Off to the airport

Tuesday morning arrived with Emily standing rigidly at the airport curb, clutching a brand-new Samsonite suitcase—still bearing the clearance sticker she'd forgotten to peel off. Kevin chuckled as she adjusted her blazer for the twelfth time, the fabric wrinkling under her nervous grip. "Relax," he said, nudging her toward the sliding doors. "They don't bite at TSA unless you forget to take your laptop out."

Inside, Emily froze mid-step when the terminal's cavernous space swallowed her whole. The departure board flickered with cities she'd only seen in movies: Chicago, Denver, Atlanta. Her breath came shallow as she eyed the security line, fingers twitching toward her ID like it might dissolve. "What if they think my license photo looks suspicious?" she whispered. Kevin didn't hear—he was already swiping his boarding pass at the kiosk, leaving Emily to wrestle her suitcase onto the scale alone.

The security line inched forward as Emily clutched her passport with white-knuckled intensity. Her Samsonite suitcase—now mercifully sticker-free after Kevin‘s teasing—thunked awkwardly against her thigh with every shuffling step. Overhead, a tinny voice announced final boarding for a flight to Chicago, the words warping through the terminal’s echo.

She jumped when the belt conveyor jerked to life ahead of her, swallowing laptops and shoes like some mechanical appetite. "Ma’am?" The TSA agent’s bored tone snapped her attention back. Emily’s breath caught as she fumbled with her ID, the plastic slipping in her damp grip. Behind her, a toddler wailed about lost teddy bears—a sound that somehow made the sterile chaos feel even more overwhelming.