The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  “I’m not that funny,” I tell him, glancing down at my half-eaten veggie burger.

  But he ignores this. “Tell me more about life at the Starbucks mansion. How many ponies do you have? And servants! Do you have someone to brush your hair for you, like in Victorian times? Do you have a personal mozzarella stick chef? I’ve always wanted one of those. I’d take him with me wherever I go. Just in case I get the sudden craving for mozzarella sticks.”

  “I do,” I tell him, attempting to reinflate myself. “And a personal jalapeño popper chef.”

  His mouth drops open. “Shut the front door, Vegina!”

  A few other diners look over at us, and I bow my head in total humiliation. Muppet Guy gives them a what-are-you-going-to-do? gesture and says, “That’s her name. Unfortunate, I know.”

  I pick the burnt end off of one of my fries and pop it in my mouth. “What about you, Mr. Schwarzenegger? You mentioned you live in Los Angeles?”

  “Yes,” he says in all seriousness. “But we have a vacation house on Uranus.”

  I nearly choke on my fry. “Really?” I try to sound genuinely interested. “What’s that like?”

  “Cold,” he says matter-of-factly.

  “I can imagine. Not an ideal spot for a vacation home.”

  He shakes his head somberly. “It was one of those time-share scams. You know, they show you the brochure with pictures of a tropical island and white sand beaches, and then after you sign on the dotted line, they tell you that your time-share is actually on Uranus. Apparently, it was all in the fine print.”

  “But who reads the fine print?” I ask.

  “Exactly. So, me and the fam, we pack it up every summer and spend some time on Uranus. You should come, Vegina. You’d like it there.”

  I press my lips together in an effort to keep the charade of a serious conversation going. “You know, I would. But I already have plans this summer.”

  He snaps his fingers. “Bummer. Being a caffeine heiress and all, your social calendar has got to be pretty full.” He sighs dramatically. “But I took a shot.”

  “Yes. Very busy.”

  “So, what brings you to the airport today, Vegina?”

  “On my way to a coffee convention in Bangkok, actually.”

  I watch his lips tremble as he tries to hold on to his slipping composure. I now realize this has morphed into an entirely new game. Who can get the other to break character first. I’ve had a lot of practice not smiling over the past year, so I imagine this should be a piece of cake for me. He clears his throat. “Where was that convention?”

  “Bang. Kok.” I enunciate the two syllables with purpose, the new me keeping an effortlessly straight face.

  He nods pensively, like he’s trying to place it on a map in his mind. “I’ve heard of it. Don’t they have like a famous track and field star there? A javelin thrower, I think.”

  I have no idea where he’s going with this, but I play along. “Hmm. I’m not sure.”

  “Yeah, they do. I forget his name but he jaculates like a pro.”

  And I’ve lost.

  I bury my head in my hands and giggle uncontrollably.

  Muppet Guy is still playing along flawlessly. “Is everything alright, Vegina? Your face is turning red. Are you getting enough oxygen? I have a very high threshold for that sort of thing. Summering on Uranus, and all. The atmosphere there is quite thin.”

  I laugh harder.

  “Okay, you two,” comes a voice behind me. I pick my head up and wipe at my eyes. Siri is standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring at us. “You are having way too much fun over here. And you”—she jabs a finger in my face—“just negated my claim to bingo.”

  “All right, all right,” Muppet Guy says. “No need to get crotchety.”

  I start giggling again.

  Siri throws her hands in the air. “See! There’s no way I can claim you as Mopey Girl now. Look at you! You’re grinning and giggling like a sorority girl.”

  “She’s right,” Lottie says, sounding slightly annoyed. “Why weren’t you ever this fun when I was alive?”

  This sobers me up fast. I clear my throat and mumble, “Sorry.”

  “You should be,” Siri says. “Jimmy only has one space left before he beats me. And the stakes are really high.”

  “What are the stakes?” Muppet Guy asks.

