Exit Row

Maya pressed her sweating **palm** against the airport window, watching the **orange** sunset bleed across the tarmac. Three hours ago, she'd walked out of her senior analyst position mid-presentation—a job that had turned her into something resembling a **zombie** for six years. Her colleagues probably thought she'd finally snapped. Maybe she had.

"Final boarding call," the agent announced. Maya's carry-on contained everything that mattered: her laptop, a change of clothes, and her mother's vintage locket.

She'd been **running** from the truth for months now—that spreadsheet simulations and quarterly projections had become a tomb where her ambition went to die. Her therapist kept asking what she actually wanted. She'd finally answered: not this.

Her phone vibrated. David's name appeared again. Her ex-boyfriend, the one who'd accused her of being emotionally unavailable, of always having one foot out the door. He wasn't wrong. But how could she be present when she didn't even know where she was supposed to be?

The terminal's fluorescent lights made everyone look slightly undead. Business travelers in suits, clutching coffees like lifelines. She used to be one of them—**running** on caffeine and resentment, her **palm** prints invisible on every glass door she passed through.

"Ma'am?"

Maya realized she was blocking the jet bridge door. She stepped aside, heart hammering. This was the first spontaneous thing she'd done since college. The terror felt almost like hope.

The plane sat gleaming under **orange** sky, a silver bird that would carry her somewhere she'd never been. No itinerary. No return ticket. Just the possibility that underneath the **zombie** exterior she'd cultivated, something alive still remained.

She touched her mother's locket through her shirt. What would happen when she landed? She had no idea. For the first time in her adult life, the unknown didn't feel like a threat.

Maya exhaled, found her seat, and watched the ground fall away.