The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  “What do his parents do?” I repeat, looking to Reginald for another prompt. But instead, his body stiffens and he seems to suddenly notice the small condiment counter behind him. He turns and makes his way over, avidly gathering up napkins and packets of sugar like he’s stocking up for the apocalypse.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” I snap, irritated that her question appeared to have made him uncomfortable. “I don’t interrogate every single person I meet.”

  “Well, be sure to stay in a public, visible place.”

  “As opposed to all those dark, dangerous alleys in the airport?”

  “Ryn,” she scolds.

  “Mom. I gotta go. Our coffee is almost ready. Shut off the news. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  I hang up the phone before she can say anything else. A moment later, a string of text messages vibrate my phone.

  I click through each one without really reading any of them until there’s only one unread message left.

  “Sorry about that,” I say when Muppet Guy returns with his supplies. “My mom is a little overprotective. She thinks that I’m going to go all crazy super slut on her. Or worse, that I already have.”

  He raises a single eyebrow. “Well, with a name like Vegina, who can blame her?”

  I chuckle. “Right? She brought it on herself.”

  He looks me up and down, causing my cheeks to glow with heat again. “No offense,” he says, clearly coming to some kind of conclusion. “But you don’t strike me as the crazy super slut type.”

  “Know a lot of crazy super sluts?”

  “Actually”—he slaps the sugar packets against his palm as though he thinks the action will make him look tough—“no.”

  I nod. “Didn’t think so.”

  Muppet Guy glances down at my phone. It’s then I notice that I’ve been incessantly rubbing the surface of the screen. I force my thumb to freeze. To act like a normal thumb.

  “So,” he says, looking back at me, “any particular reason she thinks you’re going to go all crazy super slut?”

  My thumb twitches again, searching for a way out of the mental force field I’ve built around it.

  Yes. Because she read it in a book about grief.

  Because she still thinks Lottie’s hidden contraband was mine.

  Because that’s what good girls like me do when they lose their anchor. They get lost at sea.

  “Grande nonfat latte for V and a regular grande latte for Mr. Schwarzenegger!” the overworked female barista calls out. She’s so hassled, she doesn’t even flinch at the name. The rest of the awaiting mob, however, all turn to look at Muppet Guy.

  “No relation!” he calls out as he pushes his way to the front and grabs the two cups.

  By the time we’ve both sweetened our lattes, he seems to have forgotten all about his question. And I’m grateful that I don’t have to come up with another lie.

  It Never Ends Well

  My parents got divorced in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. Everything about the separation was clean and tidy. Like they’d been planning it since their wedding day.

  Summer meant no missed school or carpools or homework to worry about. And since I was already moving from elementary school to middle school, it felt like a natural transition period. New school. New life. Easy. Peasy.

  I spent the entire summer at my grandparents’ house in Phoenix while my mom and dad ironed out the details at home. They assured me it was simpler this way. Neater. Less mess. My mother was a big fan of the Less Mess Method. Whatever path left the least amount of debris was the path for her.

  When I flew back from Phoenix at the end of the summer, my parents were divorced. Just like that. Done. Finito.

  It was strange. Like stepping through a wormhole and coming home to a parallel dimension of your life. When I boarded the plane in June, my mom and dad were husband and wife. When I disembarked the plane in August, I was another statistic. Another trapeze artist perpetually caught on a razor thin wire between two parents, two houses, two lives.

  “What’s it feel like?” Lottie asked me in the tree house later that night after I’d come home to a half-empty house. Not only had the divorce been finalized in my absence, but my father had moved out the remainder of his things.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It feels the same, I guess. Except my dad doesn’t live with us anymore.”

  I was surprised by how true that was. Since I wasn’t around to witness any of the proceedings or moving boxes or scheduled mediations, it simply felt like my dad was on a work trip. Except he’d taken all of his stuff with him.

