I sighed to myself as the clock on my phone turned to two. And it wasn't two in the afternoon.
My flight was supposed to leave around ten p.m, but with my luck, had been delayed. My parents had reccomended that I get a room in a hotel somewhere and board the next flight home in the morning, ("You know what kind of people hang around this late!") but every time I finally decided to get up, an announcement came over the intercom saying, "The weather is almost cleared up! We should be ready to go in about an hour! We just need to move you all to gate number..."
So there I was at two in the morning waiting for a plane home. I was tired, unable to sleep, and surrounded by a bunch of pissed of people who just wanted to get where they were going.
At least, I told myself, I'm not in a forgien country. But it almost felt like one. Everything changes at two a.m.
Almost everyone who was awake had earbuds in, but I took mine out. Silence. The whole area was filled with silence. Snow fell outside, but since there was no longer a storm, the scene was almost peaceful.
Then there was some kid who wouldn't shut up. He was on the other end of the seating area, and he kept going from one person to the other, asking something before moving away. His voice wasn't loud enough for his words to be distinguishable, but he still disturbed my silence.
I waited for a moment, glowering at him from a distance, hoping he would just give up whatever he was doing. He had to be around my age, twenty, so surely he had to have enough common sense to know he was being, well, annoying. Didn't he?
After five more minutes of this, my conclusion was no. No, he did not realize that nobody cared what he was doing. I could imagine what he was saying without him having to even come near; "Hello, would you be interested in purchasing this new, high-tech..."
He went up to some older guy and repeated himself. There was a pause, and then the older guy snapped.
"Okay, buddy," he started, getting to his feet. "Sorry to seem insensitive, but you just need to go sit down and shut up. We're all trying to get some sleep."
The kid didn't seem to know what to do. About half the room was watching him. And some impulse told me to get up.
Yes. Very bad idea. A girl all on her own walking up to a strange male. But I figured that with all these people around, even if the kid decided he did want to pull something, he couldn't get away with it.
The kid had kind of taken a small step back, his face bright red. He was stuttering an apology, but then I showed up and grabbed his arm.
"Um, hey," I said to the older guy. "Sorry about my friend, he was just..." I mumbled something that might have passed as words, and gave the kid a small tug. He followed me back to the outskirts of the seating area.
The kid dropped his gaze to the floor, face still red. "Thanks for that, I..."
I sighed. "What were you doing?" I asked, trying not to sound completely fed up.
The kid reached into his pocket and pulled out a plain brown wallet. "I found this a couple minutes ago, and it has some pictures and... Well, a lot of money, and I was trying to find out who it belonged to, but..."
So the guy had good intentions. What was I supposed to say? It would be easier if he was advertising or something, but he just... he meant well.
"Why don't you just try guest services or something?" I suggested. "It's not like you'd be missing the flight."
He let out a small, breathy laugh, one that was more for politeness that anything. "Yeah... You think that'll work?"
I nodded. "Definitely. I think it's in a different wing of the airport, though. I'm pretty sure it's East."
