We squeeze into our seats, my sister Cori and I. I get there first, so I steal the aisle seat, crushing my pink backpack underneath the seat in front of me. She nestles into the center seat, her carpetbag splayed across her lap. The window seat is empty and we stare outside the window at the asphalt, at the men in day-glo yellow vests loading luggage into the cargo hold.
“J.K. Rowling,” my sister suggests. I tilt my head to the side, thinking about it. I shake my head no.
“She could be in Chicago!" she says.
I sigh. “Even if she was leaving from O'Hare,” I say, “she wouldn't be flying to San Francisco. She would be flying to Heathrow, or something.”
Cori shrugs. This is our game: guessing who will sit next to us on the airplane. I look back over my seat at the row behind us. My parents and youngest sister, Kristi, are all engrossed in the in-flight magazine. Cori and I watch the steady stream of people walking down the airplane aisle, lugging their carry-ons behind them.
“That one,” I whisper, elbowing her. A tall, lanky hipsterish dude with scruffy hair carries a duffel bag on his shoulder. He looks around twenty-five. He is “our type.” Cori nods, and we both cross our fingers as he saunters (for he does saunter) down the aisle. Magically, he stops right by our row and peers at us.
“Is this 19?” he asks. “I think I’m in that window seat.” He lifts his duffel into the overhead compartment. We lift our legs and scrunch our knees to our chests in our seats, making ourselves as small as possible. He sits down, buckles his seatbelt, and stretches his legs.
“They don’t have very much leg room anymore,” he says. Cori sneaks a look at me. The guy is sitting next to us, and he’s talking? This is our lucky day. Usually we have to entertain ourselves on the flight by making mini-movies on my digital camera and hiding it whenever the flight attendant walks by.
He looks over at Cori’s legs, tucked neatly into a pretzel. “At least you don’t have this problem,” he jokes. She nods, lets out a half-giggle.
“Are you going to San Francisco?” he asks her. He doesn’t look at me. I try to blame this on the fact that I’m not sitting directly next to him.
“Yeah,” Cori answers. “I’m going to visit some relatives for Christmas.” I notice she doesn’t say we, doesn’t acknowledge her sister sitting next to her, nor her parents in the row behind. I take out the SkyMall catalog from the pocket in front of me and pretend that I’m really interested in reading about dog stairs, while my sister and this guy carry on a conversation.
I tune them out, until I hear the guy ask, “So do you go to school here in Chicago?”
“School?” Cori asks. I look over at them. The guy, who is wearing a USC sweatshirt, has his arm draped over her armrest.
“Yeah,” he says. “Do you go to college here? Northwestern? U. Chicago?”
I bite my lip, stifling the laughter that is bubbling up inside me.
Cori pauses. I cough. She glances over at me and stomps on my foot.
“No,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t go to college here.”
He leans towards her. “Where do you go to school, then?” I pull my SkyMall closer to my face, to hide my quivering chin.
“Actually,” I hear my sister say, though I don’t look at her, or him, “Actually, I’m thirteen.”
“Oh,” the guy says. “Okay.”
I peek out the side of the catalog and he’s staring out the window. Our airplane starts to roll towards the runway. The flight attendant walks down the aisle, checking to see that we’re all buckled up. I look at my little sister, who looks a bit crestfallen.
As the safety instructions are read aloud, the guy reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt and puts on his headphones. He pulls the hood over his head and leans against the window, crossing his arms across his chest. I shrug at my sister, and she grins, and I finally let out the peal of laughter I’ve been holding in. I hand her the SkyMall. We look at the Harry Potter replicas for sale.
Jami Nakamura Lin is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the Pennsylvania State University. She is a nonfiction editor at Revolution House magazine.