  “Are you okay?” Lottie asked, those perfect two lines forming between her eyes. Lottie hardly worried about anything. It just wasn’t in her nature. So whenever I saw those matching wrinkles appear, I knew she was genuinely concerned about me.

  I swallowed and tried to answer her question truthfully.

  Was I okay?

  I felt okay. Even though, somehow I knew I wasn’t supposed to.

  “I think so,” I told her.

  “I wish my parents would get divorced,” Lottie said, collapsing onto her back, her shiny red locks spreading out around her head like a fiery halo.

  “No, you don’t,” I told her.

  “At least then they’d be forced to talk to each other.” She stared at the rafters in the ceiling for a long time, like she was an architect studying their structural integrity, calculating out just how long they’d hold up before everything collapsed.

  Then, after a silence that seemed to stretch on forever, she whispered, “I don’t ever want to get married.”

  I lay down next to her and gazed upward, trying to figure out what was so interesting up there. “Never?”

  “Never,” she affirmed.

  “Why?” I didn’t understand her logic. If anyone should be anti-marriage it was me. I was the one who had just (sort of) been through a divorce.

  “It never ends well.”

  “It could end well.”

  I heard her hair swishing against the wooden floor as she shook her head. “No.”

  The finality in her voice sent chills down my spine. I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That I wasn’t the rule. I was the exception. We both were. But I was too cold to argue.

  “I should probably get back to my gate,” I tell Muppet Guy. “You know, in case they decide to leave early.” I hoist my sweetened latte in the air, like a really lame toast. “Thanks for lunch.”

  As distracting as the last hour has been, I’m anxious to peel off this strange girl’s skin and go back to being myself. The girl who doesn’t giggle uncontrollably and make lewd jokes with boys. The girl who sits quietly by herself, tapping questions into her phone, and having conversations with her imaginary dead best friend.

  “Okay,” Muppet Guy says. “I’ll walk with you. I should get to my gate too.”

  “Okay.”

  As we walk, I silently berate myself for not devising a better escape plan. One that didn’t come with some unintentional invitation to join me.

  I should probably go help the baggage handlers unload luggage in the blizzard.

  I should probably go change my tampon in the bathroom.

  I should probably go jump in front of an airport train.

  How fast do airport trains go?

  Has anyone ever committed suicide by leaping in front of an airport train?

  “Not that I’m in any hurry to get to Miami,” Muppet Guy goes on.

  “Don’t you mean Uranus?”

  He chuckles through a sip of coffee. “Nah. That’s just in the summer. Trust me, you do not want to be on Uranus in the winter.” He pretends to shiver.

  I fake a smile. The new me is already wearing off. I can feel her slipping away the longer we walk through the B terminal. The closer we get to the train. The closer I get to reliving January 1st, 10:05 a.m., all over again.

  The problem is, once that layer has been shed, once that protective coating has worn off, all that’s w
aiting underneath is the old me. Ryn Gilbert.

  And I really don’t want him to be around when that happens.

  We reach the shopping rotunda in the center of the B terminal. It’s shaped identically to the one in the A terminal, but the stores and restaurants are different. The food court is still stuffed with grumpy, frustrated people who would clearly rather be anywhere but here.

  A female voice over the intercom system is paging passengers. The list seems endless. She actually has to pause and catch her breath at some point before continuing with what I swear is a sigh.

  Diving back into the anarchy of the terminal’s main hub instantly reminds me of Troy, the unaccompanied minor, off somewhere on some secret child prodigy mission that I wouldn’t understand.

  “Any system, if left unattended or isolated, will eventually result in entropy. Or chaos.”

  Well, he certainly seems to be right about that.

  A moment later, as if in an effort to prove the boy’s theory, I’m nearly steamrolled by a twentysomething woman storming out of a Brookstone store like a tornado escaping a bottle. I have to jump back to avoid the collision.

  “If you love the damn back massager so much,” she’s ranting as she walks, “why don’t you just sleep with it?”

  Suddenly, a man comes running after her. “Miranda, will you calm down? I was just asking about its features!”

