For Alexis

Snow fell outside, and the sounds of suitcase wheels on tile filled the the Seattle airport, Kaci pressed her hands against her face, trying to dull the stabbing headache she faced. She sat with her back pressed against the wall, in her hand she crumped, and re-smoothed her boarding pass. She was tired, everyone else looked put together, she thought, except for her. In reality, to everyone else she was just another guest at the airport. A side character in their lives. Kaci kicked herself mentally, for she had chosen to fly for the first time in six years, on the busiest day of the year. Christmas Eve.

    "We will now  begin boarding group A for flight 219 with service to Phoenix Arizona." an announcement came over the loudspeaker. Kaci had memorized her boarding pass by now, she was boarding group 3. So she sat there, when they did call boarding group 3, she exhaled sharply.

    Once on the plane, she found her seat. At the very back of the plane, next to a girl with a hoodie on and who seemed intent on being fixated on her phone. Infact, Kaci could hear the heavy metal music coming from the girl's earbuds. She said nothing. It was a concept, Kaci thought, that she was just one out of hundreds of people who boarded planes, going every which way. For reasons unbeknownst to her. The girl sitting next to her didn't know that Kaci was going home for the first time in six years, and that she would be seeing the baby she abandoned all those years ago, her daughter. The man sitting two rows up, wearing a suit didn't know that Kaci was six months sober, or that she'd recently rented a one bathroom studio in the bad part of town.

When the plane took off, Kaci found herself making up stories about the people surrounding her. Perhaps the man who sat across the isle was a businessman, only gone for three days, he had three sons at home and a wife whom he cheated on. She was unknowing of this, or maybe she wasn't. Maybe she stayed with him for the money. The tired mom holding a newborn baby in her arms, maybe she gave birth while on vacation. Perhaps she had no husband at home to return too, maybe he was in the marines and died in the line of duty. The girl sitting next to her, perhaps she was an addict, and on her way home from rehab, or maybe she had been kicked out of her home. The girl was asleep, and had been ever since the plane took off.  Kaci got a closer look at the girl, she was pretty. She had brown hair, that looked incredibly tangled and she wore sweatpants and a black hoodie. It was only then that she realized, the girl's face appeared to be stained with tears. She wondered what had happened to her. When the beverage cart showed up, halfway through the flight the girl awoke, bleary eyed. She brushed hair from her face and timidly asked the flight attendant for a ginger ale. Kaci got the same.

"Does your stomach get upset on planes?" The girl asked, poring her soda into a cup. Kaci nodded.

"I don't fly much, but when I do, it sure feels like an issue." She said, trying to keep her tone light. The girl nodded.

"I'm Alexis." She said.

"Kaci."

They made small talk for a while, and Kaci learned that Alexis was from Colorado, and that she had lived with her sister all summer in Seattle.  Alexis was returning home to her family. Although she didn't seem why, and there was an unmistakable note of sadness in her eyes when she spoke about it. Kaci told her she was going home to see her daughter.

    "You don't know her?" Alexis asked. Kaci shook her head.

    "No fault of her own, I ran away days after she was born. I left her with my parents." She told the girl. Alexis nodded. Normally, Kaci wouldn't have told anyone this, the fact that her drug addiction made her split on her own child. But there was something about Alexis that struck her as non-judgemental.

    "I'm sorry. I bet she'll be happy to see you." She said. But Kaci wondered if that was true. So she changed the subject.

    "Are you excited to see your family?" She asked Alexis, and the young girl sighed.

    "I'm not going to see my family. I'm getting off the plane in Phoenix, not Denver."  She said, running a hand through her hair and brushing it over her shoulder.

    "Your running away?" Kaci asked, feeling a twinge of sadness for the girl. her own story, didn't differ that much of the girl sitting next to her. Though she wouldn't say that.

    "There's nothing left for me there, or in Seattle. Maybe there will be something for me, somewhere else." She said, tears brimming at her eyes. Seeing her, Kaci felt as if she was speaking to a version of herself from five years ago, she could hear the heartbreak in the girl's voice. There was silence, until the girl spoke again.

    "I'm not a good person, and they are and I hurt everyone. Maybe it's better if I'm on my own." She said.

    "Why's that, why aren't you a good person?" Kaci asked, and it was on instinct. Even though she had just been asked a very personal question, one that probably made her want to smash windows, Alexis just sighed. She rolled up the sleeves of her hoodie. There, Kaci saw fresh track marks, and next to them were cuts, obviously intentional. She sucked in air. Because, sitting there in front of her was her from five years ago. It made her cringe inwardly, it was like looking through a window in time, and she desperately wanted to close it. 

Kaci, was about to speak when the captain announced they were landing. On the ground, as people collected their bags, Kaci turned to Alexis. She rummaged through her purse, and pulled out a fifty dollar bill. If she'd had more, she would've given it all to the girl. But she pressed it into her hand.

"I cant." Alexis said, trying to hand it back to her. Kaci shook her head.

