Leaving

Melbourne Train girl sat outside Gate 8 at the international terminal of the airport. Only one other woman was waiting: mid 50s with orange lips, a novelty Christmas jumper and a newspaper. Melbourne Train Girl remembered the international terminal being much larger when she was 15. She remembered sitting nervous and jittering among hundreds of other passengers. She remembered looking at boxes of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and wondering if she should buy one just so she could say she'd tasted a macadamia if anyone foreign asked her.

At 24 Melbourne Train Girl had tasted macadamias. And at 24 the airport was small and dingy and very empty.

Slowly, the gate began to fill. Malaysian girls with bags of duty free Tim Tams and Louis Vuitton purses, a man in a German t-shirt, the Greek girl who held up the check-in with too much luggage, wealthy wives emerging from the business class lounge and assorted lone travelers with magazines, books, laptops and crosswords for company.

Melbourne Train Girl had her own company of books, as well as pens pencils and assorted art supplies. She had smuggled both knitting and embroidery needles through customs, but the turning of her stomach gave her no appetite for any such distraction. Instead she looked at the duty free alcohol, bought duty free chocolate and a tin of Casltemaine Rock and watched the strange vending machine in the gate lounge as it dispensed Coke and Red Bull to the swelling crowd with its noisy, robotic arm.

Then, all of a sudden the crowd moved. The boarding call pulled it like iron filings toward the magnet of the gate and Melbourne Train Girl realised it was time. For the third time that day pain pricked the back of her eyes and she blinked them angrily. Grow up! She said that aloud and realised people were looking at her. The goodbyes with her mother outside the coffee place and with The Boy as he got on the train to work had brought the same tears but she hadn't let either of them see. Especially The Boy, who might think her overly emotional or obsessive after such a short time knowing each other. And besides, whe was the one who planned the three months of travel alone with such optimsm and unfounded confidence in herself.

So she did grow up, and stepped on the plane.