She lifted her service tablet. "The system shows the special meal closed."
"Closed how?" Zire asked.
Merrick examined the gray symbol beside Zire's name. "Closed can mean canceled or marked delivered, depending on which page you're looking at."
No one spoke for several seconds. Zire felt the shape of the problem changing. The word canceled had sounded final when Bria said it. Now it was only one possibility, and she had offered it as a certainty without giving him any reason to trust her.
"Then could you check which one it is?" he asked.
Merrick looked again at the screen. Bria drew the tablet close to her uniform, and for the first time since the argument began, her movements seemed less irritated than cautious. Zire noticed that too. His grandfather would have told him to remember it.
Merrick was the kind of person who disliked surprises during boarding. He had arrived at the airline after several years working in hotels, where he learned that the difference between a complaint and a crisis was often the moment someone stopped listening. His immediate instinct was to settle the dispute quietly, return to the galley, and allow the departure process to continue. There were bags to stow, passenger counts to verify, and a captain waiting for the door to close.
But the child in front of him had not demanded that anybody be punished. Zire had identified himself, stated the disputed item, and asked for a simple comparison. Merrick could not think of a good reason to refuse that request without first establishing that it was unreasonable. He extended a hand toward Bria's tablet.
"Let me review the record," he said.
Bria held it for another moment. "I already checked. The passenger is misunderstanding a canceled request."
"Then we'll settle the misunderstanding."
She surrendered the device. Merrick opened the premium service page and searched for PENN, ZIRE. His expression changed almost imperceptibly as he read the sequence of entries. The initial cancellation was there, but so were two subsequent actions, each with its own time and status.
"This order was canceled at 8:39," he said. "Then it was restored."
Zire leaned forward. "Restored when?"
"At 8:56. And after that, it was marked served and accepted at 9:12."
"But I wasn't served anything."