The morning had gone badly before boarding began. A scheduling supervisor had asked her to cover for another senior attendant, and an equipment delay had shortened the time available to prepare the cabin. Karen had argued with Jaime about the placement of service carts and reprimanded a gate employee for misplacing a catering notice. None of those irritations justified what would happen next. They mattered only because Karen had entered the aircraft already looking for someone over whom she could demonstrate control.
As she walked down the aisle performing her headcount, she saw Caleb in 2A. Her eyes moved from his red backpack to his gray sweater, then toward the empty space beside him. She stopped and consulted a printed sheet. "Excuse me," she said. Caleb turned away from the window and sat up straight. "Are you sure you're supposed to be in this section?"
"Yes, ma'am," Caleb replied, reaching for his boarding pass. "I'm in seat 2A." Karen glanced at the paper without taking it. She asked where his parents were and whether he had wandered forward from economy. Caleb explained that he was flying alone and that the airline had arranged for someone to look after him. He had rehearsed those details with his mother, and he recited them exactly as he remembered them.
Karen's expression tightened. "Children flying alone don't usually sit up here without special approval," she said. "Perhaps someone put you in the wrong line." Caleb looked at the small metal plate beside his seat. The number was clear. "But that's my seat," he said, almost apologetically.
"We'll see about that," Karen replied. She turned away before he could offer the boarding pass again. Caleb watched her disappear behind the galley curtain, unable to decide whether he had done something wrong. He glanced at Graham, who was opening a newspaper, and considered waving. Then he remembered his mother's advice about asking questions directly and resolved to wait for the attendant to return.
In the galley, Jaime was reviewing the service roster when Karen asked about the boy. Jaime confirmed that the gate agent had handed over an unaccompanied-minor envelope and that the child had been correctly seated. Karen frowned at the printed manifest, where the line reserved for the receiving crew member was blank. "That's not what this says," she told Jaime. The younger attendant offered to check the electronic reservation record and reconcile the difference.
"I don't need an investigation over a child who boarded the wrong cabin," Karen said. Jaime started to explain that the scanner had accepted Caleb's ticket and the special-service handoff had already been completed. Karen gave her a look that ended the conversation. "Get the last passengers settled. I'll handle this." Jaime obeyed, but the uneasiness in her stomach did not go away.
Back in seat 2A, Caleb opened his astronomy guide to a page about Saturn's rings. He traced an illustration with his finger and looked out at the bright Texas sky. He wondered if the plane would climb high enough for the clouds to look like the photographs in the book. He did not know that a disagreement over his seat was growing behind a curtain only a few steps away. For the moment, he was still simply a child waiting to fly west toward his grandmother.