The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  I’m not following his messed up logic. “The train to the A gates is across the way.”

  “But where does this train go? C is the last terminal.”

  Who cares where this train goes? I need to get back to the A gates. It’s quarter to six. My flight leaves in two hours.

  “The guilt-trip train lady told us to exit,” I remind him.

  “She also told us to hold on to the handrails.”

  “Which I did!”

  The train still hasn’t moved. I hear another voice come from just outside the still-open doors. This one is male. “No boarding from this position. All trains depart from the other side of platform.”

  “See?” I point in the general direction of the voice.

  “Do you always do everything the automated voices say?” he asks, smirking.

  “No,” I reply defensively while at the same time realizing that the truthful answer is a resounding yes. They obviously programmed those instructions for a reason. Even if I don’t know the reason, I’m still inclined to follow them.

  “This train has to turn around eventually, right?”

  I consider his argument. I suppose he’s right. If C is the last terminal, the train must turn around. But what if it doesn’t? What if this particular train is scheduled for maintenance and disappears into some dark garage and we can’t get out?

  “I’ve always wanted to know where the train turns around,” Xander says, and I’m starting to comprehend his choice in Muppet paraphernalia. Animal is the crazy one. The chaotic one who runs around screaming. Who doesn’t follow the rules.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered where the train turns around?” he asks with a roguish raise of his eyebrows.

  “No,” I say automatically. “I want to get to my gate.”

  “Relax,” he tells me, and it strikes a nerve.

  “I am relaxed,” I snap even though I feel further from relaxed than I’ve felt all day.

  “You still have”—he pulls his phone from his pocket and glances at the screen—“two hours until your flight leaves.”

  “What if they push it up?”

  He shoos this away like a bothersome fly. “They’re not going to push it up. If anything, they’re going to push it back. Have you looked outside recently? This storm isn’t getting any better. It’s getting worse.”

  My heart hammers at the thought. It can’t get worse. It has to get better. I have to get home.

  “So really, you have no place to be but right here,” he reasons.

  I swipe on my phone to check the weather. To prove him wrong. He has to be wrong. But my chest tightens when I see the tiny little Searching sign where the bars are supposed to be.

  There’s no signal down here.

  Even more reason to get out of this train. I’ll just ride the escalator up to the C gates, connect to the network, and check the weather. And the information boards, while I’m at it.

  “Will you chill out?” Lottie scolds. “You’re acting crazy.”

  Because I want answers? I snap. That makes me crazy?

  “Because you’re starting to sound obsessive.”

  And you’re starting to sound like Dr. Judy.

  Lottie laughs her buoyant, infectious laugh.

  What’s so funny? I ask.

  “You’re a smart girl. You figure it out.”

  I need to check those information screens.

  “You just checked them five minutes ago.”

  I’m beginning to lose patience with her. A lot can change in five minutes, okay?

  “Like what?” she challenges.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Xander, who must notice I’ve disappeared into my own head, because he’s looking at me a little strangely. “But I have to—”

  Just then, the doors glide swiftly closed, sealing us inside, ripping the choice right out from under me. The train rumbles into motion again. With a giddy “whoop!” Xander resumes his surfing stance. I gaze out the front window. There’s nothing but darkness ahead of us.

  Haven’t you ever wondered where the train turns around?

  Right now all I can do is hope that the train does turn around. That this journey comes with a return trip back. That I didn’t just surrender my fate to a dark tunnel with no visible light at the end.

  At 10:00 you were alive, I say meekly to the voice in my head. At 10:05 you weren’t.

  Then, instinctively, I grab on to the handrail.

  What Lottie didn’t know—but we soon discovered—was that the Craigslist ad she found for a poker tutor was actually a notice for an underground traveling poker game. Apparently, the name of the poker tutor in the listing—Madeline Meroni—is some secret code directing Portland poker players to the location of the next game.

  I would have run the other way, but Lottie, being the girl that she is, didn’t miss a beat.

  “Of course we’re here for the game,” she said confidently when the large bouncer at the door peered down on us as if we were ants cowering below a skyscraper. He was as pale as a zombie and twice as frightening.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed as the bouncer led us through a dimly lit hallway with a pungent odor that I couldn’t quite identify. “We should leave. Like now.”

  “If you want to be the best at something,” she replied, “you have to just jump right in.”

  “I thought you said if you want to be the best at something, you have to learn from the best.”

  “Exactly. And these guys are the best.”

  “At what? Murdering girls and burying their bodies in Vancouver? Lottie, I do not want to be buried in the ’Couve!”

  The bouncer turned around and shot us both a glare. It was enough to shut even Lottie up.

  We turned left down another hallway, descended a set of dusty stone stairs, and entered a large, smoky basement with a single overheard lamp. A table for ten had been set up in the center of the room, and nine of the chairs were already full. It was a motley assortment of players, ranging from full-on Portland hipster—skinny jeans, flannel shirt, fluffy beard and everything—to a massive bald dude with white eyebrows and a neck tattoo.

  Regardless, they all looked like criminals to me. And in a way they were. This wasn’t exactly a legal gambling establishment.

