There are moments; do we all know these moments? You're flying. You're at 35,000 feet, or something like it, and there are clouds—so many puffy, white things, floating below, and then there are the shadows of the clouds; they're all over the place, all over the water, the exact mirror image of vapor. And at the same time, there are specks—tiny, white specks. And you look. And you think: are they ships? or are they whales? or are they merely the frothing waves? Because you have no perspective. And you're staring and you're marveling and then you look at the engine just outside your window and you study it and you look at its simple round shape, so close, and you think: my god, I'm suspended; I'm suspended all the way up here by the power of this thing. And you stare some more and then you look at the clouds some more and the shapes on the water, and there's dark, deep blue, and there's bright, wispy white, and there's you, and there's the person beside you, playing Sudoku on her phone.

Born in New Jersey, raised in the South, Margaret Goerig now lives on the San Francisco Bay in California, where she is working on her first novel about the unlikely friendship between an 84 year-old Parisian born woman and a 54 year-old Midwestern divorcee, and the road trip they take together. You can follow Goerig on twitter at @maggieskitchen.