bench where I did my homework in nice weather?
The plane suddenly lurched downward and my eyes snapped open, my hands flashing down to clutch my armrests with a death grip. I yanked out my earbuds and looked around frantically, expecting to see yellow oxygen masks dropping from the ceiling. But the plane had steadied and all of the other passengers were reading or sleeping or tapping away at laptops and cell phones. Nobody looked perturbed.
“ Just a little bit of turbulence,” said a voice to my right. I turned to find Mr. Smith beaming at me.“ Perfectly normal, nothing to worry about.” He patted my hand reassuringly.
I gave him a close-lipped smile and tried to pull my hand away as discreetly as possible.“ Is this your first time flying?” Mr. Smith asked. I nodded.“ Remarkable, isn’ t it,” he said dreamily, looking out the small window at the cloudscapes around us.“ Yes,” I managed creakily. I wished for a bottle of water.“ A hundred years ago, no one would have believed this,” he continued.“ Flying around in giant metal tubes? Impossible.” He laughed gently.“ I guess you really never know what’ s going to happen in the future. And one hundred years, that’ s not even that long ago in the grand scheme of things.”
“ A lot can happen in a hundred years,” I offered.“ The Industrial Revolution, the destruction of Aztec civilization, the ends of dynasties.”
“ Smart girl,” Mr. Smith said, echoing the TSA agent from security.“ You know your history.”
“ I’ m a history major at U Penn,” I said, resigned to the fact of conversation.
“ Ah! A noble choice,” he said approvingly.“ But why? If I may ask. It seems like you young people these days are all about technology, innovation, the future!”
“ I guess I like knowing what happened,” I said, suddenly acutely self-conscious.“ Things in the past seem so clear. You can find out the causes for things, see why they happened. See what could have happened instead.” I smiled awkwardly, feeling like I’ d said too much.“ I just … I like knowing.”
“ Oh, I know you do, Kate,” Mr. Smith said, in quite a different tone of voice than before.“ I know you do.” He began to fumble with the clasps on his satchel, and I turned towards the window again, assuming, with some relief, that the conversation was over.
Thirty seconds later, something heavy landed in my lap and I snapped around with a small shriek. A couple of heads turned to look at me, and, cheeks flaming, I ducked my head to look at whatever was now resting across my thighs.
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