Not Your Average Nerd

Chapter Ten

 

10

 

My eyes opened as the older woman beside me shook my shoulder. Since flying wasn’t her thing, she decided to inform the person next to her all about it. Guess who that lucky someone got to be?

“It makes no damn sense for these tickets to be so expensive,” she complained while picking at her long yellow nails, “I mean maybe it would be worth the money if a bunch of half-naked young gentlemen were comforting me. But nope.” I watched as she rolled a dirty little ball around between her thumb and finger. She sure did have a lot under her nails. My nose wrinkled as she turned her head toward the isle and flicked the piece of crud out of her fingers and into the hair of the woman in the seat in front of her. Ugh.

“Anyways, girl,” she said as she turned both her body and attention toward me. “I’ve been jibber-jabbering to you for the past few hours and I don’t even know your name.” Her wrinkly old pale right hand stuck out in front of me as she brushed her left hand through her short while hair. I couldn’t help but smile.

            “Ileana.”

            “My, what a lovely name you’ve got there.” Her right hand brushed down my arm as a toothy grin lit across her face.

“Thank you,” I chuckled. “I’m sure your name is just as lovely as mine.”

            “Why thank you, I’ve always been told that Fran was just one stunning name.”

            In the end, Fran wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought she was. Sure she knew how to complain and gross me out by picking and playing with the god-knows-how-old dirt lodged under her nails, but she also knew how to tell great stories and make a boring flight from Texas to Oregon much more entertaining. I was actually kind of bummed to hear the captain’s announcement that the plane was about to start descending. Fran was right in the middle of telling a tale of how she had gotten drunk, lost her shoes, and had to hitchhike in the middle of the night to get home. Man, I would have loved to meet young-Fran. I could only imagine how much crazier she was than the old Fran I met, who was quite a character for being in her mid-sixties.

 

            “Search for me on FaceBook, darling!” Fran shouted while waving goodbye. She rode down the escalator on the left while I rode on the right. I smiled as I watched her run down the machine, nearly taking out everyone in her way, and into the arms of an awaiting family. A woman who looked like she was in her mid-30’s, who had to be Fran’s daughter judging by the similarities, a tall family man, and two kids who seemed to be more than happy to see their grandma. My smile grew as Fran waved one last goodbye while muttering something to the small little blonde girl with pig-tails and blue eyes.

            As I stepped off of the escalator I looked around, expecting my father to run at me with some sort of joke on the tip of his tongue. He was always there, waiting to call me ‘four-eyes’ or ‘Romanian Hermione’ or something lame that he found absolutely hilarious. My brows furrowed as I searched through the faces and recognized none.

 

“Tată?” I asked, reaching out to touch the shoulder of a man who stood with his back facing toward the escalator. I really hoped that this man was my father. Grabbing the shoulder of some random man at an airport would have been beyond embarrassing. Having my face turn tomato-red before meeting up with my father would have just given him something else to pick fun at.

            “Oh, there you are!” My father shouted, pulling his phone away from his ear just as my phone began to buzz. Ha. As he turned around I watched his eyes go from normal sized to being the size of grapefruit. “Il-Ileana?” he asked, grabbing his phone back out of his pocket.