Unaccompanied Minor Read Online Free PDF Page A

with white icing, in case anyone cares—since I started running away, and about two and a half weeks since I’ve been on the run full time. That’s if you want to call me a “runaway,” because in order to be a genuine runaway wouldn’t your parents need to know you are missing? In my case they had no idea. Since my parents only communicated through me in accordance to various court and/or protection orders, it was easy to let one believe I was with the other.
    I would do this for days at a time, hopping planes, wandering airports, and subsisting on pretzel packets and the perishable in-flight food items that you pay for from the cabin snack carts now. Unaccompanied minors are given all that stuff free—sandwiches, salads, fruit and cheese plates—it was better than the boxes of Rice-A-Roni my stepfather kept in his cupboards. He lived like a frat boy minus the pizza crusts, because even leftover pizza would have been better than the ancient staples in his kitchen pantry. I seriously think they were left there by the previous owners.
    Ash only fought for shared custody of me for two reasons: One, so he wouldn’t have to pay child support, seeing as he had officially adopted me back when I was too young to object, therefore he was beholden to the same responsibilities as a biological father in the same circumstance; and two—and most important—so he could hurt my mother.
    When he won, it was probably as big a surprise to him as it was to any of us. Then recently he took it a step further, and the judge—who seemed to think Ash was a saint—recommended he have the title of “primary physical custodian,” which the judge of course granted, and now Ash was in charge of all important decisions affecting my life.
    It was a stupefying turn of events, and it didn’t help at all when my mother attacked Ash’s girlfriend Kathy in the hallway outside the Fulton County courtroom during the last contempt hearing, but that’s not to say Kathy didn’t deserve it. She did. It’s just that I’ve learned that when it comes to divorce and custody cases there are two worlds: the real world, and the bizarro world of family court. Kathy Landry, twenty-nine years old, processed blond hair, pretty in a hardened, face-like-a-frying-pan kinda way, personality of a sea urchin, so skinny you wondered how vital organs could actually fit inside her body, was nowhere near a mother herself (a cactus could die of neglect in her care). In other words, Kathy’s character was the perfect combination of emotionless telephone dial tone and soulless rabid badger to help guide Ash through the idiocy of family court.
    On the day my mother attacked her, Kathy had provided Ash’s attorney with what she referred to as evidence proving my mother was a dangerous alcoholic. This “evidence” was heavily referenced in the guardian ad litem’s recommendation, and it consisted of Facebook photos my mom had been tagged in a few weeks prior. It showed her having a good time at Flo’s fiftieth birthday party during a layover in Mainz, Germany. I remember hearing about that party. In fact, it lives on in WorldAir legend. The entire crew was so hung over the next day they had to commandeer the emergency personal-oxygen tanks (known as “PO2 bottles” by those in the industry) and take turns huffing pure oxygen in the first-class lavatory. Luckily not a soul was booked in first class on that trip, so that cabin was designated a hangover triage of sorts. The pictures are also legendary, as Flo, to this day, is known for flashing her bra on her birthday.
    So all the crew during the layover, including my mother, were flashing their bra-clad chests to the rest of the revelers in the bar. I suppose it looked like they were having fun, especially in the pictures where the ladies took turns kissing the handsome bartender’s mouth, but to be truthful they were so drunk that to me they just looked like a group of attractive, bumbling recovering stroke victims.