"Maybe it doesn't seem like it now, but I was once just like you. Alone, scared, feeling worthless. But Nobody was kind to me, and it would've helped, if they'd looked past what they thought they saw, and realized I was a human being." She said, and slung her bag over her shoulder. As they disembarked, Kaci looked one last time at Alexis. Good luck out there. She thought, as she watched the girl drag her suitcase into the throng of people in the terminal.

    Two Weeks Later:

Kaci had forgotten about Alexis the second she saw her daughter. When she'd stepped out of the cab, her child had ran into her arms. In all the ways Kaci had imagined meeting her daughter, Iris to go this was not it. She'd never thought she'd be glad to see her, and Kaci wouldn't have blamed her if she'd been sad, or standoffish. But she had begged to return to Seattle with her, and after many maybe's Kaci, and her parents had finally accepted. With her legal rights back, and sobriety intact the farthest thing from Kaci's mind was Alexis. Until she was bored,s itting at her gate, with the bouncing bubbly child practically running circles around her, Kaci flipped through the newspaper. There was an article, Teenage Jane Doe found dead under overpass. She continued reading.

A teenage girl, around the age of fifteen or sixteen was found three days ago dead under an overpass, she has not been identified. Her cause of death according to the official autopsy report was drug overdose. Methamphetamine and several opiates where found in her system. She was also four months pregnant at the time of her death. She was badly decomposed, so a facial reconstruction was made of her. If you know anything about this Jane Doe please do not hesitate to contact the local police department, 911.

Kaci sucked in air, as she turned the page to look at the facial reconstruction. She found herself looking at Alexis. The girl she'd sat next to on the plane, not two weeks ago this day. Kaci sighed. She was, probably the only person in all of Phoenix, to know who this girl was. She was also, probably the only one who cared. Back in Seattle, Kaci searched in vain, for whom the family of the girl was. She asked the airline for Alexis's last name, they were uncooperative. Kaci never did find the young girl's family. But she kept the article from the newspaper. She thought that was the end. That is, until three years later. Kaci was married, with another child, a son she named Noah, and a husband whom she loved dearly.  One day, at her job, A woman appeared, heavily pregnant and with a toddler in tow. She bore a resemblance to someone, though for the life of her Kaci couldn't remember who.

    "I'm here for my appointment with Dr. Carson." The woman said.

    "Last name?" Kaci asked.

    " Sallow." The woman said. As Kaci entered the name, two results came up. One before the other, there was a Taylor Sallow, and an Alexis. The last appointment Alexis had, was two weeks before Kaci's flight to Phoenix. Coincidentally, there had been none in the past three years. There were many people with those first names, though the last name wasn't one she had heard before.

    "Taylor or Alexis?" She told the woman. The woman raised an eyebrow.

"Taylor, I didn't know Alexis was still in the system. She doesn't live her anymore you can take her out." She said. This was normal, checking people in for there doctor's appointments was normal, but seeing a woman who so closely resembled the girl on the plane, and with the same last name, was not normal. Nor was the fact that Kaci knew she was the sister of Alexis.  To confirm, she clicked on the girl's name. There, was a photo of the girl she'd met on the plane, three years ago, the same girl who died under the overpass. When the woman returned from her appointment an hour later, Kaci stopped her.

"Alexis was your sister." She said, a statement not a question. The woman looked at her, stunned.

"She is, I haven't seen her in years, nor spoken to her. She used to live here." Taylor said.

"She died." Kaci said, not allowing an emotion to appear in her eyes. Taylor's faced drained of color.

"How would you know that? She ran away." Taylor said, stepping towards Kaci.

"I met her, on a plane. Two weeks after her last appointment here. She was an addict, and she was cutting. She was supposed to go home, but she never made it. She got off the plane in Phoenix. Two weeks later, an article was published. An unidentified Jane Doe was found dead of an overdose underneath an overpass. That Jane Doe, was Alexis." Kaci said.

The woman looked at her, an expression of disbelief in her eyes. Kaci googled the article, the day it was published, and the reconstruction of it. She flipped it around to show to Taylor. The woman's face drained of color.

"She was pregnant." Kaci said, and Taylor looked as though she was going to cry.

"Why wouldn't she get help?" Taylor asked.

"She tried, she told me what happened. That was all a cry for help." Kaci said sharply, now that she was standing in front of the woman who had indirectly killed a teen girl.

    "She had nobody" Kaci told Taylor.

    "She had me." Taylor sighed.

    "You abandoned her, you pushed her away, when all she wanted was you. That's why she's dead." Kaci said. She believed then, that the woman standing in front of her was the reason that the girl had died.

    "That's not true." Taylor said, shifting her baby to her other hip. Kaci shook her head.

    "It is true, and you know how i know it's true? Because I was once exactly like her, and maybe I didn't die by God's good grace, but I woldn't have made the mistakes that I did, if someone was standing by my side through all that shit." Kaci snapped. Taylor turned back to the photo of the girl, that was her sister on the screen.

    "She's dead." Kaci said.. There wasn't anything else to be said.