Unaccompanied Minor (7 page)

“My mom has gone through already. I’m just trying to catch up with her,” I answered. I was friendly and confident and looked her in the eye. I had practiced this.

“Well, we can’t let you through security unless you’re being escorted by a parent or guardian,” she said humorlessly.
Dang
, I thought,
she must have kids of her own
. Mothers are the hardest to fool.

“My mom’s probably just trying to get rid of me,” I joked.

“Um-hm.” She sounded not at all like she was buying my act, which was saying something, because my act was pretty good. Instead she eyed me like a shoplifter, unhooked her walkie-talkie, and spoke into it, directing her colleague to “monitor” me until they could find my mother. I spent the next forty minutes sitting next to the surveillance podium while various TSA agents took fruitless turns paging my mother over the airport PA system.

Then—thank God!—I saw Officer Ned making his way to the head of the line. He must have been on his way back from escorting another prisoner, because I could tell he was wearing his gun holster even though he was alone. He looked as irritated with the slow-moving crowd as he must have looked with the criminal he’d ferried around earlier—and as he customarily did with me, come to think of it—but that didn’t stop me from calling out to him.

“Officer Ned, hi! Over here! Officer Ned!” The other TSA agents were a little startled by my hollering, but thankfully Volcano Head had gone on a break, so without her critical eye on me I felt more free to call attention to myself. “Here! Hi, Officer Ned!” I hooted.

He finally heard me and lifted his head to scan the crowd like he was searching for someone who’d made an offensive remark.
This guy needs to cheer up
, I thought. When he caught sight of me he rolled his eyes and shook his head as though my appearance in his life right then was the rotten cherry on top of the crap sundae that had been his afternoon. Undeterred, I smiled excitedly and added jumping to my arm waving. Eventually, after struggling back into his black motorcycle boots (who wears motorcycle boots through a
TSA scan
?), he lumbered over to me while refastening the watch he’d removed for the security scan. His badge hung on his belt, half visible beneath the waistband of his lightweight bomber jacket, a departure from the usual LEO suit jacket.

“What is wrong with you, April? You can’t be yelling out my name. I’m supposed to be incognito,” he said.

“False,” I answered. I was the wrong person for him to try to con, because I knew that plainclothed LEOs are not expected to travel undercover. “You’re just saying that so people won’t bother you.”

“Exactly.”

He nodded his acknowledgement to the TSA officer in the podium at my side, who gave him the invisible law-enforcement brotherhood handshake and asked, “Are you here to escort this young lady to her gate? Her mother isn’t answering any of our pages.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” I interjected. “I’ll be fine now, thanks for your help. Officer Rockwell can take me to my gate. I’m sure my mother’s there waiting for me. Shall we go, Officer Rockwell?” I grabbed my backpack, hooked my arm through his elbow and half-dragged him onto the concourse.

When we got to a safe distance from the security area he dug in his heels and gently yanked his arm away. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“By the way, you’re
welcome
,” I teased him.

“I’m welcome for
what
?”

“For saving your butt when that prisoner tried to escape.” I nudged him playfully, but Officer Ned was about as playful as a porcupine. Still, his face softened with reluctant appreciation.

“Thank you,” he sighed. “
Now
tell me what the hell is going on here.”

“You heard the TSA agent,” I lied. “I got separated from my mother and she didn’t hear their pages, which, you know, can you blame her?” I cupped my hands behind my ears to indicate the fact that the airport PA system sounded as clear as a ham radio during a hurricane. “I probably would have been there forever if you hadn’t come along. Thanks!”

“Where are you flying? I’m taking you to your gate and meeting your mother.”

“I’m catching flight 1420 to Atlanta,” I said.

“No, you’re not.” He eyed me intently. “That flight was canceled.”

“Well, then we’re just gonna take the next flight.”

“No, you’re not,” he said again. He was really starting to bother me. “All flights to Atlanta are canceled. Haven’t you been listening to the announcements?”

“Who can hear the announcements?” I asked. It was a reasonable question. “Nobody can hear anything through these speakers.” Later I found out that an overloaded electrical transformer had blown up beneath the D Concourse at Hartsfield and closed down the entire airport for the rest of the night. It was the first time in the history of forever that anything like that had happened, and wouldn’t you know, it occurred just as I was trying to lie my butt off to a police officer.

“What’s your mother’s cell phone number?” Officer Ned flipped open his phone expectantly.

I didn’t skip a beat. “The TSA agents already tried calling her.” My eyes were wide with honesty. “But her phone is dead.”

Officer Ned snapped his phone shut impatiently. He took a card from his breast pocket. “I’m starting to find it a little hard to believe that your mother hasn’t called the police and enlisted a SWAT team to try and find you.” He handed me the card. “Do you see what it says there? I am an officer of the law. I will talk to your mother, do you understand? Right now. Take me to her this second. Or,” he continued, “you can just cut the crap and tell me what’s going on here, April.”

“Okay, fine.” I took a deep breath and let it out with an air of dramatic dejection. “I’ll tell you everything. First I have to pee, though. Can I please go pee? There’re no bathroom breaks when you’re practically held prisoner at security.”

You really can’t blame Officer Ned for losing me after that. First, I knew from experience that begging to use the bathroom was an effective ruse with him, and second, how was he to know that the door to the crew lounge was down the same hallway that led to the concourse restrooms? Or that I could gain access through that door, descend the stairs, and disappear into the busy lower region of the airport?

