MP: Amused by that, were you? I'm having fun with this character...

A/N: I goofed in the last chapter with the part about the "North Carolina airport." Kat and the crew are still in their home state up north - the flight they board in chapter 3 is going to NC, not leaving it. I've changed that now, but for those of you who have already read it...here you go, I'm correcting it.
Also note: I'm not trying to make fun of people with southern accents here - this was something that actually happened to me! And I must apologize for the chapter title - I couldn't resist.

We reached the North Carolina airport safely - in my case, that meant blessedly free of Monica and ignored by Julynn. We headed off the plane and into the main airport, toting backpacks and pillows, and gathered around Lona, the tall, thin counselor with the short blonde hair.
"A'right, gi'ls," she said in the accent I hadn't quite identified yet, "Afteh we arroive at the gaite, youw free ta go get food as long as ya taike a buddeh with ya. Weah heading fouw gaite B14."
As soon as we started walking, Monica found me.
"Hey, I saw you talking to that lady on the plane," she told me. "The one from the airport, you know, Jenny, Julie...whatver, you know who I mean. What'd she say?"
I raised a that's-not-your-business eyebrow, but the girl didn't take hints well. Should I say, at all.
"She said it was nice to see me, asked where I was going, and she hoped she'd see me again."
"Oh." Fortunately, that seemed to satisfy Monica, and she was miraculously silent until we reached B14. "Beth?" she asked as I dropped my bag gratefully on the floor. As usual, I'd packed too much heavy stuff and my shoulders hurt.
"Kat."
She ignored that.
"Let's go get food."
"Uh -" The last thing I wanted to do was watch her eat. Airport food is bad enough, why make it worse? "Actually, I'm not hungry. Why don't you ask Johnny and Peaches if you can go with them - I think they're about to go eat." Johnny's real name was Kathleen, but she and Marissa had both turned out to be devoted Jackass fans, and had named themselves Johnny and Steve-O. Not terribly original, but whatever.
I felt kind of guilty about dumping Monica on Johnny and Peaches, until I remembered that Monica was my buddy for the day. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about getting rid of her for ten or fifteen minutes.
"Hey Alex," I said as soon as the three of them were gone, "You want to go get something to eat?"
"Sure. Where's Amy?"
"Over there. Hey Amy!" I called.
"Yeah?"
"We're going to get food, wanna come?"
"Ok."
Even though it was only 10:30 in the morning, I was starving - breakfast had been at 3:00am, and those silly little pretzel bags you get on airplanes are useless for dealing with hunger. I think they're more for entertainment, myself - you know, to keep the passengers occupied so they won't bug the flight attendants.
By the time we finished our food, got back to the gate, and dug out books to read, it was time to board the next flight - or so said the clock. The voice on the overheard announcement disagreed:
"Flight 921 has been delayed due to mechanical problems and should begin boarding in twenty minutes. Thank you for your patience."
I made a face as everyone around us grumbled, then settled back into my book. At least it's only twenty minutes, I thought. It could be a lot worse.
Twenty minutes later the loudspeaker came on again.
"We are sorry, but flight 921 is delayed until 12:15pm due to mechanical problems. Thank you for your patience."
Looking at the faces of the people who had grumbled at the first delay, I wondered if there was enough patience left to justify thanks. With a sigh, I shifted position and went back to my book again.
At 12:15, we heard from the tinny voice a third time.
"We're sorry, folks, but flight 921 has been cancelled. To be put on another flight, please go to the check-in counter."
This time it was me that groaned.
"Fricking airports," muttered sombody nearby.
"Our flight was cancelled!" I heard somebody say in alarm, definitely someone from our camp group. "Now what are we going to do? We're going to have to sleep in the airport!"
I had to grin at that.
"No we're not," I heard Amy say. "They're just going to put us on a later flight, that's -"
"I don't have my pajamas!" somebody said.
"My toothbrush is in my suitcase!" added yet another panicked voice. "I can't believe this."
Amy and I exchanged looks, and I heard Alex snorting behind me.
"Listen you guys," she tried to say. "There's no way we'll be here more than a few hours, it's too early in the day to be worried about spending the night -" But nobody heard her.
I went back to my book yet again as Leyla, the oldest of the counselors, joined the large line forming in front of the counter to try to get us on another flight.
By 1:30 we were on another flight. It was destined for Fort Lauderdale instead of Miami, and we were all split up because we hadn't reserved seats, but at least we were finally on our way. The lady sitting on my left was knitting something, and only looked up once during the entire flight, to accept a glass of water from the drink cart. The lady on my right was reading a book, but seemed more aware of the world around her than the other woman. I was making a knotted bracelet in different colors of purple, and she seemed interested in how I was doing it. I showed her, and when she seemed to get the idea, she went back to her book and I put on my headphones and listened to music for the rest of the flight.
About twenty minutes before the end of the flight, I finished the bracelet and put it away in my bag, digging out a new CD in the process. Just as I was sitting up again, we hit a patch of turbulence and the fasten seat belt sign came on. I'd flown a lot in my life, but this was turbulence like I'd never felt before - it was like a carnival ride. I felt like I was going to hit the ceiling, and I could see the heads of all the other passengers bobbing violently up and down. I nearly dropped my CD player and the lady on my right fumbled with her book. A couple of little kids started to shriek, in fear or excitement I couldn't tell. Several times I felt completely weightless and had to grab onto the arms of my seat to reassure myself I was still, in fact, sitting down. The most amazing thing, though, was the knitting lady - she acted as if nothing was happening. She never dropped her knitting or even paused, never reached for the arms of her chair, never even looked up. After a while I couldn't help just staring at her, and I wasn't surprised when she didn't notice that, either.
