The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  “Are you sure?” Xander asks. There’s such tenderness in his voice, such compassion in his eyes as they meet mine, for a split second, I almost do feel sure. I can almost make myself believe that the water will be warm.

  “Okay, here comes the tough one.” He exhales dramatically. “What is your favorite Doctor Who episode?”

  After a second of disbelief I burst out laughing. I just can’t help it. All of that buildup, all of that tension coiled in my legs and arms and throat. I was ready to jump. I was ready to leap off that board and hit the water hard.

  “This is not a laughing matter,” Xander scolds. “This is a very serious question with very serious repercussions. Your answer could affect the future of our relationship.”

  “You’re right,” I say, curbing my amusement. “You’re absolutely right. This is a very serious question, and I have a feeling you’re not going to like my answer.”

  He steels himself, bracing against the armrests of his chair. “I knew it. You’re going to say ‘Midnight.’ You’re a David Tennant fan, aren’t you? All girls are. It’s the hair, isn’t it? Damn him and his perfect hair!”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head somberly. “I’m afraid my answer is even worse.”

  Xander’s eyes widen. “What could possibly be worse than admitting your favorite Doctor Who episode is ‘Midnight’?”

  I slouch down in my chair, attempting to make myself as tiny as possible. “Admitting that you actually hate Doctor Who.”

  Xander shoots out of his chair like a rocket and tries to flip the table, only to discover that it’s way too heavy. So he grunts, gathers up the cards, and throws them over his head. They rain down around us like giant confetti.

  “What are you trying to do to me, woman?” he asks, his voice high and squeaky.

  “Honesty was one of the rules, wasn’t it?”

  “But . . . ,” he begins, words failing him. “How can . . .” He tries again. “You . . . That’s . . . I . . .” He collapses into his chair, tossing his arms up in frustration. “But the phone case!”

  My skin turns to ice.

  Of course, that’s where this question would eventually go. How could I forget? How could I not think that far ahead? All questions eventually lead back to Lottie. Nothing is safe. Because everything about my stupid, pointless life is somehow connected to her brains splattered across a clock stuck at 10:05 a.m. It’s six degrees of separation to a dead girl.

  “Lottie gave me the phone case,” I whisper, bowing my head. It’s the simplest phrase in the world and yet it connects everything. But I can’t bring myself to look at him while I say it. While I say her name aloud. “It was her favorite show.”

  I pray that’s enough. I pray that my use of the past tense will be my free pass. My wild card that can be played in place of the real thing.

  Xander doesn’t say anything for what feels like a lifetime. I brave a glance at him. His head is tilted at a curious angle. His eyes are dark, prying excavators, drilling for precious oil.

  He’s going to ask. He’s going to do it.

  Figure it out, Xander! I want to scream.

  Your parents are world renowned psychologists, for God’s sake! Figure. It. Out.

  “Was her favorite show?”

  My body slams into the water. It’s not an elegant dive. My hands don’t cleanly slice through the surface, clearing the way for a safe, painless entry. Everything hits at once. My face. My belly. My chest. My legs. Even the tops of my feet. It stings. It burns. It cuts. It bleeds.

  It’s ice-cold fire.

  Who knew water could be so unforgiving?

  It’s liquid, for crying out loud!

  How can it hurt this badly?

  The tears pool up, I shove them back. I close my eyes tight. I lock them in.

  Keep it together, I tell myself. It’s just a stupid game.

  “I think you have to win another hand to ask that,” I say so quietly, I’m certain he couldn’t possibly hear. Unless he was one of the X-Men.

  But he did hear. Because the next thing he says is like colliding with that wall of freezing water all over again.

  “I think maybe you should just answer it.”

  And beyond all reason, beyond all sense, beyond all meticulously welded armor, the voice of someone who’s been shoved under for far too long rises to the surface. It’s me. Or some long-ago buried version of me. A version I barely recognize anymore.

  “I think maybe you’re right.”

  The call came at 10:52 a.m. It was my cell phone that rang. Lottie hadn’t listed her mother or father or any family member as the In Case of Emergency contact in her phone. She had listed me. I hadn’t even known until the case of emergency presented itself.

  I was bent over the toilet, regurgitating the water I’d foolishly tried to keep down, cursing the cook at Pop’s Hot Dogs for the millionth time for serving questionable meat, and vowing to become a vegetarian like Lottie.

  At first I didn’t hear the phone over my retching. By the time I flushed, it was on the last ring. I saw Lottie’s name on the caller ID and tried to answer, but it had already gone to voice mail. I called her right back.

  “Hello?” came an unfamiliar male voice.

  My first thought was that I had dialed the wrong number. But then my puked up, malnutritioned brain caught up, and I remembered that I had dialed it straight from the call history. My second thought was that it was a boy Lottie had met at the mall.

  I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It had been less than an hour since she’d left my house after failing to convince me to come with her. There was no way she could have driven to the mall and parked and met a boy in less than an hour.

  Lottie was good but she wasn’t that good.

  “Hello,” I said uneasily.

  “Are you the emergency contact for Charlotte Valentine?”

  The blood congealed in my veins. I froze with my phone pressed against my ear. “I . . .” But I couldn’t get anything out.

