The stewardesses form a huddle in the back while they study the choreography of the plane with precision. They are preparing to provide us with their signature Excellence in Flight service. They wear khaki pants with aqua marine tops, ribbons on the back of their buns that resembled chop sticks, and scarves around their necks with their ends pointing out like little propellers. It was clear we were headed towards an efficient and courteous voyage.

I get situated in the aisle seat of the Korean Air flight from San Francisco to Seoul and introduce myself to the girl next to me as “Hi, I am your new best friend for the next twelve hours.” She gives me a funny look. Her name is Kitara. It is given to her by her sister, who named her after the baby in The Lion King.  Her sister also named the cat Mochi, gets perfect grades, and loves shopping for clothes. Twelve-year-old Kitara has on her mother’s grey old sweater and cut-off jeans, preferring to wear what has already been broken in.

She is returning home to Beijing after three weeks in a program at Stanford University’s Center for Talented Youth. She is part of a group of kids from across Asia who once a year come to spend six hours a day in classes and then get escorted around campus by local students. They stay in the empty dorms, while students are away on their Summer vacations. She shows me pictures of Leland Stanford’s tomb, the Weeping Angel sculpture where ashes of his child are buried, time capsules left by alumni, and a garden of rare cacti.

Kitara knows she will be a prosecuting attorney. She needs to make a lot of money to support her father tells her. Her life will be ruined if she is not successful. She is forbidden to become an artist or even worse, an actor. Her father is a businessman who relocated his wife and three children from Singapore to China, to a country that would allow just one child if it wasn’t for their foreign passport. She is not exactly sure what he does for a living other than he travels a lot and when he comes home his eyes are swollen and red; and his company pays for their housing and college.  She does not want to hurt his feelings when he returns home from his trips with gifts, but she never uses them. Watches and nail polishes are stacked up in her closet. The best gift he ever gave her though was that short-haired English cat her sister named Mochi.

She tells me she goes to a school full of rich kids. Her father says it is important to show off your wealth and get noticed. Fathers drive their most expensive cars to drop off their kids at school. She shows me a chat from a girl who brings a ridiculously expensive Bottega Veneta purse to their sixth-grade, now seventh-grade class. “A nearby school has bad luck,” she says. One of the students lost both parents in the

Malaysian Air flight that mysteriously disappeared a few months earlier, and another student just committed suicide. Now all the parents want to send their kids to her school. I spill the coffee and she quickly pulls a pre-moistened tissue from her carry-on to help clean up the mess.

Her mother is Christian, and her father is Buddhist.  She plans family vacations, and he stays behind to work. Once a year they light red incense for someone who has died. She explains how they will tap the sticks three times while saying a prayer that lifts up into the sky along with the smoke. She demonstrates, moving her closed palms in prayer up and down, tapping the surface of the plastic fold out tray, counting slowly, “One… two… three.” She says it seems like the most important part was the counting.

Once a year her mother cleans out her sister’s closet for donations while her sister cries. Her sister shops a lot and deserves it because she gets straight A’s. Kitara prefers going with her mother to the dog shelter each month. She gets excited for the school’s Smile Drive in November, when her class raises money to help a child get their cleft palate surgery. She wants to volunteer someday like her brother, to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

A couple hours into the flight they announce the store is open. Kitara shows me a half inch thick magazine from the pocket in front of us that is full of luxury items, make-up from every major line, perfume, watches, designer sunglasses, chocolate, vitamins, kids’ toys, electronic gadgets… I wonder how the center of this cabin could possibly hold one of everything, it was like some sort of Noah’s Commercial Arc. She told her mother not to give her too much money because she did not want to be spoiled, but she has enough to get a make-up sampler for her sister.

Where she lives there are many younger women who find older men to support their lifestyle she says. She calls them “Gold Diggers.” Her father found two of them. Her parents divorced after the first and remarried before the second. The marriage survived the second one. Kitara discovered the Gold Digger. One day she found the women’s card on her father’s desk and a letter folded next to it. She read the letter saying to herself, “This is not right,” and showed it to her mother. Kitara realizes that that business trip was not business.

We talk about how fortunate we are to be educated women who can find a partner when we want rather than need one. I told her, “Do what you want, it’s your life after all.” I wonder if she believes me. Ten hours into the flight as we were both trying to sleep, I feel a warmth on my left arm. It is her head using me as a pillow.