  “Whoever loses has to clean the ketchup dispensers for a week. And do you know how gross a job that is?”

  Muppet Guy points to me. “She has no idea. She’s an heiress. She’s never had to work a day in her life.”

  I give him a swift kick under the table.

  Siri crosses her arms. “Really?”

  I avert my gaze and shake my head. “No. Not really. He’s just making that up.” For some reason this girl completely intimidates me.

  “Well, Your Highness, if you two are done eating, can you give up the table? There’s about a thousand other stranded passengers who want to sit down.”

  I glance behind me and notice a long line has formed at the counter, where another employee in a red apron is taking orders. “Sorry. We’ll leave.”

  I stand up and start to pick up my tray. “Don’t touch that,” Siri snaps. “I’ll get it, Your Majesty. It’s my job.”

  “I’m really not—” I start to say.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Get out of here. Go fly off to Saint Bart’s or wherever it is you people go.”

  Muppet Guy stands and pulls his messenger bag over his head, crumpling Animal’s face once again. I start to put on my backpack but can’t manage to reach the second strap. Then, suddenly, Muppet Guy is behind me, holding the strap out for me. The gesture makes my stomach flip.

  “Thanks,” I mumble as I loop my arm through. He smiles at me, and I, like a coward, look away.

  Siri finishes cleaning up our table and carries the trays back to the counter. As she goes, she calls over her shoulder, “You still owe me a Mopey Girl!”

  I pull out the hair that’s caught under my backpack straps. “I’ll let you know if I see one,” I say quietly, but I’m not sure she hears.

  I glance back at the now empty table, and the breath catches in my chest when I see my phone lying there. I can’t believe I nearly left it behind. I snatch it up and tap in the passcode, my eyes automatically veering toward the bottom of the home screen.

  One unread message.

  I check the clock, suddenly desperate to know how much time I’ve killed during this meal. It’s almost five. A whole hour has passed.

  Which means I have less than three hours to go.

  I click the Web browser and hover my fingers over the keyboard, ready to ask Google all of the unanswered questions that have piled up in the past hour, but suddenly I can’t think of a single one.

  The thought unnerves me. I make one up fast.

  How cold is it on Uranus?

  Negative 371 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “Everything all right?” Muppet Guy interrupts, nodding to my phone.

  I shut off the screen. “Yeah. Fine.”

  “Wanna grab a Starbucks?” he asks with a wink.

  “Sure.”

  On the twelfth visit, Dr. Judy asked to see my phone. It was a casual request that came after I’d already been sitting on her couch for a good twenty minutes. But it took me by surprise. She hadn’t brought up my phone since the first session, when she gave me permission to hold it. There was no lead-up, no segue. One minute we were talking about a book I was assigned to read in English and the next she was pointing at the device clutched in my hands.

  “Are you allowed to ask that?” I replied, stalling for time. “Are you allowed to look at a patient’s phone?”

  “I’m allowed to ask,” she stated neutrally. “And you’re allowed to say no.”

  I hesitated, making a mental list of the pros and cons in my head. As it turned out, there weren’t many.

  Pro: If I hand it over willingly, like it doesn’t even faze me, there’s a high
er chance she won’t make a big deal about it.

  Con: If she sees the text message, she might ask about it. She might read it.

  The decision was made.

  “Why?” I asked, trying to sound more curious than defensive.

  “You said holding it makes you feel better. I’d just like to get a bit more insight into that.”

  With the screen off, I held up the phone, turning it around once. She reached for it. I returned it to my lap, flashing her what we both knew was an artificial smile. “Okay?”

  She leaned back in her chair, chuckling softly. “Okay.”

  I let out an inaudible breath. I’d learned that breathing too hard was a giveaway. A sign of distress.

  “It’s an interesting phone case,” she remarked, writing something down on her yellow pad. I watched her pen move, carefully observing the messy loops and scrawls. I’d found there was a direct correlation between my behavior and her scribbles. I was the earthquake and she was the Richter scale. The crazier I acted, the higher the magnitude.

