The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  “No offense,” he says with a humorless laugh, “but I don’t think you can lecture me about the best way of dealing with things.”

  My eyes narrow. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know what it means,” he replies dryly.

  I stare down at the abandoned book on the ground. The solution to his problem. Cast aside. The thought makes me angry. And bold.

  “Do you realize how immature you’re being?” I point to the book. “You have an out! And you won’t even take it! All to spite your parents?”

  I watch his expression shift from tense to defensive. “It’s really none of your business.”

  He’s right. It’s not my business, and yet my frustration is still piloting me. “Do you know what I would give to be able to reverse what happened to me? Anything! Everything! But I can’t. I will never be able to undo Lottie’s death. And here you are with the solution to your problem on a silver platter, and you’re choosing to ignore it.”

  “I told you,” he snaps. “It’s not just about the book.”

  “No, it’s about your parents. And how you refuse to talk to them, so instead you’re using your expulsion to get back at them. Like a coward.”

  That last part does it. Xander jumps to his feet and stares at me, his breathing ragged, his face flushed. “You’re calling me a coward? You won’t even read a stupid text message.”

  My breath catches in my throat. I glance down at my phone still clutched in my hand, still on. I press the home button, my gaze immediately zeroing in on the messaging app. On the little red circle that’s hovered above it for the past year.

  One unread message.

  “It’s not the same thing,” I say, my voice low, livid.

  “It’s a text message!” Xander cries. “That’s all it is. It’s not a bomb. It’s not a loaded gun. It’s just a text message.”

  And then, before I can react, he’s reaching out, ripping the phone right out of my hand.

  “Give that back,” I warn, taking a step toward him. But he takes a step away.

  “What are you so afraid of? What it says? Or what it doesn’t say?”

  “You don’t understand,” I fire back, my voice dangerously close to cracking. “You’ll never be able to understand. Your life—your problems—is a cakewalk compared to mine.”

  “Just read the message, Ryn. Stop avoiding your feelings and read the damn message! Look, it’s easy.” His finger plunges toward the screen, and it may as well be a knife plunging into my heart.

  “Nooooooo!” I scream, causing a few sleeping passengers around us to stir.

  But it’s too late.

  He’s done it. He’s clicked it. He’s reading it. It’s read. It will never be unread again.

  After a few moments of stunned silence, I lunge for the device in his hands. He’s so startled by my sudden attack, he takes a step back. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly, as though coming out of a trance. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what—”

  My hand brushes against the surface of the phone as I attempt to tear it from his grasp, but I don’t have a firm grip, and it drops to the floor. The case pops off and clatters to the side.

  I dive for the phone and pick it up, staring at the screen.

  My eyes scour the list of messages, my heart pounding harder with each name that I read.

  Mom

  Dad

  Xander

  Cheap-O Airlines

  Where’s Lottie’s name? Where’s Lottie’s message?

  All the while, Xander keeps repeating his pitiful apology over and over. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  But I can barely hear him. My breathing grows shallow. I start to hyperventilate. My heart is racing now. My throat stings. My eyes burn.

  “You deleted it,” I croak.

  “No, I didn’t.” Xander leans toward me, his brows pinched in concern. “I just read it. I swear I didn’t . . .”

  “It gone!” I cry. “You deleted it!”

  “It must have gotten deleted when you reached for it. Ryn, I swear I wouldn’t—”

  “It was all I had left of her and now it’s gone forever!”

  I don’t even feel the tears in my eyes until they’re rolling down my cheeks like thick, black ink.

  I don’t even realize I’m crying for the first time in nearly a year, until I’m sobbing.

  “There must be a way to get it back.” Xander tries to take a step toward me, but I jump away.

  “Don’t come near me. Don’t ever come near me again.” The fat tears swallow my words. The sobs shudder my body. If only Dr. Judy could see me now. Would she be proud? Or would she be sorely disappointed?

  Something tells me it’s the latter.

  “Ryn,” he says, his voice barely audible. “I’m really sorry. I—”

  “Are you happy now?!” I bellow, waking up every single passenger in this airport. “She’s gone forever. And it’s all your fault!”

  Xander shakes his head, his vibrant blue eyes clouded by something. Moisture? Regret? Pity? “Ryn. It’s no one’s fault. She—”

  “Shut up!” I cry. The tears are coming faster now. A year’s worth of anguish streaming down my face. “Now I’ll never know what she said to me. I’ll never know.”

  I slide down the wall, collapsing around the phone, cradling it to my chest. I’m weeping and blubbering like a child as I repeat the words over and over. “I’ll never know. I’ll never know.”

  Xander kneels in front of me, careful to keep his distance. His face mirrors my pain.

  “Ryn,” he tries. “I—”

  “Just go,” I tell him. “Just leave me alone.”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. I’m not going to leave you. Not like this.”

  I swat at my damp cheeks, trying in vain to brush away the tears, but they’re coming faster than I can keep up. “Fine,” I huff, scrambling back to my feet. I grab my backpack and toss one strap over my shoulder. “Then I’ll go.”

  The Comfort of Strangers

  The A terminal is already awake. People are milling around in search of food and information about the storm.

  I run back to the shopping rotunda and up the escalator to the small deserted balcony I found yesterday, but it’s completely overrun.

  So I keep going.

