Page 4 of Every Step She Takes
Sadie
I am not Diane Lane.
And Diane didn’t spend her thirty-fifth birthday wandering around a Hudson News because her anxiety forced her to get to the airport four hours early.
No, in Under the Tuscan Sun , Diane Lane made her mental breakdown look tragically beautiful. I make my mental breakdown look, well… tragic.
I arrive at my gate an hour before boarding just as the woman at the front counter picks up the phone to make an announcement.
“Welcome to British Airways flight 520 to London,” she trills in a lovely accent.
“We will begin boarding momentarily, but we want to remind you that this is a full flight. Overhead storage space will be limited, so we’re looking for fifteen passengers who’d be willing to check their bags free of charge. ”
My bag weighs at least thirty pounds and is already crushing my shoulders, so I briefly consider ditching it when my phone buzzes in the pocket of my yoga pants.
It’s a mildly threatening text from Vi reminding me to post before boarding.
I snap a maybe-artistic, maybe-just-crooked photo of the gate sign before slapping a filter on it and uploading it to the cestlavi account, along with fifteen of Vi’s pre-approved hashtags.
Two seconds after I press post, I get another text demanding the next one is a selfie. THE ALGORITHM WANTS PHOTOS WITH PEOPLE , she text-shouts at me. My phone buzzes again as another bubble appears on the screen. AND YOU HAVE TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO MY FOLLOWERS .
A beat, and then a third text. I DON’T WANT ANYONE THINKING I TOOK THAT JANKY-ASS PHOTO .
The spiraling thoughts start as my steps echo through the jetway before boarding the plane.
What if I can’t find any overhead space for my backpack?
What if I can’t navigate my way through Heathrow and I miss my connecting flight to Porto?
What if the plane crashes and I end up in some kind of cannibalistic Yellowjackets situation? Or worse, a Lost situation, where I won’t know what’s going on for six years, only to discover I was maybe dead the whole time anyway. At least, I think that’s what happened in the Lost finale.
What if I’m the only person who is still confused by the Lost finale?
What if my seatmate packed a tuna sandwich and wants to talk to me ?
My anxiety brain thoroughly and efficiently runs through every worst-case scenario, trying to protect me from upcoming disappointment by anticipating it. Because I am Molly Wells’s daughter through and through.
When I arrive in front of seat 18B, I discover there’s easy access to bin space (though my heavy bag requires the help of three strangers).
There is only one seat next to mine by the window, and the older woman on the other side of the aisle has already removed her shoes and started in on a knitting project. She doesn’t seem like a talker.
The flight was the one thing Vi couldn’t easily transfer into my name when I decided to take her place on this trip four days ago.
She planned to buy me a ticket using her airline miles, but the owner of the tour company stepped in and kindly offered to arrange my flight, including an upgrade to premium economy. I guess it pays to be an influencer.
I would never splurge on such an indulgence, but I can’t complain about the extra room. Apparently, only straight-size people under five-feet tall are allowed to be comfortable on airplanes, and I am neither of those things.
I take off my coat and shove it under the seat in front of me before cuing my downloaded “sad girl indie” playlist on Spotify and spritzing a small amount of lavender onto my left wrist to calm me.
Then I set up my things in the seat pouch in front of me: two L?rabars; my Owala water bottle; Dramamine; a phone charger; a Lonely Planet guidebook about Portugal.
I glance down at my phone and the screen is an endless stream of notifications from Vi’s Instagram, comments and mentions and tags.
There are texts from my sister about content, and texts from the assistant manager of the store about inventory, and texts from my mom about whether I packed enough doses of my Lexapro.
I ignore everything, put my phone in airplane mode, and slide it into the pouch too.
The flow of people entering the plane soon thins to a slow trickle, then stops completely, and the window seat next to me remains empty.
The flight attendants start closing the overhead bins, and I begin to relax a little as Gracie Abrams croons in my AirPods.
I let my elbows spread wide and my long legs stretch out a little farther, enjoying the freedom.
Until out of nowhere, a blue-haired figure materializes in the aisle, swinging a backpack that dangles off one shoulder and accidentally smacking people with a Hydro Flask covered in stickers: several different pride flags, a SHE/HER decal, and a “Protect Trans Kids” glittery rainbow all catch my eye.
