On My 18th Birthday, My Parents Drove Me to the Ai…

Ordinary people doing ordinary things, unaware that the girl in seat 18A had been discarded like luggage someone no longer wanted to claim. When the plane landed, the regional airport looked almost too small to be real. One baggage carousel.

A coffee kiosk. Two rental car counters. A mural of green hills and red barns painted along one wall.

Outside the windows, the sky was pale and low, and beyond the runway I could see trees, not buildings, not highways, not the crowded geometry of the city I had left behind. I walked slowly into arrivals, gripping my bag. There were only a few people waiting.

A woman with two toddlers. A man in a fleece jacket holding flowers. A driver with a tablet sign.