Combine the following ingredients and let sit for 5 hours:
7 times frantically checking bag for phone, keys, wallet, and boarding pass
27 restaurant recommendations from random coworkers (Mom’s)
1 plain black umbrella (also Mom’s)
1 Starry Night patterned umbrella (mine)
1 bottle of leave-in conditioner forgotten on my bureau
1 jean jacket that is too light for New Jersey and too heavy for Louisiana
90 people allowed to board before us
24 planes ahead of ours on the runway
1 adorable baby girl with wispy white-blond hair in the seat in front of me
19 strands of gray in her mother’s dark hair
2 tattoos on the back of her father’s flushed neck
10,000 feet to fall if something that is not supposed to explode explodes
5 failed attempts to access airplane wifi
1,000 regrets I didn’t bring a book of Neil Gaiman short stories
54 pages of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man read
0 pages of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man enjoyed
5 minutes reminiscing about kissing someone from New Orleans
45 minutes musing about the person who I want to kiss at home
1/100 chance that I will ever be brave enough to kiss said person
30 minutes wondering what percentage of college freshmen are virgins
60:40 ratio of girls to guys at most of the schools I’ve applied to
2 months left before I choose where I will be spending the next
4 years of my life.
Sophie Panzer is a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where she studies history and sexual diversity. She is trying (and mostly failing) to learn French so she can navigate the city better. She attended the 2014 Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and is the winner of regional keys and a national silver medal from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in YARN, Teen Ink, The Veg, and Yiara Magazine.