The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  The door closes again.

  “Uh,” Xander says, taking two giant steps away. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re not doing anything,” I say impatiently. “I’m going out there.”

  I’m not sure whom I’m trying to convince more. Me or him. But it appears both of us need convincing.

  “Uh,” he says again. “Why?”

  “Because it’s just something I have to do.”

  “Freeze to death?”

  I shake my head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  And he wouldn’t. How could he? He grew up in a perfect life. With perfect parents who knew exactly what to do when something went wrong. Although I highly doubt anything ever went wrong for him.

  I take another step forward. The doors respond, yawning open for a third time. I swear this time, I hear them asking with a sigh, “You again? Look, are you going to leave or not?”

  I take a deep breath, puffing up my chest like armor. I hold up my hand to cover my face from the barrage of snow that lashes out at me.

  “I’d just like to say for the record that this is a terrible idea.”

  I shut my eyes and try to block Xander’s voice from my mind.

  “I’d have to agree,” Lottie chimes in. “This isn’t your brightest moment, Ryn.”

  “Stop!” I mean this for Lottie, but fortunately Xander falls quiet too.

  I shiver and zip my measly sweatshirt up to my chin, pulling the hood around my ears and tugging on the cord. My phone is still clutched in my hand. I glance down at the time: 7:49 p.m.

  Less than fifteen hours to go.

  I’m doing this.

  I’m doing this.

  I’m doing this.

  I shove my phone into the pocket of my sweatshirt and take one step closer to the eye of the storm.

  Dr. Judy stared at me in silence, waiting for me to speak. I swiped on my phone and checked the messaging app.

  One unread message.

  Satisfied, I looked at the clock. We had only six minutes left. Six minutes and then I wouldn’t have to do this again for two whole weeks. Even though I’d gotten used to the idea of being in therapy, it still didn’t mean I liked going.

  On the other hand I knew I was spending the next two weeks with my father and his new wife, and for a brief moment I couldn’t decide which was worse.

  “What about drawing?” Dr. Judy asked, shattering our mutually agreed upon silence.

  I squinted at her. “What about it?”

  “Art can be very therapeutic. Some people find that it helps them with the grieving process. Helps them pay homage to what they lost. Musicians write songs, authors write books, poets write poetry—”

  “I don’t draw anymore.” I cut her off before she had a chance to finish. I knew exactly where this conversation was heading, and I wasn’t going with it. There were vague answers I was willing to give to appease her. There were topics I was willing to skirt around for the sake of pretenses, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “And why is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I just grew out of it.” I tried to convey an air of nonchalance in hopes that she would see this as a nonissue and move on.

  But in this room, nothing was a nonissue. Everything was worth talking about. “And when do you think you ‘grew out of it’?” she challenged, putting a strange emphasis on my words. Like she was testing their validity.

  I didn’t want to think about this. I hadn’t thought about this in nearly nine months. But her questions were drilling holes in the brick wall I’d built up around those dark memories. Those first few nights at the very beginning. When I drove myself crazy. When I sat in my bedroom until daybreak trying to capture her. Trying to draw her the way I remembered her. Trying, and trying, and trying, and failing.

  Until I was surrounded by images of Lottie’s disfigured face.

  Until I was drowning in a pool of black ink.

  I shrugged, careful to keep my expression neutral. “I don’t remember, really. My passion for it just sort of fizzled out. It happens.”

  Dr. Judy watched me with vigilant eyes. I’d learned she had two kinds of stares. The pitying one and the one that called “bullshit!” This was the latter.

  “Why do you think that is?” she asked.

  I swallowed.

  Because she’s not deformed.

  Because her eyes don’t droop like that.

  Because there’s no point in drawing something that doesn’t look real.

  “I just don’t enjoy it anymore,” I said, looking down at the phone clasped between my cold, talentless fingers.

  Because she’s beautiful.

  And I used to be able to draw beautiful things.

  But my hands stopped working.

  “Okay,” Dr. Judy said, surprising me somewhat. I didn’t think she was going to let the subject go so easily. But she clicked her pen with an air of finality. “Since I’m not going to see you for the next two weeks, I have a little experiment I’d like you to try while you’re away.”

  “What’s that?” I mumbled, disinterested.

  “Do you know what a silver lining is?”

  “I know what a Silver Linings Playbook is.”

  She didn’t look amused. She rarely did.

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  I shrugged and checked my messaging app again. “It’s like something good that can be found in something bad.”

  I didn’t have to be an astrophysicist to know where she was going with this.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “There are no silver linings to Lottie’s death.”

  She seemed to rethink her previous statement. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “If you think I’m going to try to come up with reasons why Lottie’s death is a good thing, then you’re the crazy one.” I wasn’t even trying to mask the irritation in my tone. I expected to see something flash on her face—some kind of judgment or displeasure or that subtle fascination she’d mastered so well—but her face was as placid as a lake.

  “I want you to write down every silver lining that you find,” she instructed.