  “I think this basement was part of the Shanghai Tunnels,” I whispered into Lottie’s ear. “Where they used to kidnap women and force them into prostitution.”

  She shook her head. “That legend has never been proven.”

  “Cashier’s over there,” the bouncer grunted. “We don’t take anything smaller than hundies.”

  Lottie nodded like she’d done this a thousand times. “Gotcha.” Then she grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the “cashier,” who was really just a blond guy wearing sunglasses and a backward cap, guarding a dinged up metal cash box with a gun placed on top.

  I felt my left lung give out. “Lottie,” I screeched, grabbing hold of her coat sleeve and clenching my teeth. “He. Has. A. Gun.”

  But she waved this off as if I’d said something as harmless as “He has a dust ruffle.”

  “They never use it,” she whispered. “It’s just there to keep people from trying anything. It’s probably not even loaded.” Then she flashed her most perfect Lottie smile at the cashier and produced five hundred-dollar bills from her bra. She pushed them across the table with the tip of her finger. “Buy in for five hundred, please.”

  I didn’t need to ask where Lottie got the money. Her father kept a stash of hundreds hidden in a safe in his office. Lottie had cracked the combination years ago. She claimed that he was never around enough to keep accurate count.

  “Maybe if he came home more than three times a month, he’d notice when money went missing,” she’d said to me once after swiping a hundred for a food court binge at the mall. “Until then, his loss, our gain.”

  “There’s only one seat left,” the cashier said, holding each bill up to a small lamp on the table. “Which of you is going to take it?”r />
  “I am,” Lottie said immediately, and some tiny, infinitesimal part of me felt the snub. Sure, I had no intention of actually playing. Sure, I was about the last person in the solar system equipped to play in an illegal, underground poker game. But the fact that Lottie came to the same conclusion about me stung. Just a little.

  The cashier handed her a rack of green-and-white-striped chips and deposited her bills into the cash box.

  Lottie hugged the rack to her chest and started toward the empty chair. I stepped in front of her. “Lottie, this is crazy!” I whisper-yelled. “I really think this is a very bad idea.”

  “Relax,” Lottie said. “Portland was founded on this kind of debauchery. It’s in our blood.”

  “You were born in Chicago!”

  “Even better.”

  “You don’t know how to play,” I murmured, glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of the other players could hear me.

  “I know the basics from watching TV. I’ll just fake it until I make it. That’s what I do best.”

  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to grab her by her gorgeous cherry red locks and drag her out of there. Or, at the very least, I wanted to come up with another pointless argument for her to breezily negate. But as I watched her sashay to the table and slide into the last empty seat with a confidence that managed to fool even me, all I could think was, Yes, Lottie. That is exactly what you do best.

  I watch out the back window as the train rumbles slowly down the track, eventually reaching a fork and veering left to enter another seemingly endless tunnel that leads God knows where.

  “This is so cool!” Xander says as he bounces a few times, readying his muscles for whatever comes next.

  Death. That’s what comes next. I’m almost sure of it.

  The train continues down the tunnel of doom. I still have no idea where it leads, but I know it’s not turning around. And it’s not heading in the direction of the A gates. Where I need to be right now. Where I should be right now. Where I would have been if it weren’t for stupid Lottie and her stupid obsession with Doctor Who.

  “Hey!” Lottie screeches in my ear. “Doctor Who is not stupid!”

  You can shut up now, I hiss. You and your phone case got us into this mess.

  “Wanna hear something crazy?” she asks immediately.

  No!

  This shuts her up.

  “Huh,” Xander muses, bending down to get a better look out the window I’m practically plastered to. “It’s not turning around.”

  No shit, Sherlock! I want to shout. But I stay silent, my eyes peeled to the empty track ahead of us. Because I’m a coward. A coward who can’t make her own decisions. Who doesn’t listen to her instincts when her instincts are clearly telling her—no, shouting at her—to get off the goddamn train!

  “I wonder where it’s going,” Xander muses.

  I grip my phone tighter, threatening to shatter the poor device in my hand. Not that it matters though. I won’t need a phone after I’m dead.

  Then, without warning, without ceremony, the train just stops.

  Right in the middle of the track.

  This is it. This is where we die.

  This is where some robot monster sears off the top of the car with its laser claws, reaches down, and rips us right from the train.

  This is where . . .

  “Please continue to hold on,” the female voice says. “The train will be moving momentarily.”

  I exhale the universe out of my lungs. I’ve never been so excited to hear an automated voice in my entire life.

  “Aha!” Xander exclaims. “I get it. It doesn’t actually turn around. It backs up onto the other track and then moves forward. So now we’re going to be in the back of the train, instead of the front.”

  I nod, like I’ve been coming to the exact same conclusion.

  Three seconds later the train starts up again, heading in the opposite direction. The right direction. I wilt in relief.

  “All right, old lady,” Xander says, walking unsteadily over to me. The way he has to zigzag across the car to keep his balance makes him look like one of the drunk hobos who wander the streets in downtown Portland. “No sitting this time around.”

  He can’t possibly be serious.

  “I’m not surfing in a train car,” I vow.

