Scene three: interior, Boeing 747. 2010.

I am 26 years old, flying home from an emotional visit with my family. The flight is oversold, and I am reassigned at the last minute to a middle seat. When the ticket agent hands me my new boarding pass, I look at her pleadingly, feeling the full width of my size 28 body. I know, she says. I’m sorry.

I retreat from the desk, defeated.

I plan carefully, working diligently to avoid taking any more space or time than I needed. I cannot afford to give my fellow passengers more reasons to take aim at my body. I line up early, check my suitcase at the gate, take my seat quickly.

When my seat mate arrives, he doesn’t meet my eyes. He adjusts the arm rest, assertively claiming it as his own. He needn’t have — I have learned that any free space belongs to the thin. I cross my arms tight across my chest, thighs squeezed together, ankles crossed beneath my seat. My body is knotted, doing everything it can not to touch him, not to impose its soft skin. I fold in on myself, muscles aching with contraction.

Suddenly, he stands up, fighting against a stream of passengers in the narrow aisle to speak with a flight attendant, then returns to his seat, looking thwarted. Moments later, he gets up again. I cannot hear what he says, but there is an urgency in his face. I wonder what their summit is about. He returns to his seat again, mouth straight and muscles tense. He gets up a third time. That’s when I hear him say unbelievable, his voice sharp with irritation. The fourth time, I hear paying customer, angrily over enunciated, all convex consonants.

He returns to his seat, and lets out the sharp, belabored sigh of a wronged customer. He crosses his legs away from me, leaning into the aisle, chin in his hand, glowering. He checks over his shoulder repeatedly, constantly scanning the cabin.

At long last, a flight attendant approaches him and crouches in the aisle, whispering something in his ear. He gets up silently, gathers his things, and moves up one row. Before he sits down, he looks at me for the first time.

“This is so you’ll have more room,” he says. His voice is cold.

The flight attendant looks at him, puzzled. “This won’t be a vacant seat,” she corrects. “Someone will still be sitting here.” My former seat mate looks away, then takes his seat.

This is when I realize what has happened: he asked to be reseated.The nearness of my body was too much for him to bear. All that agitation, all that desperate lobbying — all to avoid two hours next to me. I have never feared it before. I didn’t think I needed to.

The next thought comes quickly, urgently: don’t cry. You can’t cry.

But it is too late. Hot tears sting my eyes, then spill onto my cheeks. I stare at my lap, eyes fixed on the width of my thighs.

I stay like that, body knotted up into its most compact shape, eyes locked low, for the rest of our trip. Flight attendants visit my row frequently, offering free wine, beer and snacks to the passengers sitting on either side of me — apologetic offerings for having to tolerate a body like mine. The flight attendants don’t speak to me. My seat mates don’t look at me. I have been erased.

When we land, passengers filter into the aisle to retrieve their bags. My former seat mate looks at me for the second time.

“You know, I wouldn’t do this to a person with a walker,” he says.

“What?” I struggle to find my words. I didn’t expect to talk to him.

“I wouldn’t do this to a person with a walker, or a pregnant woman,” he repeats.

“I know,” I say. “That’s what makes this terrible.”