  My unwillingness to give up my phone: A 6.2.

  A few broken dishes in your kitchen but not enough to bring down a house.

  “Are you a Doctor Who fan?” she continued.

  “Why would I have the case if I wasn’t a fan?”

  “I just never heard you mention the show before.”

  “We never talked about television before.”

  She smiled, her lips never parting. “True. Do you want to talk about television?”

  “Do you?” I challenged.

  She lowered her notepad, but kept the pen poised between her fingers. “Yes,” she decided, and I felt conned once again. She’d called my bluff. “Tell me about Doctor Who.”

  How does she just know? I wondered with a simmering fascination.

  I grabbed for the expanding universe ball on the coffee table and cupped it in my hands. “What’s to tell? It’s about a guy who travels through space and time in a stupid blue box.”

  “Stupid blue box?” she echoed.

  Stupid, careless girl, I scolded in my head.

  I should have known better by now. In only a few short months, I’d become a master of concealment. But Dr. Judy had a tendency to bring out the worst in me.

  The truth.

  “That doesn’t sound like a fan to me,” she mused.

  “What do you want me to say?” I snapped.

  She glided effortlessly into her appeasement voice. “I’m just saying that a phone case is a very personal choice. A statement. Almost like a tattoo. Usually it means something to the person who chose it.”

  “Well, I didn’t choose it. It was a gift.”

  She nodded and bent her head toward her notepad. Her Richter scale scribbles were getting more intense, building to the big one. The kind they make disaster movies about.

  I knew what question was coming next. I knew I couldn’t avoid it. I could hide under a table and strap down all my precious, breakable belongings, but it wouldn’t do any good.

  “Who gave it to you?” she asked, her eyes still downcast. The tip of her seismographic pen poised like a needle waiting for movement. Waiting for signs of a looming catastrophe.

  I thought about asking Lottie for help, but I knew that was pointless. Lottie never spoke to me in here. It was like she was afraid of these walls.

  I was alone.

  I stretched the universe as far as it would go, threatening to break the whole damn thing apart. The plastic interlocking pieces dug into my skin. I heard them creak under the pressure.

  The floor rumbled beneath my feet. The bookshelves started to shake.

  “Did Lottie give you that phone case?” she guessed.

  The toy ball snapped in my hands, the pieces scattering like ash into my lap.

  “Yes,” I whispered, my voice burnt and charred.

  Dr. Judy studied me for five long seconds before scribbling furiously on her notepad.

  Meanwhile, I plunged straight into the fiery depths of the earth’s core.

  “Two grande lattes please,” Muppet Guy says when we reach the front of the ridiculously long Starbucks line. So much for this wing of the airport being a well kept secret.

  “Nonfat for me,” I say.

  “I’ll have her fat,” he says without missing a beat.

  The male barista doesn’t look amused by the comment. Apparently no airport employee is happy about being here today. He grabs two large paper cups from his dwindling stack and starts to scribble on them with a blue Sharpie. “Names?” he mutters.

  Reginald looks expectantly to me. “Go ahead. Tell him your name.”

  I feel my face color again. “You can just write V.”

  Muppet Guy lets out a snort. “Cop-out.”

  “For his, you can write Mr. Schwarzenegger.”

  The barista glares up at me from behind the cup.

  “And in case you’re wondering,” I add, “there’s no relation. But he gets that a lot.”

  Muppet Guy snickers beside me as the barista passes the labeled cups to the one girl who’s been tasked with making all the drinks. There appears to be about ten orders ahead of ours. It’s going to be a while.

  I steal a peek at the clock on my phone.

  Two hours, thirty-seven minutes remaining.

  “Nine dollars and eight-four cents,” the barista announces from the cash register.

  “Oh,” Muppet Guy says knowingly. “Clearly you don’t recognize her.”

  I slap his arm. “Don’t,” I warn through gritted teeth.

