A stranger took the seat I’d paid extra for, laughed at me holding my six-week-old, and told a flight attendant she refused to move. They put me three rows behind my ten-year-old.

The “double assignment” the first flight attendant had seen was Bonnie’s own edit.

“You reassigned yourself into a revenue seat,” Delphine said.

“There was a glitch—”

“Bonnie. I’ve known you eleven years. Don’t.” Delphine’s voice did not rise once, the entire time. “You watched a woman with a six-week-old and a ten-year-old walk down this aisle and you kept a seat you’d assigned yourself into, and when my colleague asked you to move, you told her the girl was big enough.”

“The flight was full. I’d have been offloaded—”

“Yes,” Delphine said. “That’s what standby means.”

Bonnie tried one more thing.

It’s the thing they always try, and I’d heard a version of it at the gate, and it landed differently at thirty thousand feet in front of a hundred and forty people.

“You’re going to do this over a seat? In front of everyone? Because of a child?”