A Long Way From You Read Free

It’s even bigger than Mrs. Corcoran’s, which was the biggest one I’d ever seen until now. “I got married, honey.”
    Considering my own parents’ situation, I’ve never thought about being married and getting saved in the same breath.
    “What a beautiful ring.” Talk and compliment. And then repeat.
    “Thanks, darling. Are you meeting your man in New York? Will you be wined and dined?”
    I don’t bother to tell this woman that the only wining and dining I’ve done is “borrowed” Arbor Mist with some BBQ, and that I’m only seventeen.
    “No, ma’am. I’m taking a course at Parsons. It’s an art school,” I say proudly.
    The closest I’ve ever been to Parsons before this is watching Tim Gunn on Project Runway tell contestants to “make it work.” I can’t believe that I’m actually going to school there. Fierce .
    “Oh, good for you,” the woman says. “You have to have a career these days. Thanks to my generation.” She rolls her eyes as if she’s not thankful for the feminists’ efforts for equal rights.
    Art as a career ? Maybe in New York with all of its galleries and museums, but it’s so not possible in Broken Spoke. It could happen only if Madame Williams would finally retire and I became the art teacher. I try to make eye contact with Meredith, the flight attendant, so I can apologize with my eyes for the whole I’m-a-waitress-too comment, but she’s flirting with the Jameson-and-ginger man in 4A.
    The woman beside me pulls her eye mask back down, rests her head against the window, and snuggles up with her black cashmere blanket. “Get some rest,” she mutters. “You’ll need it. You know, New York is the city that never sleeps.”
    I think about pulling out my sketchbook again, watching a bad movie, or asking for another Pepsi. But then . . . I’m not thinking at all.
    I wake up sleeping upright, which is a first for me. The only person I know who sometimes sleeps sitting up is Amber, and I think that’s called passing out.
    There’s a fabulous bacon smell wafting throughout the cabin. The aroma reminds me of weekends at Corrinne’s grandparents’ and brunches at Hands’s, which always beat Cheerios at my place. My watch says it’s only four a.m. Central Time, but I sit up with a hunger. The Lady in (All) Black next to me is reapplying her makeup, using a monogrammed gold compact. Definitely nothing you can buy at our local Piggly Wiggly. But I’ve learned that drugstore makeup is just as good if you know what you’re doing.
    The lady looks at me directly for the first time, then pulls open the window shade. Light floods our seats.
    “Darling,” she says, “switch seats with me. We’re going to fly over Manhattan at sunrise. This is something that you must see. I’m still awestruck by its beauty even after living here for twenty-five years.”
    After some awkward maneuvering, I have my nose pressed up against the window of my new seat. Its imprint leaves a mark that I try to rub away. Right now, the view is houses and more houses but Monopoly-size ones.
    But then I see water, and I spy it: a tiny green statue.
    The lady nudges me and says, “ Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door! ”
    “The inscription on the Statue of Liberty,” I say. “I read about it at the library when I tried to learn everything I could about Manhattan.”
    “Somehow, I think you’ll still end up surprised,” she says. “I’m going to give you an aerial tour of the island of Manhattan. It’s going to be quick because the island is only—”
    “Thirteen miles long.” I’m beginning to like this lady even if she’s a bit un-PC.
    “The green patch—that’s Central Park. There’s the Empire, the Chrysler,” she says, pointing to different skyscrapers. “Oh, that’s the Brooklyn Bridge,” she