Alice’s mother looked at the airport monitor and cursed. It was under her breath, but still loud enough for Alice to hear over the bumping wheels of luggage carts, the clickity-clack of high-heeled boots. Alice followed her mother’s gaze. She saw the flight number for Cleveland and read across to the letters that flashed Delayed. The butterflies that had been dancing in Alice’s belly all day fluttered anxiously. 

Alice’s mother sighed. “Figures I’d get stuck waiting on him. Oh well, it’s just an hour.” 

Alice twisted the plastic lanyard that labeled her an unaccompanied minor. Three months ago, an hour wouldn’t have meant anything—Alice was, after all, a child who knew how to keep herself entertained—but with the world of changes that had happened between being nine and ten, it meant one less hour she would get to spend with her father. To remind him how funny and smart she is. To remind him not to forget about his daughter, Alice, who still lived in Chicago with the woman who used to be his wife.

Alice’s mother put her arm around Alice’s shoulders. “Guess we’ll have time to get you something to eat after all.”

Alice squirmed from her mother’s grip. From a nearby restaurant she could smell melting cheese. Pizza, she thought-wished. But she didn’t say it out loud. Alice had made a bargain the night before, whispered in the dark to whatever invisible force controlled her fate, that if she didn’t talk before she boarded the plane, she would make it to her dad’s place safely. Alice had been on an almost no talking kick since her dad left. She even gave herself points for choosing words with the least number of letters when she did have to speak, like a reverse scrabble game. But today there was more at stake. She would not speak one word. Not a yes, no, or thank you. Total silence. 

Later, when she saw her dad, she would talk and talk and talk. She’d tell him how things had really been, not the fake answers she’d been putting in her emails as her mother perched by her shoulder reading aloud like some over-lipsticked parrot: Fine. OK. All Good. In his emails back, her dad never mentioned the woman he was living with. She wasn’t supposed to be there while Alice visited. Alice’s mother had agreed Alice could visit, but only as long as that woman wasn’t there. 

Alice’s mother fished in her purse. “Let’s try to find something that won’t poison your system.” She pulled out her phone and spoke as her fingers tapped the screen. “David, flight delayed. Will send update.” She dropped the phone in her bag. “Or not.” 

Alice’s mother had been talking to herself a lot lately. Sometimes she’d narrate her actions. “I’ll put the milk in the fridge and then get the dishes washed.” But other times—at the store, or in the car, or walking to the house—Alice’s mother would start speaking mid-sentence, as if she’d been having an argument that had gotten too loud for her head.

In line at a smoothie stand, Alice watched the man in front of them swing a young boy onto his shoulders to create a totem pole of red hair and gray t-shirts. The woman with them paused while placing their order to smile. “My two handsome men.” 

 “Can you see the board?” Alice’s mother asked.

A lump formed in Alice’s throat, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the flight delay, the happy family, or her mother’s not-so-gentle reminder that her glasses should be on her face and not stuffed deep in her backpack in their purple and green storage case. She shrugged. 

 Her mother stepped forward. “We’ll take two Mango-Madnesses. Small. There’s no added sugar, right?” 

Behind the counter, a worker blended drinks. Red, orange, red, orange. The next one will be red, Alice thought. But it was another orange one. Alice felt cheated even though it was their drink order that broke the pattern. Finding patterns made Alice feel like a scientist, like her dad. He worked for a pharmaceutical company, looking through microscopes for patterns in viruses and other small things. Alice used to worry that he would catch a disease at his lab, but he caught a different kind of bug—“the love bug” her mother called it—and now it was almost worse, because Alice felt as if a part of her had died instead. 

Alice’s mother led Alice toward the gate, grasping her shoulder again as a honking service cart approached. They watched it pass by like a Royalty float in a parade. An elderly couple perched on the back with crowns of white hair, clutching canes in place of scepters. 

When they got to the gate, all the seats were filled. An overflow of passengers sat with their backs against the walls, creating a mismatched centipede of extended legs. Alice’s mother made her way to an open spot on the floor, but a skinny teen in baggy pants and earphones sat down first.

