A/N: I have never been on a plane, so I don't know how that goes, and the airport where I live is tiny. Like tiny, tiny. We don't have any stores or anything in there. We have a Subway. The sandwich place. That is all. And it's, like, deserted. It's never the least bit crowded.

So I have no idea how LAX is. I can't even imagine. Apparently it's massive and there's a ton of stores and shit in there. If I get it all wrong, sorry.

I sat in one of the chairs at the airport for a few minutes, but I was bad at keeping still, and I was nervous so I felt the need to pace. So I got up and walked around aimlessly, looking in all the stores.

It was weird. I didn't know a lot about Van. I barely knew anything about Van. She was just my daughter. I just gave her an X chromosome. It didn't mean anything unless I was actually involved in her life.

I knew her best friends were Alyssa and Neha and Shaquine and Sarah. I knew she couldn't stand when people put their ketchup directly on their fries, instead of dipping them one at a time. I knew she never wore matching socks (she just wore the two she picked up first). I knew she always ordered chicken fingers and fries, but then only ate the fries. I knew she drank too much caffeine. I knew she liked the color purple, and the color pink, and she hated the color yellow, unless it was nail polish. I knew she always had her nails painted. I knew she always had wintergreen tic tacs with her. I knew Lauren made her brush her teeth three times a day because of all the sugar she ate. I knew she loved Starbuck's, but Lauren never took her there because she said it was too expensive. I knew she liked to write. I knew she was shy.

I knew some things about my daughter, but I didn't know enough for it to mean anything.

When Lauren texted me saying they just landed, I turned and started to walk back towards the terminal, only then realizing how far from it I had gotten in my wandering.

There were too many people there. I was never much a fan of airports. I hated them, actually. I saw a bunch of people coming out, meeting with their friends or family, hugging, talking, whatever. They had to have been on Van's plane, so I just waited.

I saw Lauren first, and she smiled, and waved. She had on a flowy orange shirt and jeans with Toms. She always wore Toms. There was a gold cross around her neck and I remembered when she was probably fourteen her telling me she hated gold jewelry. Her brown hair was stick straight (I knew Van was jealous of that) and she had cut it shorter, at her shoulders. Her blue eyes were complemented by the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. I always liked that.

Van was behind her, and she smiled too, but it was tight, and, I imagined, forced. Her dark brown hair was all pulled up into a bun on the top of her head, which wasn't usual. I had only seen her wear it down, and it fell all the way down her back, close to her waist. She was in a plain black and white striped t-shirt, and flowy black shorts. She had on her white Vans. She liked Vans a lot, and I thought that was ironic.

"Toby!" Lauren said, coming up to me and giving me a hug.

"Hey," I said, looking first at her, then to Van.

Van just gave a shy wave, then reached up and tucked her bangs behind her ear.

While we waited for their luggage, Lauren was the only one really talking. She was telling me about Africa, and what she'd be doing there, and how excited she was. Didn't it all sound so great? She knew I wasn't religious, and she wasn't one to try and 'save' people who didn't want to be 'saved' (me), but she did talk about God an awful lot. She wasn't preachy about it. She just thought about it a lot, I guess, and couldn't not talk about it. It didn't bother me, really.

Lauren's bags were going to Africa with the other people in the missions group (or whatever that's called), so we only had Van's stuff, but she had a lot of stuff. We somehow managed to get it in my not-very-big car.

"So where are we eating?" I asked when we were all in the car.

"We've never had In-N-Out, so…" Van said and it was the first time she said anything other than 'yeah' or 'no'.

"Oh, right. You poor souls. We'll definitely go there."

"I'm excited!" Lauren exclaimed. Lauren was usually excited.

So we went there. And when we sat down Lauren had to go to bathroom, which left Van and me alone, and I was sure she did it on purpose. Van was typing on her phone, smiling at it, but only slightly, and I wasn't sure I should interrupt the text conversation she was probably having with Sarah or Alyssa or Neha or Shaquine, but Lauren was going to leave us alone for three whole months in just a few hours, and I knew I would have to talk to her, and she would have to talk to me, and why not start then?

"Has your mom ever done this before? A mission trip or whatever?" I asked, causing her to look up from her phone.

"She went to Nicaragua for, like, two weeks last summer. I stayed with Bebe and Pop," she answered, referring to Lauren's parents.

"You ever thought about going on one?"

She laughed, surprising me, and put her phone down. "Nah. Not for me. I have no reason to need religion. See, the story with Mom is, she, like, you know, made a mistake when she was my age, got pregnant, was all depressed or whatever, then, when she was in college, she decided she was going to turn her life around. So she found Jesus," she explained. "It's cool, I guess." She shrugged. "I'm not much like her. I think I'm more like you, which fucking sucks, but I've come to terms with it."

Then she picked up her phone and started typing and smiling again. It was quiet until Lauren came back because I was so shocked at what she'd said that I couldn't even respond. She'd said being like me 'fucking sucks'. She said 'fuck'. She spoke in sentences. She said she didn't need religion. What was the most shocking? I just let that go and when Lauren got back we talked about the cool sinks in the bathroom. I liked that conversation much more.