Live, from the other side of the world

Right now there's a fifteen year old girl doing me a favor in some big city in the south of China. I love my life. She has flown for twenty-five hours and still has a six hour bus ride to go before she finally, finally, finally gets back home. It's midnight there but not to her body and who does she know on the right side of the planet to be awake and have her e-mail open? Well, that would be me.

So as she doesn't sleep in some darkened hotel room--her father is there--we are trading text-message-y e-mails about her endless journey and the fact that now that she's there she'd rather be here because "China = no good" --did I mention she's fifteen?--but while I suggest she may feel different once she sleeps and sees the rest of her family and friends, nothing can get too deep in six word sentences. And besides, she's on to figuring out how she can go outside and buy some street food even though she only has U.S. dollars--did I mention she's fifteen?

A few messages later, that plot is abandoned, too, but it's no matter. It's a little closer to her morning, a fraction of her mission accomplished. Back here in her yesterday afternoon, I haven't thought about why the phone isn't ringing for the longest stretch of the day. A favor I didn't even ask for, completed all the same.