“Prick,” her mother muttered. 

Alice pictured the boy deflating into a blue-hooded puddle on the floor, like the balloon she’d gotten at the circus the last time it was just the two of them, her and her dad. The balloon had been as pink as the cotton candy still sticky on her fingers. It had bobbed on its string against the car ceiling. When it floated into the front seat, her father jabbed it too hard; it whooshed around the car as it lost its air. He’d shrugged, not noticing her tears. “It’s all energy, pumpkin. Now that energy is free to become something else.” 

He didn’t know that Alice slept with the dead balloon under her pillow. How she’d wondered if its energy had entered her, reabsorbed on an inhale. Imagined it filling her cells, sending her floating above her bed, the house, and out into the night sky. How far would she drift before someone caught her? A few weeks after her dad left, she came home from school and saw the balloon in the trashcan, a circle of pink rubber in a sea of carrot peelings and crumpled paper towels, like a punctured life raft whose passengers abandoned ship.

Alice’s mother scanned the area for another place to sit. “Oh, Brenda, is anything going to go your way?” 

Was it Alice’s fault her mother talked to herself? With Alice’s dad gone, there was no one to fill in the other end of the conversation. Alice could go an entire morning without saying a word, not responding to “Do you want toast,” or “Where’s your lunch box?” Her mother filled the silence. “Of course, you do.” “Now I see it in your hand.” Alice wished she never had to talk again. She’d heard the words her mom and dad flung at each other, sharp as daggers. As deadly as poisoned arrows. Words could burst a marriage. Just like that. Prick.

Alice followed her mother’s figure as she made a beeline for a space by the windows. She might have been mistaken for Alice’s older sister, at least from behind. She’d lost a lot of weight since Alice’s father left, claiming her diet helped lower their food expenses, but Alice thought she looked like she’d been filed down into points: shoulder blades, nails, nose. Everything seemed sharper. 

Alice’s mother crouched to the floor and sat crisscross applesauce. That’s what Alice’s kindergarten teacher used to call it when they sat on the floor at reading time. Alice’s knees touching the knees of her friends, her hand cupping a laugh before the teacher’s reprimand. Alice felt sorry for the girl she was back then with the stupid pigtails, giggling over who knows what. That girl had no idea what was coming.

Instead of sitting, Alice pressed her face to the window. A plane taxied on the runway. Luggage carts zoomed. Other vehicles carried gas or food to waiting airplanes. But their area of the tarmac seemed abandoned. The passenger tunnel jutted out like an elephant’s trunk. One orange-vested employee leaned against the stacked luggage cart. Alice tried to spot her suitcase. It was new for the trip, pink with black trim and a yellow hair ribbon tied to the handle just in case someone else on the plane had a pink-with-black-trim one too. Money had been tight, but her mother had splurged and spent forty-dollars online. Alice thought of her packed things; her green and white striped T-shirt, her second favorite pair of jeans, her days-of-the-week underwear, Sunday through Thursday. What if the suitcase got lost? Then she would just have Friday and Saturday. Everyday couldn’t be Friday and Saturday.

Alice sucked at the straw; the last of the orange slush worked its way onto her tongue. She counted how long before it melted. Conversion, her father had taught her, is the act of one substance becoming another substance. Ice to liquid. Liquid to gas. 

Her mother groaned. Alice turned her attention to a voice coming from the speakers, but only caught “—inconvenience. We’ll update you shortly.”

Around them passengers started to shift and mutter; some moved toward the ticket counter.

Alice’s mother stood. “Delayed again. This is all your fault, David.”

Alice didn’t see what her father had to do with delaying the plane. And why would he? He’d used lots of exclamation points in his last email when he’d written Can’t wait!!! 

Her mother shook her head. “At least another hour, kiddo. Hope you brought a book.”

Of course Alice had brought a book. Three in fact. The pages dog-eared and bandaged with tape after too many overeager turns. But the books were for the plane. And for nighttime at her Dad’s place, which loomed in the distance, as strange and unknown as a foreign country. 