  “Excuse me?” Grumpy Barista says, and I immediately wonder if that is on Siri’s bingo card.

  “You see,” Muppet Guy begins haughtily, gesturing to me. “She is actually the daughter of . . .”

  I kick his shin and he lets out a yelp. “Nothing,” I say hastily, handing the clerk my mother’s credit card. “He’s just fooling around.”

  The barista swipes the card, and Muppet Guy and I wander over to the small mob of people ready to storm the joint if their caffeinated beverages don’t appear in the next two minutes.

  “I can’t believe you paid for that.” Muppet Guy shakes his head in disappointment. “All those perks. Down the drain.” He makes a whoosh sound, which I assume is supposed to resemble the flushing of a toilet.

  “I didn’t want to cause a scene. There’s a long line.”

  My phone vibrates quietly in my hand, and I glance down at the screen. It’s my mother.

  She’s calling.

  She never calls.

  She always texts.

  That’s when I realize I haven’t responded to any of her previous messages. She’s probably worried sick.

  “Sorry, hold on,” I murmur to Muppet Guy, and swipe to answer the call. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Ryn! Thank God! Are you okay?” My mom’s frantic energy vibrates right through the speaker.

  Muppet Guy’s eyes light up. “Mrs. Starbucks???” he mouths in awe.

  I stifle a smile and turn away from him.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “The news says all the flights out of Denver are canceled.”

  “Delayed,” I correct her. “My flight to San Francisco is leaving in less than three hours.”

  “Really? That’s not what the news is saying.”

  “That’s what the board is saying,” I tell her. Although I feel confident that I have the more accurate information, I still feel a small solar flare of panic burst inside my chest.

  “Well, maybe you should just stay in Denver. I don’t know how I feel about you flying in that weather. It looks horrible.”

  I peer out the nearest window. It does look pretty horrible. But I assume whoever updates those information screens knows what they’re doing. They probably have some super high-tech advanced weather system that’s telling them the storm is on the way out.

  “It’ll be fine,” I assure her. “If the airlines say it’s safe to fly, then it’s safe to fly.”

  My mom has become
infinitely more paranoid in the last eleven months and thirty-one days. I guess that’s what happens when your only child just manages to outwit death on a technicality. You start to believe that death might try again.

  “I’m going to start looking for hotel rooms just in case. You can stay the night and catch a flight first thing in the morning.”

  My throat starts to constrict.

  The clock on the car’s dashboard flashes wildly in my vision.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  “No, Mom,” I rush to say. “Don’t do that. I’m coming home tonight. I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight. Get off the Internet.”

  She hesitates. “Fine. But I don’t like thinking about you stuck there all by yourself.”

  “You were just about to book me a hotel room all by myself,” I remind her.

  “I know. I just—”

  “Besides,” I tell her, “I’m not by myself, so you don’t have to worry.”

  Silence. Then, “Oh?”

  I turn back and share a look with Muppet Guy. “I made a new friend.”

  He flashes a wide, toothy grin.

  “Who?” my mom demands. “Who is this new friend?”

  “His name is . . .” I struggle to even say it. “Reginald.”

  “His name?” she echoes in alarm.

  “Yes. Reginald is a he,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “How old is he?”

  I look Muppet Guy up and down. He stands up taller and straightens an imaginary suit jacket. “Uh. How old is he?” I repeat the question.

  Reginald holds up ten fingers.

  “Ten,” I say automatically.

  Reginald sighs and shakes his head, flashing eight more fingers.

  “Ten?” my mother echoes in surprise.

  “I mean, eighteen. He’s eighteen. Same as me.”

  “Oh?” she says again, and I catch the dread in her voice. If she was still thinking about booking that hotel room, I’ve certainly put an end to that. “And where does this Reginald person live?”

  “He lives in Los Angeles,” I say, remembering our conversation in the restaurant. “But his family vacations”—I bite back the giggle that threatens to give me away—“elsewhere.”

  My mom is not amused. “What do his parents do?”