Then the kicking began.
Thump.
The first impact caught me directly between the shoulder blades, jolting my head forward against the polyester antimacassar.
Thump.
Three seconds later, the second blow drove into my lower lumbar support, shaking the plastic armrests and causing the hot coffee in my cardboard cup to slosh over the rim onto my denim trousers.
Thump.
It was not the accidental brush of a passenger shifting her legs in a cramped coach row. It was a rhythmic, forceful, deliberate kinetic assault delivered by a pair of heavy, hard-soled platform sneakers slamming squarely into the structural ribs of my seat.
I took a slow, measured breath, counting backward from ten as I had learned to do over open chest cavities when an aortic clamp slipped. I turned my head around the molded plastic headrest.
Seated directly behind me in 15A was a girl of approximately ten years old. She wore an oversized designer sweatshirt embroidered with a gold Parisian logo, expensive noise-canceling headphones tilted off one ear, and a sullen, belligerent scowl on her face. Her legs were extended straight out, her knees locked, rhythmically driving the thick rubber soles of her shoes into the back of my seat with the metronomic cadence of a pile driver.