  Was this some kind of joke?

  Was Lottie playing one of her pranks on me?

  Did she ask some random guy at a mall kiosk to call me and pretend something bad had happened?

  “We found your name listed as the In Case of Emergency contact in her phone,” the person on the other end of the call said. It was no longer a friendly male voice. It was now Darth Vader’s voice. Lex Luthor’s voice. Lord Voldemort and Hannibal Lecter and Gollum. All rolled into one.

  I tried for words again, but I barely even managed syllables.

  “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” the voice of doom continued.

  “What?!” I blurted out. I didn’t even have to try. The sound just flew out of my mouth.

  There was a slight hesitation on the line. Lord Voldemort was stalling. Drawing out my agony like the evil bastard that he is. “I’m afraid Charlotte has been in an accident. I’m calling from St. Vincent’s Hospital. Her body was brought in a few minutes ago.”

  The floor gave out beneath me. I started to fall. Down, down, down. Never hitting the bottom.

  Her body.

  Not her.

  “No,” I argued vehemently. “Lottie isn’t at the hospital. Lottie is at the mall. She went to the mall. She’s at the mall.”

  I kept repeating it in my mind, knowing beyond all doubt that the repetition would make it true. That it had to make it true.

  There was no other option. There was no parallel universe in all of the multiverse where Lottie wasn’t at the mall. Laughing and flirting and sparkling.

  “I’m sorry,” Lord Voldemort said.

  But he was wrong. He was evil. He was trying to trick me. Because that’s what villains do.

  They lie.

  And I was going to prove him wrong. I had to prove him wrong.

  I started running. I ran, not because the mall was less than a mile from my house, and not because I didn’t have access to a car, but because it was all I could do. It was all my body would allow me t
o do.

  Run.

  The man’s voice was still on the line, echoing like a psychotic parrot, “Hello? Hello? Hello?” He eventually gave up and disconnected.

  I kept running.

  She was at the mall. He was mistaken. I would show him he was wrong.

  It was cold outside. I was barefoot and dressed in flimsy pajama bottoms and a tank top. No bra. But I felt the chill only on the inside. The ice-cold liquid panic that pumped through my veins, that froze my heart and turned my body to stone.

  My stomach threatened to heave the entire way, but miraculously I managed to keep the vomit at bay.

  I never actually made it to the mall. I stopped when I saw the intersection that would forever haunt my dreams, awake and asleep. The intersection that would forever divide my existence into two jagged, unequal parts:

  Life With Lottie/Life Without Lottie.

  I was breathless and agitated and soaked in sweat. My cold, wet tank top was clinging to my body.

  A fire truck and three police cars were parked in the middle of the road, their lights whirling and spinning and flashing like a disco. Someone had blocked off the two cross streets with cones. People had already started to gather around the perimeter.

  In the center of it all was Lottie’s black Beemer.

  The car was so demolished, it was hardly recognizable. The entire left side was smashed all the way to the center console. There was no more driver’s side door. Just a massive gaping hole where it used to be.

  What could have possibly done this?

  A giant?

  A transformer?

  An asteroid?

  I got my answer when my gaze drifted a few feet away. The second car—a pickup truck—had spun away from the collision before coming to rest in the middle of the far lane. The hood had been crushed.

  My heart pounded wildly in my chest as I searched the damage for Lottie. I ran a few steps closer, feeling a stabbing pain as something sharp—probably shattered glass—wedged into my bare foot.

  The car was empty.

  My hopes surged.

  She got out. She’s okay. Maybe she walked the rest of the way to the mall.

  Then I remembered what Lord Voldemort had said, and my legs practically gave out.

  “I’m calling from St. Vincent’s Hospital. Her body was brought in a few minutes ago.”

  I stepped even closer to the vehicle, close enough that I could see the inside. Close enough that I could make out the drops of blood and shreds of flesh and fragments of brain splattered across the steering wheel and broken dashboard.

  Lottie’s brain. Lottie’s beautiful, vibrant, full-of-life brain. In pieces.

  My stomach heaved again, and this time I couldn’t hold it back. I vomited air and whatever was left in my stomach.

  The clock on the dashboard flashed tauntingly.

  A time stamp marking the exact moment the universe decided to give up on me.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  And all I could think was,

  I’m too late.

  I’m too late.

  I’m too late.

  When I stop talking, Xander is quiet for a long time. I haven’t been able to look at him since I started. I do now. His eyes are unfocused and misty. His mouth is slightly ajar. He wets his lips, like he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.

  Because what do you say to that?

  There’s nothing.

  People try. They’ve tried for the past year to tell me how sorry they are. To insist that they’re here for me. That I can talk to them. But do any of them mean it? Do any of them really want to know that I stood barefoot in the street and watched my best friend’s brain fragments drip off a dashboard?

  Of course they don’t.

  That’s why I’ve never told that story. Ever. Until right now.

  Thousands of dollars in therapy bills, countless parenting books about grief, a year of tapping answerable questions into my phone, and here I am, telling the whole story for the first time to a stranger I met only eight hours ago.