  I started to protest, but she held up a hand to stop me. “It doesn’t have to be about Lottie. It can be about anything. Whenever you find yourself lamenting about something that you perceive to be ‘bad,’ I want you to try and find a silver lining within it and write it down.”

  “Is this like homework?”

  She ticked her head to the side. “Kind of.”

  “Are you going to be checking it when I get back?” I mocked.

  “Only if you want to show it to me.”

  Which meant I didn’t have to do it.

  Which meant I wouldn’t do it.

  “Let me ask you something, Ryn,” Dr. Judy began, and for a second I almost feared that I had said that last part aloud. “What have you done to grieve Lottie?”

  I didn’t understand the question.

  Dr. Judy rephrased. “What steps have you taken to grieve the loss of your best friend?”

  “I didn’t realize grief was an active emotion,” I said without thinking. Without properly weighing the consequences. And I immediately regretted it.

  Dr. Judy put her pen down. That was never a good sign. It meant whatever I had just said was so groundbreaking, so earth-shattering, that even her little ballpoint seismograph couldn’t accurately capture its epicness.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” she asked.

  I glanced at the clock. Two minutes remaining. Dr. Judy was usually very punctual. When that digital clock in the corner hit the hour mark, that was it. Session over. Next patient. But she had, in the past nine months, been known to make exceptions when the subject matter was deemed important enough. And by the way she was looking at me now, her body bent forward, her eyes searching, this felt like it was shaping up to be one of those exceptions.

  I knew I had to defuse the situation. Steer her to ano
ther track. A track that got me out of here on time.

  One minute remaining.

  “I just mean,” I began confidently, “I grieve Lottie every day. I don’t really plan out how I’m going to do it, I just do it.”

  Dr. Judy sat back in her chair, picked up her pen again, clicked it, and started scribbling. The clock in the corner ticked over. A new hour had begun.

  I stood up quickly. The room spun. I clutched my phone to steady myself.

  “Well,” I began breezily, “I guess I’ll see you next year.”

  Next year.

  A debilitating chill racked my entire body.

  The next time I’m in this office, Lottie will have been dead for an entire year.

  The next time I’m here, I will have made one full rotation around the sun without her.

  I gripped my phone tighter, but for some reason, this time, it offered me no stabilization.

  I wanted to turn around and scream at Dr. Judy. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. Always, always wrong.

  Grief isn’t an active emotion. It’s not something you do. It’s something that happens to you. It’s 100 percent passive. It’s a tornado that rips your house from the ground, right off its foundation, twisting it around and around, before dropping it haphazardly back down to the earth. Sure, you’re still in the same place, but everything has been destroyed. The windows face the wrong way. The china has fallen from the cabinets and smashed to the floor. The furniture is upside down. And you’re standing in the middle of it all, wondering what happened. Wondering how you’re ever going to put it all back together again.

  And now she wants me to be an active part of that? She wants me to open the doors and the windows, too, and welcome the tornado inside with open arms?

  I want to say all of this. The words are pounding at my lips. But I don’t want to stay here another second. I don’t want to give her any excuse to prolong this session.

  I reach for the door handle, my hand shaking from the storm brewing inside of me.

  “Ryn,” Dr. Judy says, just as my fingers wrap around the cool brass.

  I take a deep breath and spin around, fighting to keep the emotion from taking over my face. “Yeah?”

  “You have to do something,” she says, her voice full of compassion. Her searching eyes no longer searching. “If you don’t control the grief, it will eventually control you.”

  I nodded vehemently, like this was the best wisdom I’d ever received in my life.

  But really, I was just counting the seconds until I could close the door behind me and lock Rational Ryn on the other side for the next two weeks.

  My feet hover at the threshold, my toes just barely behind the invisible line that marks the inside of this airport from the scary, unknown world beyond. My body is blocking the door from closing again. The cold hits me like a million samurai swords slicing at my skin. The snow swirls around me, biting at my ears, my nose, my lips.

  How could you just leave me?! I shout into the chaotic, meaningless white void of my mind. How could you do that?

  But there is no response. The snow is too loud. Or I’m too small. Either way, my silent words get lost somewhere in the storm.

  I stare into the frenzy of white. I can’t take the pressure. I can’t handle the cold.

  I’m a coward.

  I’m just as weak and pathetic and inept as Dr. Judy thinks I am.

  I’m not cut out for this.

  Lottie should have been the one left behind.

  I’m the one who should have died.

  You got the wrong person!

  You took the wrong person!

  “How long are we gonna stand here?” Xander asks. “ ’Cause I’m kind of freezing my ass off.”

  I wilt, stumbling backward in defeat. The doors close behind me, securing me inside, guarding me from the storm once again.

  I collapse into one of the black leather seats in the vestibule and try to breathe. But the snow is still blocking my lungs. It’s frozen inside of me. Keeping the chill in and the air out. I close my eyes tight.

  Xander sits beside me. A moment later I feel his hand on my back. His touch sends warm tingles down my spine. I don’t want him to move. And yet he has to.

  I can’t feel this warm when it’s that cold outside.

