Up from Jericho Tel [antikvár]

one k There was a time when I was eleven years old—^be-, tween the start of a new school year and Midwinter's Night—^when I was invisible. I was never invisible for long, and I always returned to plain sight, but all my life has been affected by the people I met and the time I spent in a world where I could see and not be seen. It happened not so long ago, less than a year after Congress had passed the anti-hijacking bill. The airlines had not yet put in X-ray equipment, so the checking had to be done by hand. My mother had trained to become an airport security guard; she had learned what to search for in the suitcases and pocketbooks that passengers carried on board. She proved to be quick and thorough at it, so she got a job at one of the world s busiest airports, Kennedy International, serving the New York metropolitan area.