She arrived back at her apartment and tried the door. It was locked. KSL must have fallen asleep again and forgotten to unlock it. She called him again, and he came to unlock the door. He asked if he was still allowed to keep the car, she said fine but when he went to work to please leave her house keys so she could lock up. She didn't want to take them with her on the trip but, desperate times.
She went to her room and fell asleep.
Waking up at noon, she checked her email for an update on her new flight. Nothing.
She decided to just check the app, and found that her flight was due to leave at 1:30pm. Panicked, she threw everything she needed back into her luggage and called a rideshare. She looked around for her keys and found nothing. KSL had forgotten to leave them for her, so she dragged her luggage up to the front office to ask them to lock the door behind her.
Silently she urged the driver to hurry. At this rate she'd be getting into the city at 8pm and she'd been cheated out of an entire day with her cousin's exploring Brooklyn. Of course her flight was delayed an hour when she got there, so she had breakfast in a small place just inside security. She had a great chat with a woman about what content writers do, and then she was finally boarding her flight.
She didn't have the couple sitting next to her any longer, so she put up the arm rests, laid across the seats, and slept most of the way there.
Thirty minutes before landing she put up the window and looked out into the dark. Lights started to pop up, and slowly the city came into focus. She was filled with excitement, guessing that every skyscraper she saw was the Empire State Building. She was finally right, and the plane gently made it's way into Queens, and JFK.
She knew it was time to be "on." The City preys on weakness, senses it, and she needed to practice in the airport. She walked quickly and with purpose, even though she wasn't completely sure where she was going. Luckily the airport was set up well, and she was able to make her way to baggage claim. She wasn't able to find exactly where her baggage was coming out and asked an attendant, perfecting her "polite but impatient" tone. It worked, and she felt like she was succeeding already, even though she was still nervous.
She looked around at the people as she waited for her luggage, and noticed that there were many people that looked exactly like her cousins from New York, and her mom. It was the first time that she realized that she'd never really been surrounded with people that looked like her before, even though she took after her dad's side of the family in her looks. She still smiled like these people did, and a small part of her heart felt like she was home, even in the airport.
She made her way to the taxi line, and then made her way through Queens to Brooklyn. She tracked on Google Maps, making sure she knew where she was at all times. She drove through Queens thinking about The Nanny, Williamsburg thinking about the Humphrey's from Gossip Girl. She was so busy staring out the window that she was shocked when the taxi slammed on it's breaks and the driver swore in a language she'd never heard before.
She looked up to see what had gotten in their way and went into Culture Shock.