Alice’s mother moved to a newly emptied row of seats. Alice put the cup in the trash, keeping the straw to chew on. She placed her backpack on the floor and sat next to her mother. To any of the other passengers or the uniformed check-in people behind the counter, they seemed like just two people in the crowd: a brown haired, blue-eyed girl and her mom. But Alice wasn’t what she seemed. No one was. She kicked a wad of dried gum on the carpet until her mother told her to stop fidgeting.

When Alice first asked about seeing her dad, Alice’s mother had sighed and said, “He’s gone, hon, you just need to forget about him.” “But—” Alice started. Her mother had snapped. “You don’t get it. Your father went crazy, okay? He’s not acting like your father anymore.” Alice, as usual, stayed silent. But forget about him? How could she? The memories of him were as much a part of her as breath. At night, under the covers, she’d hold an internal screening of her life, age zero to nine. She could speed up the memories or freeze one image to study it like a photograph. Herself at five, dancing with stuffed animals on the comforter, her father’s hands in tickle position, her toothy smile. Dr. Friedlander was always asking, “So, Alice, is this a real smile today?” But all of Alice’s real smiles belonged to her memories. Now, she’d gotten her way. She was going to see her dad. But she couldn’t shake the feeling in her belly, like she’d swallowed a rock. What if her mother was right?

Alice’s throat tightened. She searched the waiting area for a pattern. Seated across from her a woman with an old-fashioned hairdo read a magazine. Next, a man in trendy square-framed glasses held a phone. Then a person reading a book and the next looking at a phone. 

Patterns helped Alice not to panic. Panic was when your heart started racing so fast you thought it was going to push free of your chest, when your face got sweaty and you couldn’t breathe, and it felt as if the passage to your lungs had caved in. The first time she felt it was the night her dad left. She’d been doing homework, her pencil clenched as she tried to ignore the shouting. Then came the silence. A few minutes later, the door to her room creaked open. Her father kissed the top of her head, “I’m going.” She’d scribbled a silent message onto the paper, but he’d turned and left without reading the words caged in lines of loose-leaf. Please stay.

Passengers re-filled the seats around them, complaining into phones or to others in their group. The ones without seats paced like a pack of angry beasts. Alice tried counting her breath. One, two, three. It was on a list Dr. Friedlander had given Alice of what to do when she felt a panic attack coming on. Things like write in a journal, draw pictures, do twenty-five jumping jacks, scream into a pillow. He didn’t know about finding patterns. That was Alice’s secret. 

Alice closed her eyes but she could still sense the commotion, as if she were connected to it by live wires. When she opened her eyes, the air was spotted with bright pixels of light. She chewed the end of the straw, played with her lanyard, and noticed her mother had started talking to the man with the trendy glasses. He was older than she’d thought at first, the glasses and blue jeans an attempt to fake his age, like her mother’s dyed hair and tall black boots. 

 Alice leaned toward them and put on her listening ears. That’s what she had to do at school sometimes when her head got too full of thoughts. Her teacher would notice her looking out a window, or off into space, and would say “Alice, you need to put on your listening ears.” Alice would picture her ear attached to a tube with no other sound in it but the teacher’s voice. Sometimes, though, her other thoughts pushed their way in, crowding her attention like there was something special to see—a meteor or movie star—and she would forget to listen down the tube, missing yet another important teaching fact. 

The man with her mother spoke in a rush, his words running into each other as if he were speaking in cursive. 

“See, they never give it to you straight, when you check online it says delayed indefinitely, the holdup’s probably mechanical so you might want to get on another flight, but I used miles so I’m stuck.”

“Well that’s a drag, but I’m stuck too. Alice’s mother motioned toward Alice. “She’s going to see her father. Guess the only plus is my ex has to suffer the wait on his end.” 

The man flickered a smile. He extended his hand. “My name’s Bob.”

Alice’s mother returned the shake. “Brenda.” 

“Two B’s,” he said. “With such a long wait, we’re going to be bored. That’s three. How about we aim for four. Bored Bob’s going to get a beer. Want to come? My treat.”

