I was five years old, wearing a puffy red coat that made me look like a walking marshmallow. My feet could not reach the chair when I sat down, so I swung my legs back and forth while watching the luggage carousel spit out suitcases like an endless magic trick. Brown cases appeared, then black ones, then a bright blue one, and even a pink suitcase tied with a ribbon.
My parents told me to wait beside the carousel.
“Do not move,” my mother said with the same impatient tone she used when speaking to a dog she barely liked. “We are going to get the car.”
My father had already started walking away while scanning the crowd instead of looking at me. He squeezed my shoulder once, firm and brief, and then both of them disappeared into the moving crowd of travelers.
At first I believed them because children always do. I counted the bags that slid down the conveyor belt, and I hummed quietly to myself. Whenever a suitcase dropped heavily onto the metal ramp, I held my breath because the sound seemed strangely angry.
Time stretched in a way that felt wrong. Families came and went, hugging each other while collecting their luggage. The carousel slowed, stopped, and then started again for another arriving flight. My throat began to tighten.
I slipped down from the chair and stood on my toes while searching the crowd. Every adult face looked tall and distracted. I focused on a woman wearing a beige coat and stared at her with desperate hope, silently wishing she would turn into my mother, but she only glanced at me briefly and then looked away faster.
“Mom?” I called softly. “Dad?”
Nobody answered.
I sat back on the chair and pressed my palms against my knees the way I always did when I was trying not to cry. I told myself they would come back soon. I told myself they had forgotten something. I repeated every comforting lie a child invents to keep the world from breaking apart.
A loudspeaker announcement crackled overhead while someone laughed somewhere behind me. A rolling suitcase bumped into my shin and continued moving without stopping.
Eventually I slid down from the chair again and walked toward the large glass doors where people greeted arriving passengers. The crowd was thick, and I was quickly surrounded by legs, coats, and moving luggage. The noise from voices, wheels, and announcements felt like water closing over my head.
I stopped walking because I suddenly felt lost.