, she noticed there was no one in the waiting area–dozens of empty blue seats spread out in all directions. There was no one behind the desk, no lines waiting to board. A yellow fabric cord was pulled across the entrance to the hanger, the door closed.
As Julia walked to the glass wall facing the tarmac, she watched a domestic airliner crawl from the terminal towards the runway. It inched, foot by foot, towards the bend in pavement. Then, without warning, it sped to an unimaginable quickness, floating through the air before she knew it.
She pressed her forehead to the cold glass, foundation streaks forming above her. She watched the metal bird drift into the air, turn slightly, and then disappear behind layers of fluffy clouds.
She was gone.