Eventually the turbulence ended, though, and we landed and were shunted down the gangway into the third aiport of the day. Our group, like an animated blob, headed down one hallway after another, following the signs for baggage claim. I retrieved my big black bag when it eventually came around, then stood back to wait for everyone else. As Monica was pulling her third piece of luggage off the conveyor belt, she turned to me.
"No," I said as she opened her mouth. "This bag is heavy enough as it is." I lifted the black beast to demonstrate.
"You're strong, Beth, pl-"
"Hey Peaches," I called, a little louder than was entirely necessary. "Was that your bag that just went by?"
She glanced up, brushing her thick, fly-away bangs out of her eyes.
"Oh - yeah!" she said, and hurried after it through the crowd.
After much waiting, sweating, and impatience, we finally got all our luggage and made it outside to the taxi area.
"The vans should be here any minute," Leyla told us. They'd had to change the rentals at the last minute, because we'd had pre-rented vans in Miami before the flight to said city was cancelled.
We crossed two taxi lanes to reach a bus stop and dropped our bags. Most of us then sat down on the bags. Since my bag was wider than hers, Amy came and shared mine.
"So what'd Julynn want?" she asked curiously. "I saw you talking to her on the plane."
I told her everything Julynn had said, and when I was done, Amy made a face.
"Weird," she commented. I nodded.
"But funny. You know, I kinda like her."
Half an hour later, two white vans finally showed up. I noticed with some chagrin that they were both of the 11-passenger variety. The vans we'd gotten out of camp in that morning had been bigger, and we'd still barely fit with all our luggage. How on earth were we supposed to cram ourselves into these?
It wasn't long before I got my answer...
"All right, girls in the back row in first, take your backpacks with you, then we'll pass these bags back to you." We did as we were told, with some difficulty getting the backpacks through the narrow space between seats. I was on the far right of the back row, against the window. Several bags were squished on top of us, and then the next row of seats was filled. They got bags too, and then the front row...it was then I realized that our holding these bags on our laps wasn't temporary.
No, I thought, They can't do this to us.
But they did. It took longer than I'd like to think about to get us all stuffed in, and by the time we were finished, I was jealous of all the freedom of movement enjoyed by canned sardines. My pillow was under my feet, my backpack was on top of them, and I had somebody's really heavy bag on my lap, which came all the way up to eye level so I could barely see over it. It was a good thing I'd kept my CD player out of my bag, because there was no way I could reach my backpack without pulling any muscles.
"This is great," said Johnny, who was sitting on my left. "If we crash or something, we're all gonna die, 'cause there's no way we're getting out of here."
The scary thing was, she was right.
I had just managed to resign myself to being immobile for the next three hours, when we stopped at a gas station. Shara pulled open one of the doors and yelled, "Ok, fire drill! Everyone out as fast as you can!"
"What?" I protested, as did several other girls. There was a chorus of "You've gotta be kidding," "You're crazy," "Are you outta your mind?" But she made us do it anyway. Of course, all it proved was that if there was really a fire, we were all very dead.
As soon as we were out, we had to get back in again. We crammed ourselves into the back and got the luggage dumped on us. There was no hope of finding my seatbelt in that mess, but I was wedged so tightly I figured I didn't need it anway.
"Everybody buckled in?" called Bet, who was driving.
Johnny and I exchanged a look - she had the same issue I did. We laughed.
"Yeah!" we called together.
"Or close enough," I added quietly.
Fifteen minutes after that, we stopped again.
"Lunch!" called Shara.
"Can we stay here?" we started begging. "We won't make a mess, we promise..."
"Sorry," she said, "No eating in the vans. Out."
By that time we were starting to invent a faster method of getting out: first row gets out, as they don't have to be buried under luggage. Then the second row dumps their luggage on the first row seat, gets out, and so on.
Finally we were all clear of the vans, and I took the opportunity to look around. I'd never been "down south" in the US, and while Florida wasn't really deep south, it was certainly the closest I'd ever gotten. It was hot, humid, and smoggy, my least favorite kind of weather, but at least it was sunny. There was grass growing through cracks in the pavement, and palm trees here and there that rustled in the slight breeze. The sidewalks were crumbling, and things had a sort of lazy, dusty look about them - the cars, the houses, the people, everything.
We went inside the restaurant, which was some sort of fried chicken shack, and lined up to order. I was startled when I looked at the lady behind the counter - she was a darker shade of black than I'd ever seen. Most black people I'd seen, when I thought about it, were really brown - but this lady was very close to really being black. I tried not to stare as I told her what I wanted.
"Fried chicken wings, please."
"Ya want that hatamah?"
"What?"
"Hatamah?" I had no idea what she was saying, but I didn't want to ask again, so I took a guess.
"Um, hat?"
"Ok. Next!" I wondered what I'd just ordered - hopefully not something horrible.
I figured it out when I got my plate of chicken and started eating.
"Wow, this is spicy," I commented. "Good thing I like spicy food, 'cause I didn't order it spicy -" I cut myself off when I realized that I actually had done just that.
Hatamah, I repeated in my mind, and suddenly wanted to kick myself. The lady had been saying 'hot or mild.' My guess of 'hat' had gotten me spicy chicken.
Well, this is an experience already, I thought. And we're not even there yet!