Читать книгу Time - Roger Reid - Страница 13

As soon as the flight attendant said we could, I turned on my cell phone.

A text popped right up.

U landed?

Yes. At back of plane. Make take awhile.

Make?

Might take awhile

Come straight down concourse

You there?

At top of stares

Stares?

Stairs

Because I was at the back of the plane, I had plenty of time to text my mom and dad and let them know I was on the ground. Mom texted me to call her when we got to our host’s house. After about ten minutes I was able to sling my backpack over my right shoulder and leave the airplane.

Our gate was at the furthermost point down Concourse B at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. It was, I’m guessing, at least two hundred yards from the gate to the terminal. About halfway down, you could see people waiting beyond the security checkpoints. When I was about seventy-five yards away, I thought I spotted her. When I was about fifty yards away, I was sure of it.

She was looking right at me.

I stopped and shifted my backpack from my right shoulder to the left.

She was looking right at me.

Even from fifty yards, I could tell her hair was a little longer. She was wearing blue jeans. Not the cut-off jeans she wore in the longleaf forest—these were long pants. She wore a short-sleeved black blouse, and her dark hair seemed to blend into the shirt from my distance.

She was looking right at me.

I shifted my backpack back to my right shoulder and continued down the concourse.

A voice over the intercom said something about not leaving bags unattended. It sounded muffled, like it was off in a soon-to-be-forgotten dream. I paused and closed my eyes for a second. The one clear sound I could hear was that of my own pulse pounding in my ears. I opened my eyes and at that instant felt a little queasy.

She raised her left hand just above her head. I nodded toward her. She lowered her hands and head, and a second later my phone buzzed.

U ok?

I did not text her back. I nodded in her direction.

Another buzz.

Y U just standing there?

This time I did text back.

Hungry. Just airplane peanuts for three hours.

I cinched my backpack up on my shoulder and continued on down the concourse.

She was, like she said she would be, at the top of the stairs—sort of. The stairs, it turns out, were escalators separated from the concourse by a rail and by the TSA. When I got to the point that I would have to go down to the baggage claim area, she called out to me.

“Meet you at the baggage claim,” she said.

She swirled around and her hair did that thing where it seems to drift up in slow motion. Never seen anything like it.

I took the escalator down, and there she was at the bottom waiting for me. We stood there looking at each other for either two or three seconds or two or three hours.

“Glad you could make it,” she said.

And then she stepped toward me. I was afraid she was going to hug me. Instead she smacked me in the shoulder with a sideways fist. My stomach did a somersault.