Always on Your Side (NaNoWriMo 2019)

31.

"Doing homework at four in the morning on your first day of spring break? Shouldn't you have senioritis by now?"

Adam's lame joke is met with a painfully awkward silence. I look up from said homework long enough to aim a forced smile at the rearview mirror. Mom doesn't even bother to do that.

I don't know why Mom insisted on coming to the airport when Adam is the one driving. I especially don't know why she'd insist on coming and then not say a word to Adam or me. Whatever is going on between them is just making this worse.

I've never made this trip without Brendon before.

I'm trying to get absorbed in my book so I don't have to think about it. It's Things Fall Apart which I have to read for English, not due until several weeks after break, but I might as well get it done now. There's not much to do at my dad's place. Now that I think about it, I should buy a book at the airport to take with me; Dad had transferred enough money to my account to easily cover a book and a smorgasbord of airport snacks.

When we get to the airport, Adam carries my bags, and Mom helps me print my boarding pass and check my luggage. I am grateful for this; Brendon used to insist on taking care of that for both of us. He was fascinated with airports. So I don't really no how to do it for myself. They both walk with me, in silence, as far as the TSA line, where Mom gives me a long but awkward hug.

"This is your last time flying as an unaccompanied minor," she says. "Be thinking about how you want to celebrate your birthday when you get back. We can go out to dinner or a movie as a family; maybe we can bring Marina along, too."

Yeah, because Marina would love to go on a date chaperoned by my mom and step-dad who don't talk to each other, I think.

I probably have more memories of Brendon in the San Francisco Airport than I do of anywhere else outside of our house, made worse by the fact that all my memories of this place involve him. He loved airplanes. He'd get so happy on these trips, excited not only because we were about to see our dad, who seemed to click with him more easily than Mom did, but because we were going to fly. The halls are quiet here in the early morning, making it easier to imagine him skipping down the halls with his carry-on suitcase rolling behind him.

I hold it together long enough to purchase a book and a bottle of root beer from an airport news stand. Then I sit at my gate with my head on my lap and cry into my knees, hoping passers-by will think I'm just sleeping.

My last trip as an unaccompanied minor. My first trip completely alone.

***

I spend a good deal of the first plane ride staring out the window. Reading Things Fall Apart is enough of a distraction from reality until I get to the part where Okonkwo killed his adopted son - at that point, it's counterproductive in making me less depressed. I try reading the book I bought instead, but it seems to be aimed at old people who grew up reading The Boxcar Children because the writing style is exactly like those books, except with edgier content. I lose interest in it pretty fast. By the end of my first three-hour layover, boredom overtakes sadness, and I rummage through all my backpack's pockets until I find Brendon's phone. I brought it just in case he left any clues at Dad's house, but now I remember there were games on it. Cave Explorer and bootleg. I don't know what either of them are, but bootleg has an odd name, so I try it first.

Brendon must have jailbroken his phone - true to its name, Bootleg is a collection of old, pirated video games. Games we used to play together on our dad's old SEGA Genesis. With nothing else to do, I put on the playlist Brendon made me, start up an old Sonic game, and try to get lost in time.