Disclaimer: Noooo...
Her hands are cold, cupping her face.
Planes don't sound like they're supposed to, five hundred feet off the ground. It's soothing and quiet and she doesn't want to be lulled just yet. Time ticks on her wrist, although she's not sure how much she has left. The flight is stiflingly empty and sound travels far; a snore, someone whispering a lullaby to themselves, someone chanting a hymn with each bead on the rosary slipping down the string with a painfully loud clack-clack-clack. Alone is when it's most troubling. Alone is when she can hear her heart outpace her mind.
Michelle always told her to listen well.
Several things can happen so close to heaven (she doesn't read it in capitals because of how it sounds so absolute then). A shudder, a dip, a crash, what if? She's not sure if she's afraid of death more than she fears who will be the first to go. The dead don't die, it's the one left behind that wither away. She's almost there, she knows. Almost a 'grown-up' and the cut-off point looming nearer and farther depending on where she thought she lay.
Airplanes are chilly places that effuse metallic safetyness (she can't think of a better word because her heart's pumping that loud in her head) which tear apart easier than cluttered sets in CGI sea-storms in the movies. The plane dips, along with her stomach, and then it's warm again but no sun out as far as she can see through the window.
It's going to be a cold night.
She hadn't the presence of mind to bring a sweater. Michelle would have reminded her otherwise. She imagines her mother lying awake in imprisonment, wondering how many days are left 'til her daughter reaches the most dangerous age in time where you can only look behind yourself but never turn back.
Her hands are warm, rubbing her bare arms.
Airports are microscope slides and people are the infection sloshed within them, within tight glass cages. The illusion is bland, sterile, terribly mundane, so she knows the blood's flowing through her head again (she has a hand on the left side of her chest just to be sure). Tokyo's a blend of gray suits and gray faces, squinted eyes glued semi-shut with misplaced sleep. The clerk at Immigrations barks at her hoarsely, the voice reminding her of the smuggled illegal anime DVDs they all watched at the reservation. Maybe the bitch's just annoyed that she doesn't fit the status quo; she's not the tall, big-breasted, perma-tanned, loud-mouthed blonde stereotype they were aiming for.
In all the monochrome, color only ebbs for a moment or two. Three backpacks, pink, orange and green, bob past her, triplets linked through one chubby hand each. It seems like horrible irony for now but she forgets it, forces herself to. She's still an outsider. Just looking into a different glass bowl and returning the same goggle-eyed stares. On the reservation, it was only the lack of a cord and color in her skin that gave her away. Here, it's the stark dullness of her headband, the bland dusty shade of red in her shirt, the gold in her skin that bursts against ivory wrists that slide out from work shirts and manga-pop iridescent garb.
Time is ticking away somewhere (the wrong amount left on her wrist) and she has yet to discover where she stands. Orphans are not born from mothers, they just appear like they were dandelion heads in December breaking through sacred earth but with no story to tell, no idea of how or why there were there, they just were.
She looks up for a sign, expecting the sky and all she gets is white cement and steel frames. Her eyes almost close from exhaustion, then spring awake at the sight of a… panda? A riot of color and sprightly pigtails wrapped up in a squeal tumbles past her and the next thing she knows is that she's not alone (but lonely) and in danger of being swallowed by this crowd of competitors (if she doesn't get out alive first).
She really has no choice but to follow them and synchronize her will to theirs until the sea can stop, split and let the rivers run as they please. It's pent-up and seething in here, she can't quite get the hang of herself yet so she stares, and then slinks in between two of them. The blonde to her left walks with a rod in her back and glass in her eyes. In contrast, the little Asian (they all seem to look alike and yet not at all here) almost jogs along to keep up with her mouth glued to a neon-pink mite of a mobile.
Time is ticking away somewhere (she's in the wrong place to really know how far she's come); she's looking at them both and trying to figure out how best she fits. Is she too naïve and selfish to be a day older or too worn and worldly to be a day ahead? Neither idea meshes with the form uncurling in her conscious, knowing she's not too good at being anything yet to be anyone worth remembering and repeating.
Running off is tempting. Running away and breaking from the pack. What had Michelle told her about running? Cowardice or denial?
(Her heart's pounding again, longing for the sun.)
She looks up again once they're out on the tarmac and waiting to be shuttled to some hotel she's heard of in passing. Stars aren't an option in Tokyo unless you liked them plastic, narcissistic and blaring against television screens mounted up on the ceilings. Standing apart from the rest, she is really alone and lonely all at once.
(Michelle was smart enough not to tell her that big girls don't cry and save her hours of guilt.)
Time ticks ahead on the screen above and beyond her grasp. In neon numbers, electric-gold, the time is 12:01.
(Happy Birthday to me.)
Her hands are hot, clenched in her pockets.