"Nothing's going on."
"That's not what Mrs. Graves says."
"Mrs. Graves thinks I'm difficult because I don't pretend to agree with things I don't agree with."
Danielle pressed her lips together. "You know what she said to me? She said—and I'm quoting—'Zariah seems like she's somewhere else most of the time.'"
Zariah picked up her fork, put it down again. "I'm finished."
"I worry, Danielle. You're 12, and you spend every evening in your room with that flight simulator, and you don't have any friends that I know of, and—"
"I have friends."
"Name one."
A pause. A small, honest pause that said more than Zariah wanted it to.
Danielle softened. She reached across the table and touched her niece's hand. "I know you miss him," she said. "I miss him, too. Every single day. But, sweetheart, I worry that the planes, the simulator, all of it... I worry it's not helping you move forward. I worry it's keeping you stuck."
Zariah looked at her aunt's hand on hers for a moment. When she looked up, her eyes were calm and steady. "It's not keeping me stuck," she said quietly. "It's the only thing that makes sense to me."
Danielle didn't have an answer for that. She let go of her hand and picked up her cold tea, and they finished dinner in a silence that wasn't quite comfortable, but wasn't entirely uncomfortable, either.
Later that night, after the apartment had gone quiet and the strip of light under Danielle's bedroom door had gone dark, Zariah went to her room and sat down at the desk in the corner.
The simulator setup was more serious than what most 12-year-olds would have assembled: she'd spent two years building it—a used yoke and throttle quadrant she'd found online and slowly saved up for, rudder pedals made from modified gaming gear, three monitors arranged side by side. The software was professional-grade. She'd learned how to configure it from forums, from manuals, from the notes her father had left behind.
She put on her headset, loaded the scenario she'd been working on all week, and took the plane up. Tonight's exercise was an engine-out emergency during cruise flight: one engine fails without warning. The scenario forces a sequence of rapid decisions: identify the failed engine, control the asymmetric thrust, declare emergency with ATC, calculate whether to divert or continue, configure for single-engine approach and landing.