Chapter Text
Airports, Kai has decided, confuse him.
First, his parents had to wait in a long boring line to give half their luggage away to airport people and have it slide away on some sort of ramp out of sight. Then, they took Kai and Nya to stand in another line for a bunch more airport people to scan their suitcases and walk through some weird door his mom explained was a metal detector. Then they had to walk through crowds and crowds of people to get to a “gate” that doesn’t even look like a gate, just a bunch of chairs and a door with the number B11 on it. Now Kai’s waiting around to get on the airplane, bored out of his mind.
Kai glances around at his family. His sister is curled up with her head on his mom’s lap, nose-deep in a picture book about planes while his mom is reading an ebook. His dad is next to her with the morning’s newspaper open. Kai watches them for a second, glances back to his 3DS charging under the seat for the flight and sighs. He’s so bored.
Kai tugs on his hair, the hair that his mom says is “unruly” and “sticks up in all the wrong places”. He makes shapes with his hands. He finds a loose string on the cushion of his seat and tugs on it until it snaps. He bites his own wrist until indents appear in his skin.
Still bored.
Kai sits up straighter and looks around the airport for something to do. No one told him going on a trip would be so much waiting. Everyone else is waiting too, but they’re all reading or on their phones. Does anyone even talk in airports? Kai wonders.
Kai’s about to give up and bother one of his parents into talking to him when something catches his attention. So far, he hasn’t seen anyone his age around the airport, not that he’s really been checking, but at one of the large windows near Kai’s seat is a boy that can’t be much older than Kai. He has dark skin and tight black curls that fall down to just under his chin, and he’s staring out at the planes like they’re the most interesting thing in the world.
Well, maybe he’s not too busy. Maybe Kai can actually talk to someone. He gets up and walks over to the kid without telling his family where he’s going. It’s probably fine.
Kai sits down on the floor next to the kid, who startles and turns around to face him.
“Who are you?” The kid asks.
“My name’s Kai. What’s yours?”
“Cole.”
“What are you doing?”
“Watching the planes.” Cole looks back out the window, where a plane is gliding slowly away. “Every time I come to the airport I watch them.”
Kai shifts around on the floor, not sure what to talk about. “Are they interesting?”
Cole shrugs. “Meh. I travel a lot, but I hate airports. They’re so big and boring.”
“They are, ” Kai agrees. Finally, someone who understands him. “This is my first time in an airport, and I never wanna come back.”
“First time?” Cole turns to face Kai again, big brown eyes fixed directly on him. “Do you live here?”
“Yeah. My parents have never taken us on vacation, but they think we’re old enough now. We’re going to, um, Florida.” Kai’s not sure how to pronounce Florida, so the word comes out of his mouth too fast.
Cole nods like he understood perfectly. “I went there before. It’s warm.”
“Why do you travel so much?” Kai asks. “Why would anyone want to be in airports all the time?”
Cole glances down, and he frowns slightly. “I’m not allowed to say why. I’m not allowed to be away from my family either, but we weren’t sitting close enough to the planes.”
“You’re not allowed?”
Cole shakes his head solemnly, and his curls bounce. “Nope.”
“That’s stupid,” Kai declares. “When my parents say something isn’t allowed, it’s always something I find fun but they don’t.”
Cole opens his mouth, but a woman with smooth brown skin and black hair tied up in a bun dashes towards Cole and scoops him up in her arms. “Cole, honey, you know you’re not supposed to go out of Mom’s sight in airports, right?”
Cole frowns deeper, but he hugs his mother. “Sorry, Mom. I wanted to see the planes.”
“I know, honey, but we’re boarding soon,” Cole’s mother says. Then she looks down at Kai. “Who’s your friend?”
“I’m Kai,” Kai says, beaming up at her, because he’s been taught to always be nice to new people when he meets them.
Cole’s mother beams back. “Well, nice to meet you, Kai, but we have to get going now. Say bye, Cole!”
“Bye,” Cole says to Kai, waving.
Kai waves back and watches Cole go, then turns back to the window to watch the planes. Maybe they would be interesting enough to keep Kai busy if he couldn’t talk to Cole anymore.
And Kai stays at the window, watching planes take off and land, until his dad comes to find him so they can get on the flight and start their vacation.
* * *
In the future, Kai doesn’t remember much about the beginning of his trip to Florida, because it’s overshadowed by his parents’ sudden disappearance less than a week in, leaving him and Nya in a hotel alone. Two months later, while at a foster home back in Kai and Nya’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, the siblings are informed that their parents’ bodies were found back in Florida. They’re officially orphans.
In the years that follow before his next trip, all Kai can remember from the Florida trip is feeling terrified and alone and wondering if he’ll ever see his parents again. But when he grasps at happy memories from before his parents’ disappearance and murder, sometimes the memory of a quiet boy with dark curls resurfaces, and Kai clings to the sense of safety like a lifeline.
It feels like ages before he ever so much as sees an airport again.