  I’m sure Xander is regretting his little poker game of truth right about now.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “You probably didn’t really want to know all that.”

  “What?” Xander startles like he forgot I was even there. Then, after he collects himself, he says hastily, “No! I did want to know. I’m glad you told me.”

  I look away. “No, you’re not.”

  Xander reaches across the table and grabs my hand, stroking his fingers across mine. They’re warm. So warm. How can fingers be that warm when they’re so far from the heart?

  “He was drunk, wasn’t he?”

  I blink and pull my hand away. “Yeah. He had a blood alcohol level of point-two-five. He ran the red and T-boned her car. Then he walked away without a scratch. That’s how much justice there is in the world.”

  Xander casts his eyes downward to the table. I’ve made him uncomfortable. This is why you don’t tell people things. This is why you don’t share. Because they turn away from you. Because they—

  “When was this?”

  I swallow. “New Year’s Day. Last year.”

  I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. You don’t need to be a prodigy like Troy to do this math. “That’s . . . ,” he begins to say but loses the courage to finish.

  “Yes,” I whisper. “At 10:05 a.m. tomorrow morning, she’ll have been gone an entire year.”

  “And that’s why you want to get home so badly?”

  “I don’t do well around people.” I let out an empty bark of a laugh. “I guess you’ve seen that firsthand.”

  “And the text message? It was from her?”

  “I can’t bring myself to read it.”

  He nods, like he gets it. Does he get it? Or is he just nodding the way I nodded when he talked about his girlfriend cheating on him?

  “My therapist thinks I’m not grieving her the right way.”

  Xander snorts. “Your therapist actually said that?”

  I shake my head. “She implied it.”

  “If I learned anything from having shrink parents, it’s that there’s no wrong way to grieve.”

  I shrug. “Maybe not. But there’s a better way and I’m not doing it.”

  Silence settles between us once again, and I start to get antsy. I don’t like the way Xander is looking at me. Like I’m a lost item that needs to be claimed.

  I scoot out of my seat and kneel down beneath the table to gather the cards Xander tossed in his fit of madness.

  “Ryn,” I hear him say, and then suddenly he’s on the floor with me. Crouched across from me. The table casts a shadow over his dark, chiseled face.

  He reaches out and grabs my hand, loosens my grip, removes the playing cards clutched between my sweaty fingers. “You don’t have to do that,” he whispers.

  And there’s that look again. I have to get away from that look. I can’t be that girl to him. I can’t be that girl to anyone. After everything Dr. Judy preached to me about honesty and grieving and letting go of control, I would have thought that telling Xander would have made me feel better somehow. Lightened my load. The truth shall set you free. Isn’t that how it goes?

  But now all I feel is naked and exposed. An unarmed soldier running through enemy territory with no backup and no escape route.

  The truth doesn’t set you free. The truth strips you of your armor and leaves you to die alone.

  Alone.

  Lottie was all alone.

  If I had just gone to the mall, if I had just sucked it up and gotten in that car with her, she wouldn’t have had to die alone.

  Or who knows? Maybe if I had gone with her, the timeline would have been different. I would have taken time to get dressed, washed my face, brushed the vomit stench from my teeth. Maybe she wouldn’t have been in that very intersection at that very moment. Maybe she would have lived.

  Either way, we both would have been
dead or alive together.

  Either way, it would have been better than this.

  “There you guys are!” comes a shriek. Xander and I both startle and peer out from under the table. Siri is stumbling toward us in a zigzag pattern. “What the fuck are you guys doing under there?” She holds her head like it’s about to explode. “You know what? I don’t even want to know. You can keep your crazy sex stuff to yourself.”

  Xander gives me a weak smile and crawls out from under the table. He stands and offers his hand, pulling me up.

  “We were just taking a little break from all the commotion,” Xander explains.

  “Well, break’s over!” Siri declares. “We’re five minutes from midnight, and I need to use you two as a buffer. Marcus just showed up, and he’s been trying to get me alone all night.”

  “Who’s Marcus?” Xander asks.

  Siri glares at me. “Mopey Girl, fill in your boyfriend. I don’t have time for this shit.”

  I sigh. “He’s not my—”

  “Less chat. More moving!” Siri attempts to snap her fingers but can’t quite manage to line them up right.

  Xander looks to me, silently asking if I’m ready to return to the party. I give him a small nod, and we follow behind Siri as she staggers to the elevator. Although I’m terrified about showing my face in that room again, I’m secretly relieved that we don’t have to play Xander’s game anymore.

  Because I’m pretty certain I just lost.

  The Return of Lottie

  When we get back to the party, Mylee is ranting drunkenly to the blow-up doll on the bed. Someone has replaced the doll’s sunglasses with the snorkel mask Siri was wearing earlier.

  “I just thought he loved me, you know?” Mylee slurs. The doll stares blankly back. “He told me he loved me. And dumb-ass me, I believed him. Because I believe people when they tell me things. I’m trusting like that. I have a big heart!”

  “That girl is kind of wacko,” Xander whispers to me as we squeeze into an empty space near the ravaged beverage table. There’s absolutely nothing left to drink besides the red goo at the bottom of a jar of maraschino cherries.