That’s just being the person who was there.

One afternoon a letter came, forwarded through the academy, in the careful print of a child.

I was the boy in row 6, it read. When everyone was scared, you looked at me and you nodded before you went into the cockpit.

That’s what made me believe we were going to be okay.

I’m taking my first flying lesson today.

I didn’t remember nodding at him.