Giant headphones jostle around her neck, and she absolutely looks like a talker.
Anxiety gathers deep in my lower gut. Please . Please don’t let her be my seat companion.
She slings off her backpack and starts opening and closing overhead bins in search of a spot to stash it.
The bag looks like it was once maroon, maybe orange, but has long since faded to a fecal-brown color.
It’s covered in patches from places around the world, like Van Life’s answer to a Girl Scout vest. She makes a triumphant sound when she finds a small spot for the backpack and stands on her tiptoes to cram it in.
As she starts punching the bag into its tight space, her shirt and fleece ride up, and her jeans slide down her hip bones to reveal the waistband of her briefs and a tattoo of some kind of vined plant that snakes down her left hip and disappears into her underwear.
I force myself to look away as a flight attendant brusquely marches down the aisle to help.
“Thanks, friend,” she says to the attendant in a vaguely European accent.
She shrugs off her mustard-colored Cotopaxi fleece to reveal a threadbare gray T-shirt and a distinct lack of bra.
Her eyes scan the seat numbers until they land on 18A, and her gaze drops down to me.
As her mouth widens into a friendly smile, something weird happens in my stomach.
It’s not my usual anxiety knot; it almost feels like my stomach lifts into my rib cage the way it always does during takeoff, and I have an inexplicable sense of déjà vu as I look up at her face, like seeing someone from childhood you forgot existed.
But I know I’ve never met this woman. It’s an unexplainable familiarity, like an itch in the back of my head that I can’t scratch.
“That’s me,” she says, pointing to the window seat.
Because of course it is. I tug out one AirPod. “Sorry,” I say as I unfasten my seat belt and quickly move out of her way.
“Nothing to be sorry about, friend.” She smiles breezily.
I settle back into my seat, elbows tucked, legs crossed, AirPods in, eyes fixed forward.
It’s the body language of the unsociable and emotionally closed off.
I can feel her shifting beside me, scrunching up her coat and tucking it into the small of her back.
She attempts to squeeze her Hydro Flask into the seat front pocket, but her legs are even longer than mine, so she spreads them wide to accommodate the oversized water bottle, and her knee bumps mine.
With every movement, she jostles our joined seats, making me feel like a small boat on the open ocean.
And that’s when I pop a Xanax and wait for it to carry me off into a blissful, anxiety-free sleep.
But then Window Seat leans over me to accept a moist towelette from the flight attendant, and I suddenly feel more awake than ever.
Her Seattle grunge aesthetic suggests she should smell like a compost bin, but as she dangles her body in front of mine, I get a whiff of…
sandalwood? Clean laundry? Sunshine after an afternoon rain?
She smells like opening a window on the first warm day of spring.
It’s as I’m sniffing this stranger and thinking about Magnolia Park in early June that I realize she’s talking to me. I pull out a single AirPod again, and the music cuts off in my ear. “I’m sorry, what?”
She’s still smiling, and she gestures to her long legs. “They really don’t make these seats big enough for normal-size humans anymore, do they?”
I’m not sure what to do with this comment, so I sort of laugh, sort of cough in response.
“Where are you headed?” she asks in that same indistinct accent that’s either European or merely the effects of chain-smoking during her formative years. “What’s your final destination? London?”
“Oh. Uh…” This is not a hard question, but my brain has never performed well on-demand. “Porto,” I finally tell her, politeness winning out over introversion.
My seatmate presses a hand to her chest. “Me too.” Then she rattles off a few foreign words. And ah. That must be the accent.
“Oh, sorry, but I don’t speak Portuguese.”
“Desculpe,” she says, still smiling.
“Sorry?”
“Exactly. Desculpe is ‘sorry’ in Portuguese. Seems like something you might want to know.” She keeps smiling at me until the pilot comes over the intercom for the welcome speech.
“There’s only one reason Americans fly straight to Porto,” Window Seat continues over the announcement. “Are you doing the Camino?”
I nod.
“Cool. Are you doing the interior route out of Porto or the coastal route?”
I have no idea what that even means. “I-I don’t know.”
“Just winging it, then?” she asks. “Nice. I did that on the Camino del Notre a few years ago. If you have any questions or want any advice, let me know. This will be my fourth Camino, and a friend of mine actually—”