Alice waited for her mother to say ‘No, I couldn’t possibly.’ It wasn’t like the B’s were even a real pattern; Bob was probably short for Robert. Alice brought the lanyard up to her nose and sniffed. It smelled like plastic report covers. She fought the urge to bite down.

 “Well, I guess we have time,” Alice’s mother said. “I wonder if I should text David?” She studied her nails, scraped something off her ring finger. “Screw it. He’s an adult. He’ll figure it out.”

Bob led them to a bar with football games on big screen TVs. Pop music blared through speakers. Alice was the only kid in there. At a table they sat on high stools that Alice had to climb onto. Alice’s mother asked what she wanted and Alice pointed to the pizza triangle on the laminated menu. Her mother didn’t object, but when it arrived she attacked it with a napkin, sopping up the grease that pooled in small yellow puddles.

Bob drank as quickly as he spoke, gulping from his beer bottle as if it contained water. In between gulps he talked about an ex-wife in LA, a fifteen-year-old son, how he worked on “an investment thing,” which probably bored her mother as much as it bored Alice. Not that you’d know. Her mother leaned forward on her elbow and twisted her hair around her knuckles as if weaving it on a loom.

When the second round arrived, Alice’s mother and Bob reached for the same bottle and smiled as their fingers brushed. 

“So,” Bob said. “Tell me about you.” 

Alice listened to her mother tell a series of half-truths. “Art History major at U of M,” (she never graduated); “Work in medicine,” (she was an administrator for a health care company); “Locked out a philandering husband,” (he’d left, with a suitcase and a box of work files, after taking the recycling bin to the curb). Then her mother repeated phrases Alice had heard so often they seemed scripted. “Middle-aged breakdown.” “Male menopause.” 

Bob took off his glasses and swiped the lenses with a napkin. Without the frames, his face looked pasty, like a mound of cookie dough. Alice’s father used to wear glasses. They’d been thin and wiry, always going lopsided on his face when he laughed, but around the same time Alice got stuck with her own awful glasses, he’d switched to contacts. 

“It’s kind of funny,” Alice’s mother said, as she twirled her bottle on the table. “David was such a perfectionist, but it didn’t bother him that he’d failed at being married.”

Bob nodded. “I read in an article that most folks get two years tops of a good marriage. After that it’s just a ticking time bomb.” He put his glasses back on and pointed to Alice. “What about you kid? I bet you’re into those bands with the cute boys, right?” He tapped the table to the song on the speakers. 

Alice shrugged. She’d lost interest in the pizza and bit down instead on a strand of hair, preferring its soapy taste to the gummy cheese and soggy crust.

“She’s a quiet one,” Bob said. “Cat got your tongue?” He wiggled his at her. It glistened red and pointy under his teeth like a venomous sea creature. 

Alice squinted at the hamburger-shaped clock over the bar. The airline worker had said they’d have an update at five o’clock. It was hard to see without her glasses but she thought the hands—two oversized french fries—were perched at the four and ten. 

 “She’s not talking to me,” Alice’s mother said, and tugged the hair from Alice’s mouth. It dangled wet and matted against Alice’s neck. “I think she blames me for not stopping her father. As if I could have. He was chasing a scent like some overexcited dog. He’d have run me over if I stood in his way. And now I’m the one being punished. Kids.”

Alice thought of her silent plea. Stay. If she’d stood in front of him, blocked the door, would he have run her over too? 

“My kid never shuts up,” Bob said with a shrug. “Give me this. Buy me that. I wouldn’t mind him taking a lesson from your girl.” 

He held up an empty bottle to signal to the waitress, and scooted his stool so that when he sat back down his arm touched the arm of Alice’s mother.

Alice wished she could say something. There was no time for another drink. She scanned the crowd rushing through the terminal. Was there anyone who’d been at the gate? Maybe the flight had arrived. Alice’s mother didn’t seem to be paying attention to the time. Her face was flushed, her laugh getting louder. What if she did something stupid again? 

