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I should have listened. When my sister, Lily, shoved that folded piece of paper into my hand at the terminal, her eyes were screaming a warning I was too terrified to acknowledge. I was halfway to the departure gate, already committed to a life I thought I wanted, when the note burned against my palm like live coal. RUN. DO NOT GET ON THE PLANE. LOOK FOR THE BLACK SQUARE. I ignored her. I walked past the check-in counters and slipped into the cabin, convinced she was just having another one of her episodes. But as I took my seat and looked out the window, I saw it—a small, ominous black square marked on the tarmac below—and realized that the mistake I had just made would cost me everything I had ever loved.
I didn’t answer his message. Instead, I kept walking through the echoing halls of JFK Airport, moving with a hollow, mechanical rhythm. I wasn’t running yet—because running is what people do when they think they still have permission to be caught. I moved through the airport exit doors and blended into the chaos of the crowd outside. Taxis honked, luggage wheels rattled, and voices overlapped in a messy, relentless chorus of ordinary life. But to me, nothing felt ordinary anymore. The air tasted metallic, like ozone before a thunderstorm, and my hand was still trembling, clutching Lily’s note as if it were a life raft in a rising sea.