  It’s not fair. It’s not allowed.

  Nothing can feel good if she’s still gone. How would that ever make sense?

  “Is this . . . ?” Xander begins tentatively, as if he’s not sure how to talk to someone like me. A crazy person who runs into snowstorms. Or at least tries to. “Does this have something to do with the unread text message on your phone?”

  I jump up, sending Xander’s hand flying into the back of the chair with a smack.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looks instantly regretful of the question. “Nothing. I just . . . I saw it when I texted you from your phone. It was from someone named Lottie. And then you used that name at the restaurant before you switched to . . .” He lets that hang. “And then when you were yelling at me a minute ago and I just thought . . . I don’t know.”

  I can feel Irrational Ryn whipping herself into a frenzy. Only to be rivaled by the frenzy still banging against the glass door outside. I know once she’s out, she’ll be hard to put back in.

  But I’m finding it hard to care anymore.

  I suddenly want to let her out. I want to set her free. I’m tired of keeping her in chains.

  “You just thought that because your parents are super famous, international bestselling shrinks that you can psychoanalyze everyone you meet?”

  Xander falls very quiet. I notice his jaw clench. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I open my mouth again, the bitter, angry words burning the tip of my tongue. But just then, door 612 slides open and a gust of snow and wind comes barreling through the vestibule, stinging my eyes. Two people dressed as giant red marshmallows stomp inside, shaking snow off their massive jackets and boots. One of them tips back the hood of their coat and yells out, “Bingo!”

  I instantly recognize him as Jimmy from the restaurant. The other marshmallow unmasks herself. “No way. You are so not winning this.”

  It’s Siri.

  “Couple on the Verge of a Breakup,” Jimmy announces, pointing directly at us, as if we’re wax statues in a museum.

  “You don’t even know what they were saying!” Siri argues.

  “I didn’t have to. I could see their body language through the glass. Just look at them.”

  “We’re not on the verge of a breakup,” Xander mutters, still refusing to look at me.

  I stare incredulously at him. That’s the part he chose to refute? “We’re not a couple,” I correct.

  “Could have fooled me,” Siri mumbles.

  “Whose side are you on?” I ask so sharply, it causes both of us to startle.

  It isn’t until that very moment—seeing my volatility reflected in Siri’s reaction—that I realize how close I am to the edge. How easy it was to just uncork the bottle and let Irrational Ryn fly free. How good it felt in the moment.

  But it’s the next moment that’s the problem. It’s this moment. When I feel rash and stupid and out of control.

  When I vow to rein it all back in and bury it in the ground, where it belongs.

  “You guys are just ruining bingo for everyone today, aren’t you?” Siri says.

  Siri and Jimmy walk farther into the vestibule, continuing to stomp snow from their boots. Siri unzips her jacket. I watch her in fascination. She was out there. In the storm. Like it was nothing. Like she was just taking a stroll in the park.

  “You went outside?” I ask, focusing on keeping my voice soft and controlled.

  Siri lets out a groan. “Yeah. We thought we’d try to get out, but my car is buried under an avalanche, and I just found out from Twitter that they’ve closed Peña.”

  “What’s Peña?” I ask.

  “It’s the only roa
d that goes to the airport,” Jimmy informs me somberly.

  “What does that mean?”

  Siri looks at me like I’m extremely dense. “It means no one is getting in or out of this place tonight.”

  Assembling the Troops

  The entire Denver International Airport shrinks to the size of an elevator. And we’re all crammed inside. And the solid steel doors slam shut. And the cord breaks.

  And we’re falling. We’re all falling. Plummeting to our deaths.

  I scramble for my phone, swipe it on with shaky fingers.

  One unread message.

  But it doesn’t help. Not this time. Not now. I need more. I need to get out of here. I need . . .

  What happens when you get trapped in an airport during a snowstorm?

  Where does everyone sleep?

  If you’re stuck outside in a blizzard, how long will you survive?

  What are the signs of hypothermia?

  How do automatic doors work?

  What causes a dashboard clock to stop?

  The questions are queuing up in my mind like angry passengers waiting at the customer service desk. They shove each other out of the way, vying for first position. My fingers fly fast over the keys. I’m making so many mistakes, some of the words in my search bar look more like Vulcan than English. But somehow Google manages to translate. Because Google is amazing. And because, obviously, Google speaks Vulcan.

  Type question. Hit Search. Click Result. Scan text.

  Type question. Hit Search. Click Result. Scan text.

  Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  I’m barely even reading the search results. I’m just trying to answer a single question before ten more show up. Bits and pieces of random information drift aimlessly around in my head like planets kicked out of orbit.

  Blankets and water . . .

  Two days without shelter . . .

  Symptoms include: shivering, confusion, irritability . . .

  Sensors triggered by weight . . .

  The words might make sense if I stopped long enough to string them together, but sense is not my objective here. Just knowing the answers are out there, just knowing the questions aren’t large, gaping unknowns floating around the universe like black holes, is enough.

  Seven text messages arrive from my mom during the flurry of question and answer.