  She stops and spins around to face the man. “Oh! Oh really? Because you’re so interested in buying a back massager?”

  “Maybe,” he replies, but even I’m not convinced, and I don’t even know what the fight is about.

  “First you abandon me in line at the gift shop while I’m buying your stupid Altoids—that have to be cinnamon or else the world will implode—and then I walk all over this crazy place looking for you, only to find you flirting with a Brookstone employee!”

  Muppet Guy and I continue walking, but I can tell this conversation is holding his attention too, because he keeps watching the couple long after we’ve passed them.

  I think back to Jimmy, the plump cook at the New Belgium Hub, and his Stranded Passenger Bingo card. He needed only one space to win: Couple on the Verge of a Breakup. I fight the sudden urge to run all the way back to Gate B89 to tell him I found one. Anything to keep Siri from claiming me—the Mopey Girl—as her winning space.

  I swing by the bank of information screens in the center of the rotunda and check my flight again. It’s still leaving at 7:41 p.m.

  Satisfied, I slip back into the human sea to make my way to the escalators. I can feel Muppet Guy behind me, pushing his way through the swells of people. I don’t dare glance back for fear that I might lose my way. Or get crushed to death. When we’re almost to the escalator, I spot a bookstore called the Tattered Cover a few feet away. I have every intention of just swimming on by, but something catches my eye. My gaze zeros in on a table of books positioned right inside the entrance of the store, focusing on one in particular. It’s the most recent release by Dr. Max Hale and Dr. Marcia Livingston-Hale, those child psychologists I saw on TV earlier.

  Kids Come First: 101 Answers to Your Most Common Parenting Questions.

  I drop my empty latte cup in a nearby trash can and divert my course toward the bookstore. I want to see what these 101 most common questions are. If I can find just one that applies to me, then maybe there’s hope for me after all. Then maybe I still have an ounce of normalcy left.

  “What are you doing?” Muppet Guy asks, and I can’t help remark on the elevated level of his voice. It sounds almost like panic.

  Does he have some bizarre fear of bookstores?

  Is he crazy and abnormal too?

  The thought brings me a wave of comfort. Maybe I’m not the only one of us who sits in a therapist’s office once a week playing with “busy toys.” Maybe he has a Dr. Judy of his own. Maybe he likes expanding and contracting the universe just as much as I do.

  What would a fear of bookstores be called? Libraphobia?

  “I just want to see something,” I tell him, making my way to the table and picking up a copy of Dr. Max and Dr. Marcia’s book. I can feel Muppet Guy hovering next to me, fidgeting with the strap of his messenger bag.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, glancing at him over my shoulder.

  He runs his fingers anxiously through his hair and then strangely reaches for the book, ripping it from my hands and putting it back on the table. It sits slightly crooked atop the other copies.

  “What are you doing reading that garbage?” He lets out a strange laugh that comes out more like a snort. “I mean, self-help books? Seriously? What are you? A forty-year-old spinster?”

  I squint at him, completely thrown by his shift in behavior. His voice. It’s all high and squeaky. He can’t possibly be going through puberty now? Look at him. He’s at least six feet tall, and his body is—

  I derail that thought and pick up the book again. “I just saw these people on TV earlier, and I was curious about something.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather check out the young adult section? I’m sure there’s some new end-of-the-world-catastrophe-and-we’re-the-last-two-humans-so-we-better-start-repopulating-the-earth book out. Isn’t that what all you hormonal teenage girls are reading these days?”

  I shoot him another curious look and open the cover, flipping to the table of contents. “Hormonal?”

  “You said so yourself!” he defends. “Your mom thinks you’re turning into a crazy super slut!”

  My eyes widen and I glance around the store. At least four other customers heard that and are now eyeing me with suspicion. As if Crazy Super Slut is actually code for Airport Terrorist.

  “Sorry.” He lowers his voice.

