"I brought you some water. I'm... I'm sorry about what happened." Tanya's voice was barely above a whisper. "I tried to say something to him. I told him you had a valid ticket. He said if I opened my mouth again, he'd have me fired. He said..." She stopped.
"What did he say, Tanya?"
"He said he doesn't need 'two of them' causing problems on his plane."
Two of them. Simone let that sit for a moment.
"How long have you been flying?"
"Eight months."
"And has he done this before?"
Tanya looked at the floor, then back at Simone. "Twice that I've seen. Both times it was..." She paused. "Both times it was someone who looked like us."
Simone nodded slowly. She unscrewed the water bottle and took a long sip. Then she reached into her tote and pulled out a small leather notebook. Black cover, no label.
"Thank you, Tanya, for the water and for trying."
Tanya nodded quickly and walked back toward the galley. Her hands were shaking.
Simone opened the notebook to a blank page. At the top, she wrote a date. Below it, she wrote a name: Captain Derek Greer. Below that, she started writing details, times, exact quotes: the guard's grip on her arm, the bruise forming on her skin, Linda's laughter, the champagne poured for someone else in her seat, Greer's nod toward the back, "two of them." She wrote it all down. Every word, every look, every second of silence from the passengers who watched a Black woman get dragged to the back of a plane and chose their magazines over their morals.
From the front cabin, Greer's voice boomed again. He was telling Ashland about the aircraft's features. "Top of the line, sir. Only the best for our clients." He patted the armrest of seat 1A—Simone's armrest.
Simone didn't look up. She kept writing. The notebook was small, but what was inside it was about to become very, very big.