  “You are totally surfing in a train car.”

  I scoot farther back onto the bench, until I’m pressed against the window. He reaches out and grabs hold of my arm, giving it a tug. “C’mon, cheater. Get up. Use those perfectly good legs of yours.”

  I glance down at his hand on my arm. “Oh, look. You grabbed on to something. You lose. Game over.”

  He gives me a fake har har laugh. “Very funny, Vegina. But it has to be a real handrail.”

  He tugs on my arm again. I don’t like the sensation of his hand on me. It’s too close. Too personal. Too much. But apparently, the only way he’s going to let go is if I play his little game.

  “Fine,” I say, scooting forward. He releases his grip.

  I stand, feeling the rumble of the track beneath my feet.

  “Backpack off,” he orders. “It’ll hinder your balance.”

  With a sigh I stuff my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, then reluctantly shimmy out of my backpack and set it by my feet, careful to keep one hand on the pole the entire time.

  “Now,” Xander says, returning to his ridiculous surfer stance. “Just let go.”

  I swallow and let my grip on the pole loosen. My fingers tingle in protest, wanting to squeeze tighter. I spread my legs to steady myself and release my hands, testing out my balance. It’s more stable than I thought it would be.

  Well, this is easy.

  Of course at that very moment the train decides to lurch, and I go tumbling forward, halfway across the car. I crash right into Xander. For the second time today.

  “Please hold on. This train is approaching the C gates.”

  She couldn’t have warned me a second earlier?

  Xander catches me with a laugh. And suddenly, the only thing I can feel is his hands on my shoulders. His mouth near my mouth. His eyes close enough to see inside. See all my secrets.

  I jump back, grasping for my pole again.

  The train pulls to a stop and the doors open.

  “Exit here for all C gates.”

  I consider darting out right this second. There’s got to be a walkway back to the A terminal. Hell, I’ll walk outside in the snow if I have to.

  “Don’t give up,” Xander encourages, as if my thoughts are encapsulated in a tiny cartoon bubble above my head.

  A melodic little five-note song plays. It sounds like something you’d hear between scenes of a laugh-track sitcom. “The doors are closing. Please keep clear and hold on for departure to all B gates.”

  I look hopefully toward the empty platform. If someone gets on, maybe we can stop this ridiculous game. But no one does. The doors glide shut again. The train starts to pick up speed.

  “I don’t think I’m coordinated enough for train surfing,” I tell Xander from my pole. “It’s probably safer if I just stick to the handrail.”

  “Safer, maybe,” Xander agrees. “But not nearly as much fun.”

  A boisterous cackling laugh vibrates in my brain. “Wow,” Lottie muses. “This guy is good. He’s only known you for what? Two hours? And he’s already got you pegged.”

  I’m not pegged.

  So much for ignoring her.

  “You are sooo pegged. You are like the most peggable person I know.”

  “Peggable” is not a word, Lottie.

  “It is now. I just invented it.”

  You can’t just invent words.

  “I can do whatever I want. I’m dead.”

  “Everything all right over there?” That was Xander. Although, thankfully, I’m sane enough to tell the difference, I still flinch slightly at the sound of a real voice interrupting my conversation with an imaginary one.
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  “Yes,” I say quickly.

  “You looked like you were somewhere else,” Xander says.

  I was, I think at the same time Lottie says, “She was.”

  The train slows dramatically. Xander almost loses his balance. He takes two large, stumbling steps to realign himself. The doors open again. No one gets on.

  “The doors are closing. Please keep clear and hold for departure to all A gates.”

  The voice is music to my ears.

  You’re almost there.

  One more stop.

  The doors close. The train wrenches into motion again. I let go of the handrail and step into the center of the train. If for no other reason than to prove Lottie wrong.

  “Good!” Xander encourages, as if I’m a five-year-old afraid to dive off the diving board.

  Fake it until you make it, I remind myself.

  I spread my legs slightly and stretch my arms out to the side just like Xander’s doing. I’ve never actually surfed before. Lottie wanted to take lessons after she fell in love with one of our coworkers at A-Frame, but by the time she got around to finding a local surf school, she’d already moved on to the guy who worked at the mobile phone kiosk.

  “Try to put all your weight in your feet,” Xander instructs.

  “Where else would my weight be?”

  The train banks slightly to the left. This time I’m ready. I shift to compensate, sticking my butt way out. It’s not graceful but it works. I stay upright.

  “Well, that’s attractive,” Lottie criticizes.

  May I remind you, this was your idea.

  “Actually, I think it was his idea.”

  “You’re a natural!” Xander encourages.

  We both anticipate the next dip, bending our knees and leaning to the left in an effort to right ourselves.

  “Nice!” he says.

  My lips curve into a grin. The expression feels foreign. Like a language I spoke as a small child but lost over the years, because I never had a chance to practice it.

  “See? It’s fun, right?”

  Actually, it is. As stupid as it sounds, it might be the most fun I’ve had in eleven months and thirty-one days.

  I feel a pull in my stomach as the train starts to slow. I brace myself for the change, rooting my feet firmly into the floor.