  I peer up from the page and study his body language. He’s shifting nervously from foot to foot, scratching at his hairline. I’m pretty sure he’s considering grabbing the book from me again, so I take a step back and angle my body away from him.

  I run my fingers down the table of contents, skimming each of the hundred and one questions listed.

  My hope sinks to the floor like a dead body with cement shoes. I can’t find one question that seems to apply to me. To my life. No wonder my mother switched to those other books. I’m no longer a commonly asked question. Now I’m a special circumstance.

  When I look up again, Muppet Guy is watching me like a creepy stalker. His head is bent slightly, his teeth are going to town on his poor, defenseless thumbnail.

  What is the matter with him?

  And then I get another thought. If he really is a closeted libraphobic, maybe he’ll have no choice but to leave and I’ll finally be alone again.

  “Is that really what you want?” Lottie asks, coming out of one of her sporadic hibernations. “To be alone?”

  I’m not alone, I remind her, returning my attention to the book. I have you.

  “And how long do you think that will last?”

  I freeze. It’s the first time either one of us has directly mentioned the elephant in the room. Or the elephant in my head, as it were. That she is a figment of my imagination. That she is a coping mechanism. That coping mechanisms are temporary.

  That one day I won’t need her anymore.

  I grapple for a response. Something provoking. Something that will get her riled up enough to change the subject.

  Besides, I tell her, you’re the one who said you never wanted to get married. You’re the one who said that relationships never end well.

  It works. Lottie screeches back into my mind like an express train barreling through a local station. “I said marriages never end well. There are plenty of kinds of relationships that can be fun. Affairs. Casual flings. One-night stands in airports. Now, where is that first-class lounge . . . ?”

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to get to your gate?” Muppet Guy has shown some mercy on his thumbnail and is now back to fidgeting with his bag strap. “What if your flight leaves early? Do you really want to be stuck in this airport any longer than n
ecessary?”

  As weird as he’s acting, he has a point. I set the book back down on the table. But as I turn to leave, I notice that I’ve accidentally placed the book upside down, with the back cover facing up. I tilt my head to get a look at the full-size author photograph printed on the jacket.

  Muppet Guy lunges toward the table, knocking over several other books in the process. He grabs the Kids Come First book and hurriedly flips it over, doing his best to tidy up the mess he’s made.

  I bend to pick up some of the fallen books, but he waves me away. “I’ve got it,” he snaps, crouching down and scooping hardcovers into his arms. “Why don’t you wait outside?”

  I ignore him and pick up the parenting book again, turning it over to get a better look at the photograph. Then I let out a gasp.

  There, on the back of Kids Come First: 101 Answers to Your Most Common Parenting Questions, are Dr. Max and Dr. Marcia, posing with their teenage son. A boy with dark hair, light brown skin, and expressive blue eyes.

  The same blue eyes that are now staring up at me in defeat from the floor of the airport bookstore.

  On the two-year anniversary of my parents’ divorce, Lottie decided she needed to distract me. I insisted I was fine—I didn’t need any distraction—but she insisted I was just really good at hiding it.

  Lottie asked her Nanny of the Moment to drive us into the city for some sort of surprise that Lottie wouldn’t divulge to me. Even though Lottie was fourteen and didn’t really need a nanny, her parents consistently kept one on hand until Lottie got her driver’s license. Mostly to drive Lottie around or run errands, or do random tasks around the house. She was kind of a catchall employee of the Valentine family.

  The nanny dropped us off at what looked like an art studio in downtown Portland. As soon as I saw the sign in the door that read, DRAWING CLASS TODAY 1–3 P.M., I immediately backed away from the building.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked in a panicked voice.

  Lottie looped her arm through mine. “We’re taking a drawing class.”

  “But I don’t need a class.”

  I’d been successfully avoiding art classes of any kind since the day I first picked up a drawing utensil. My parents had offered to pay for art classes when I was younger, but I always refused. Drawing was my escape. My passion. My thing. It felt wrong for someone to tell me how to do it. Like taking a class on breathing.