California - The Flight Over: Part 1 of 5 (Caitlin)

You never know how many baseball fields are strewn across the face of Colorado until you fly west out of Denver after dark. The eye is drawn to them like a mole among street light freckles and winding lines of headlights like wrinkles. My mother is sleeping next to me. I am peering out the window, trying to convince myself to read the book I have clutched in my lap. The Secret Lives of People in Love. I am thinking about Peter. Specifically his mannerisms. The precision of his words. His eyes - definitely his eyes, and his smile. The way it appears slowly and carefully each time I make him laugh. I lean my head against the cabin wall and think about the 6 inches that is separating me from an amount of pressure and cold wind so enormous that it would sweep the life from my body. The stewardess inserts her thin polished fingers into my line of sight, wiggling them.
"Snacks?" she giggles, and hands me a package of 100 calorie Cheese Nips. I open the package. They definitely taste like they're healthy; it's a problem. I move onto the French fries I bought in the airport grill. I am thinking about Katie now, and the refrigerator magnet we found at the dollar store last year. The words, You're STILL eating?? printed upon a cow. I am laughing and the man sitting on the other side of my mother is staring at me with a curious look on his face.