A few weeks ago, Alice’s mother didn’t show up to get Alice after school. Alice waved off a concerned teacher and said she was supposed to walk home. But she ran most of the mile, feet propelled by a fear that something bad had happened. Really bad. Her mother’s car wasn’t in the driveway and no one answered when she rang the bell so Alice got the key from its hiding spot: a fake rock made of gray plastic that blended in with the other rocks, the overgrown grass, the weeds. Sometimes you can’t tell something isn’t what it seems until you got up close. 

  Inside, Alice tried calling her mother’s cell phone but it went straight to voice mail. Her mother finally showed up near dinnertime. Alice was on the couch cocooned in an afghan, the wool wet from her tears. She was so relieved that her mother hadn’t been hit by a truck or squashed by a piano that she accepted her mother’s red-eyed, “Sorry, kiddo,” with a rush of happiness that felt like forgiveness. As her mother pulled her into a hug, Alice could smell the alcohol on her breath. Her mother rested her lips on Alice’s head. “This is all your father’s fault,” she’d said before stumbling up the stairs.

Alice’s mother’s phone rang. She checked it and set it on the table without answering. “It’s David. He can wait.”

Alice acted without thinking. With one hand she grabbed her backpack, with the other the phone, and jumped off the stool, running out of the bar as she tapped the screen to answer. 

 “Hello, Brenda?” 

It was her dad’s voice. Alice didn’t know what to do. Should she speak? She had to speak. “Dad, it’s me.” She entered the flow of the crowd, allowed it to propel her forward, like a conveyer belt. She looked over her shoulder to see if her mother had followed but saw only a blur of unfamiliar faces.

“Alice, why aren’t you on the plane?” 

Alice’s breath whooshed like she’d been punched. When she tried to speak, her words came in spurts. “Is it here? Did it take off? We’re not at the gate. Mom took me to a bar. With some guy. I can’t believe I missed it.” 

How could this have happened? She hadn’t said a single word until now, but it didn’t matter. She stopped in place. A woman pushing a stroller came up short and gave her a dirty look. 

Alice fought her way toward the nearest wall, stepping in front of people, stumbling over a cart. She found a gap by a water fountain and squeezed in. 

Her father was shouting. “Alice, are you there? Let me talk to your mother.”

Alice tried to read the nearest gate number but tears blurred her vision like a pair of glasses working in reverse.

 “Did I miss it?”

“Alice, calm down. I thought they might have you waiting on the plane. It doesn’t say anything on my end. Just that it’s delayed. If you miss it, we’ll put you on another one. Can you please get me your mother.”

“My suitcase.” She twisted the lanyard tighter against her neck. “If they put me on a different plane, won’t it get lost?”

“Your suitcase? Don’t worry. We have stores here. We can buy you stuff.”

Alice thought of her father’s last purchase for her: how she’d clung to the string as the balloon landed by her feet, and how, even though she knew better, she wished for it to spring back to life. After they’d parked, her dad unclipped his seatbelt, turned toward her and said, “Pumpkin, sometimes things break that can’t be fixed. Sometimes you have to let them go.”

 “ALICE!” Alice’s mother appeared in front of her, her face pale, her purse clutched to her chest. “How could you run off like that?”

Seeing her mother made Alice go silent again. She faced the wall, found a pattern in the tiles and traced the green and white squares. Two up, three over, two down, three over.

Alice’s mother grabbed Alice’s shoulder and turned her around. “Alice we need to go. Is that your father? Give me the phone.” 

Alice passed it to her, keeping her other hand on the wall as she traced from memory. Green, three up. White, two down.

 Her mother spit words into the phone, into the air, at Alice. “Of course you can’t help, David. What can you do? You’re three hundred miles away. Why don’t you ask her what she wants? At least she’s talking to you.” 

Alice’s mother held out the phone, but Alice turned away again and brought her other hand to the wall. Through it she could feel the vibrations of energy whirring like a thousand fans, or a million bees, their low, steady hum. If only she could transform into that energy. To become as light as the air, riding the energy waves to the spot where her dad was waiting. And when she arrived, what she hoped he’d tell her, what she needed him to say more than anything in the world, was that he would catch her, hold her tightly, and never, ever let go.

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson