Just a passenger, he told himself. Window seat. Clouds.
He had no way of knowing how wrong that was.
Chapter 5: Row 23
The jet bridge smelled of rain and warm metal, and it swayed, very slightly, under Micah's shoes.
He had not expected the walk to feel like a bridge at all — in the simulator it was just a door painted on plywood — but this one hummed with footsteps and ended at an open aircraft door where a flight attendant stood smiling at every passenger like each one was the first.
"Good evening. Welcome aboard Meridian Air."
She was in her early forties, Micah guessed, with dark hair pinned neat and a calm that seemed to lower the temperature of the doorway. Her name badge read GRACE KIM. She looked at his boarding pass, then at him — travelling alone, jacket too big — and her smile changed, just slightly, into something real.
"Twenty-three A, window seat, left side, past the wing," she said. "First flight?"
"Yes, ma'am. How could you tell?"
"You're looking at everything like it might be on a test." She touched his shoulder as he passed, feather-light. "It won't be. Enjoy it. If you need anything, my name is Grace. You come find me."
The cabin was narrower than the simulator and brighter, row after row of blue seats breathing cool air from a hundred little vents. First class came first — wide leather seats, a curtain, and in 2A, already settled with a drink, Richard Vane, who glanced up as Micah passed and then looked away. Micah kept his eyes forward, counted rows under his breath, and tried to look like a boy who belonged on airplanes.
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two —
"Watch it, window boy."
A yellow backpack swung out of row 22 as its owner wrestled it under the seat. The girl from the vending machine looked up and grinned with recognition. "Hey. Gate boy. The light thief."
"I gave it back," Micah said, and surprised himself by grinning too.
"You did. I'm Sofia. Row 22, aisle, keeper of extra snack bars." She held up the second bar like evidence. "You're behind me? Then I apologise in advance, I recline like I mean it." She studied him a moment, more gently. "First flight? You have the look. Sit, sit. The plane does the work."
Micah slid into 23A and understood at once why his mother had wished him the window. The glass was cool against his forehead. Below, in the gathering dark, ground crews moved in orange vests around the aircraft, and the wing stretched out beside him vast and patient, rain-polished, real in a way no screen had ever managed. He pressed his palm flat to the wall beneath the window. A faint, deep vibration lived there, the plane idling like something asleep with one eye open.
He listened. Grandpa's habit. Joe's first lesson. Under the chatter, the aircraft murmured — pumps, air, distant hydraulics — a whole machine talking quietly to itself.
"You doing science on the wall?" Sofia asked over the seatback.
"It sounds different than I expected," Micah admitted. "Lower."
"Okay, that's either weird or wonderful, and I haven't decided." But she said it warmly, and when the safety demonstration began, she shushed a man across the aisle who was talking through it. "Some of us are new," she told him.
Before pushback, Grace brought a set of plastic wings down the aisle for a little girl in row 19, saw Micah watching, and — on her way back — paused at 23A.
"Captain Mercer likes the young ones to see the flight deck before we close up," she said quietly. "We've got four minutes. Would you like to look? Quickly now."
His heart slammed. "Yes, ma'am. Please."
The cockpit was smaller than the simulator and infinitely more real — a wall of light and intention, switches in their hundreds, every one of them labelled. In the left seat, broad and grey at the temples, sat Captain Daniel Mercer, running a checklist in a voice like a steady river. In the right seat, a woman with dark hair in a tight braid glanced back — First Officer Elena Vasquez — and gave Micah a quick, professional nod.
"Evening, young man," Mercer said, turning, and his smile made deep lines at his eyes. "First flight?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then we'll make it a good one. Your name?"
"Micah Lawson, sir."
"Well, Micah Lawson, you enjoy my favourite office view." He tapped the windshield, where the runway lights ran away into the dusk. "Best seat in the sky is yours tonight. Window, right?"
"Twenty-three A, sir."
"Lucky row." Mercer turned back to his checklist, and Vasquez was already answering him, call and response, smooth as a song they both knew by heart.
Grace guided Micah back down the aisle. "Four minutes," she said. "Some people fly all their lives and never get those."
Back in 23A, Micah buckled his belt with hands that trembled only a little, took out the green notebook, and wrote in rolling, uneven letters as the aircraft began to move: Saw it. Real cockpit. Captain Mercer. F.O. Vasquez. It sounds alive.