The Easy Way Out

"Ten-fifteen," Vandermeer said. "Then the slot is gone."

He had drawn me two steps from the galley, where the others couldn't hear, and he wore the face of the school principal who was always on your side. "Here's how this ends in five minutes, Marisol. You take 3C. I log it as passenger consent. The hold lifts, the clip dies, and your father gets a tidy note that everything was voluntary."

"Voluntary," I said.

"Nobody gets hurt. Mr. Pruett gets his window, you get a lounge pass for life, and two hundred and eighty people get to Hawaii."

I turned my back to him and whispered into the phone. "Pop. If I say yes, what happens to the alert?"

A long pause. "It closes. A recorded consent clears it. Dev would have nothing left to review." Another pause. "Mari, I can't tell you what to do. I'm not allowed to, and you wouldn't want me to."

I looked down the cabin. Ms. Okonjo was watching me. The man with the coffee cup was watching me. Behind the curtain, someone had started a slow clap that was meant to sting.

"Ms. Quade," said Captain Rourke, and I had never heard a captain sound so tired, "I can't hold the slot past 10:15 on a hunch. If we lose it, everyone behind that curtain misses a connection, and every one of them will know your name."

"They already know it," I said.

That was the real price. Whatever I chose, I would be the girl in the video. If I moved, I'd be the girl who caused a scene and then gave up. If I stayed, I'd be the girl who made a whole plane wait.

But I thought about that word, consent, and how easily it could erase 6:41 and 6:58. I thought about the next solo kid in 3A, the one whose father didn't work in audit and whose phone wasn't already on speaker.

"I'm staying," I said. "Give me until it expires."

Rourke looked at the tablet clock. Vandermeer's smile stayed where it was, but it had stopped reaching his mustache.

"Then you have sixteen minutes," Rourke said. The clock read 9:59.