Escape like this was one of the benefits that came with impersonating my mother. And WorldAir was such a large corporation that any discrepancies juxtaposing her pass travel against her nut house commitment would not be discovered for months, possibly even years, if ever. For example, it had been eleven years since the death of my real father, and we still received his empty pay stub in the mail every month. The industry machine moves very slowly in this regard, so I felt secure in using her badge to camp in the crew lounges and even to book myself in the jumpseat sometimes, since I’m five-nine, which is tall for a fifteen-year-old, and when I spatula makeup on my face and wear my hair in a twist, I can pass for her now that they don’t put birthdates on the badges anymore.

That night, once I was certain I’d ditched Officer Ned, I moseyed over to the employee cafeteria and used my mother’s badge to buy a “payroll-deduct” hamburger, finished all of my homework—barring the composition on the five people I admire the most; I was having a hard time with that one (I wonder why)—and spent the night in one of the comfortable La-Z-Boys clustered in a dark corner for flight attendants to use when they need to catch some snores between trips. I would have slept better if not for a coworker (I consider them coworkers), who noisily masticated a big bag of microwave popcorn all night. Seriously, I wanted to swat it out of her hands like how they showed us to do to weapon-wielding assailants in the flight attendant self-defense training video.

Swat it to the ground!
I kept thinking. It was such a satisfying mental image, all the popcorn flying in the air.
Swat it to the ground!
I grinned and attached my earphones to my charging portable DVD player. I was on episode sixty-five of
MacGyver
, “The Secret of Parker House,” in which MacGyver accompanies his friend Penny Parker (played by Teri Hatcher) to an old house she inherited from her aunt, but suspects foul play when the house appears to be haunted. I fell asleep just as he was improvising a torpedo using a pipe and an old boilerplate.

The next morning I booked myself on the first flight to Atlanta as a nonrevenue employee using my mother’s badge, because the standby list was a mile long due to all the cancellations from the night before. By listing myself as a jump-seating flight attendant instead of an unaccompanied minor, I could at least grab a jumpseat if no passenger seats were left.

It was just my luck that Officer Ned was standing by for the same flight. I tried to avoid him, but he must have been on the lookout for me. When he caught sight of me he looked furious, but also, I could have sworn, a little relieved as well.

“Officer Ned!” I exclaimed, figuring I might as well play up our encounter. I rushed over and threw my arms around him. He stiffened with surprise, but after a second he patted my shoulder awkwardly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” I cried. The people around us began to gaze fondly upon our reunion.

Officer Ned detangled himself and held me at arm’s length. “All right, April.” He nodded skeptically. “One more time, where’s your mother?”

“She’s already on board,” I lied.

“Really? They haven’t even begun the boarding process!” He was angry now.

I hesitated for exactly one second before answering him. “Ah, she’s working the flight. All the cancellations from yesterday really screwed up flight attendant scheduling.”

“Right.” He rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, she volunteered to work the flight so the plane could meet minimum staffing requirements. I’ll introduce you when you get on board, I swear.”

“Is that so? Well, we’ll just wait here until they call our names and board the plane together, then.”

“Great, okay! Ah, did you hear that announcement earlier?”

“What announcement?”

“They announced my name. I must have been cleared to board. Haven’t they called your name?”

“I did not hear any announcement.”

There had been no announcement, but as a jumpseat passenger I didn’t need one. I was expected to board before everyone else in order to identify myself to the cabin and cockpit crews.

Officer Ned walked me over to the flustered gate agent. “Excuse me!” he called loudly. I winced. Gate agents hate that. “I said, excuse me!”

The agent smacked her pen on the counter and turned to him sharply. “Yes?”

“Is this young lady cleared to board?”

I’d shown her my badge earlier when I’d filled out the jumpseat slip, so she simply waved her hand dismissively and said, “Yes, of course.”

“Fine,” Officer Ned said to me. “Get on the plane. At least I’ll know where you are.”

I gave him another unexpected hug goodbye. It was mostly out of appreciation for having someone give a crap about me for once, but also because I wanted to add his badge to the handcuffs I’d pickpocketed off him earlier. It would be a while before he noticed them missing, I thought, and I had a feeling they might come in handy for me later.

“I’ll be on board myself as soon as I get my seat assigned,” he called to me as I walked down the jetway.

As I predicted, Officer Ned did not get a seat for that flight, or the next, or the next. I looked up the standby lists later to see that it had taken eleven hours for all the displaced full-fare standby passengers to finally make it to their final destinations.

So I confidently stepped onto the aircraft, nodded hello to the cabin crew, and gratefully claimed one of the open jumpseats near the aft lavatories. This was a Lockheed L-1011, Flo’s favorite airplane. Personally, I’d put this plane near the bottom of my own list because it’s forty-two years old and reminds me of a dilapidated motor home with wings, not to mention that it’s one of the few models of planes left that isn’t updated to offer onboard WiFi. But I knew that if I booked an L-1011 flight I had a chance Flo would be working it, and she liked to sneak me down to the galley with her to watch
MacGyver
and let me prepare the carts. This meant I’d get to eat as many lobster medallions off the tops of the first-class salads as I wanted before she sent them up the elevator, and I really like lobster. It’s an expensive habit for someone in my position, after I had to go on the run with zero notice. Don’t get me wrong, I’d planned to disappear for a while. It’s just that when the time came a few weeks ago, it did not go according to plan. At all. Far from it.

For example, I did not count on the kidnapping.

April Manning:

Let me clarify something; I always
prepared
for getting kidnapped—all teenage girls should be, seeing as how we are such irresistible prey to rapist/killers, it’s just a fact—but I didn’t
count
on it as a rule. But still, you never know what can happen. They always say the odds are way against you for dying in a plane wreck, too, yet that’s no comfort to me at all, for obvious reasons. In any event, it doesn’t hurt to be safe. That’s what they teach you in the flight attendant manual. It’s all about safety. And if you can’t be safe, at least be resourceful.