  I cross the bridge over the snowed-in runway, bypassing every moving walkway I encounter. That was how I got into this mess. By taking mechanical sidewalks. By cheating. By trying to move faster than one is supposed to move.

  That’s how I crashed into Xander and this whole nightmare began.

  Along the way, through my haze of snot and tears, I search my phone. I search the whole damn Internet for a solution.

  How do you recover a deleted text message?

  The answer is, you can’t. Not with messages that old.

  They’re gone forever.

  Just like Lottie.

  Just like her last words to me.

  The interfaith chapel in the concourse building is empty and dark when I burst in. I collapse into a seat in the back row and sob. I haven’t cried this hard since I was ten years old and I broke my wrist when Lottie decided she wanted to teach me how to Rollerblade but forgot to teach me how to stop.

  The chapel is small but homey. Three rows of upholstered chairs face the front of the room. Books of various faiths are spread out across a single nondenominational altar.

  I’m grateful to find a place where I can finally be alone.

  I bow my head and weep into my hands, thinking about everything I’ve lost in the past year. Everything I’ve lost in the past twenty-four hours. I think about every piece of evidence I’ve collected that proves life isn’t fair. That bad things happen to good people. That the world is a storm that will do anything to suck you in.

  Surround you.

  Suffocate you.

  Until you can’t even remember what calm feels like.

  Until chaos feels normal.

  “Are
you okay?” a female voice asks, startling me out of my thoughts and tears.

  I could have sworn I was alone in here, but when I lift my head, I see someone—a woman—sitting in the front row. Her back is to me but she looks years older than me. She must have come in while I was crying.

  I try to get a look at her face, but her entire body is cast in a strange, eerie shadow. I can’t figure out what light source is causing it though. This is a windowless room.

  I sniffle and rub my finger under my nose. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

  The figure remains motionless, facing forward, but she repeats the question. “Are you okay?” Her voice is soft yet strangely familiar. An echo of something so close I can touch it. It wraps a blanket of warmth around me.

  I consider lying. Why would I tell a perfect stranger the truth when I’ve barely admitted it to myself?

  Then it hits me that I’ve already done that.

  I’ve already told Xander things that I haven’t told anyone.

  “My best friend died,” I say woodenly, and I’m awed by how freeing it feels to say that aloud again. “One year ago today. And no, I’m not okay.”

  When the woman doesn’t respond, or even turn around, I keep going. Because it feels good. Because it feels right.

  Because it’s time.

  “And I thought I could hang on to her forever. I thought if I could just keep one tiny piece of her alive, then everything would be fine. She would never really be gone. But now that piece is gone too, and I feel so alone. I feel more alone right now than the day she died. I thought if I could just control the rest of the world, then this one uncontrollable part of it wouldn’t matter. Or it wouldn’t hurt. But it turns out, I was wrong. Because it hurts like hell.”

  The tempest of tears is back, dripping down my cheeks like melted snow on a window.

  I wait for the silhouetted woman to react the way everyone reacts. With shock. With sorrow. With vows of empty sympathy.

  But she doesn’t. Instead, in a calm, even tone, she says, “I lost someone too. A long time ago. Someone really close to me. Someone who protected me. Who looked out for me even more than I looked out for myself.”

  Something about her words hits me deep in my core. Rattles around in my brain. Drifts over my skin, leaving behind a wake of tiny goose bumps.

  “Do you miss them?” I ask, my throat thick with fire.

  “Every single day.”

  “Does that ever go away?”

  She lets out a sigh. “No.”

  I suddenly have this vivid memory of sitting in Lottie’s tree house the morning after my birthday party, drawing the landscape I saw outside the window. Exactly as I saw it. Exactly as it was.

  “You’re lucky,” Lottie said, sitting next to me and staring out that same window. “That the world looks real to you.”

  But it doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t look real. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a giant cosmic joke, and I’m the punch line.

  “The world just looks messier without her,” I whisper so softly, I don’t even think it’s audible. I’m not even completely sure I said it aloud.

  But I must have. Because a few seconds later, the woman responds. “Grief changes the way you see things forever. Because it changes you forever.”

  More tears well up in my eyes. Will they ever stop now that they’ve started? I bury my head in my lap and cry for the loss of my friend. For the loss of my real world. For the loss of everything I thought I could hold on to.

  “But I think that’s okay,” the woman says. “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply in a shattered voice. “I don’t know if I know anything anymore.”

  “You probably know more than you think you do,” she offers kindly.

  I lift my head and wipe at my cheeks. “I know that this has been the worst year of my life.”

  “But the New Year is only a few hours old,” she reminds me. “Maybe it will be better.”

  “Maybe,” I admit.

  We sit in silence for a long time, listening to the melody of the canned sound track piping in over the speaker system. Some generic meditation music. It doesn’t make me feel better, but it doesn’t agitate me either. It just is.

  “Well,” the woman says with a note of finality. “I should probably go. My flight is leaving soon.”

  She stands, and I crane my neck to try to get a look at her face, but the strange shadow seems to follow her through the chapel.

  Where is it coming from?

  Then, just as she opens the door, just before she steps through, a sliver of sunlight breaks through the darkness. Cuts through the storm like an omen of things to come. A sign that everything gets better. That tempests don’t last forever. It casts a single beam of light across the woman’s back and left shoulder, illuminating the familiar dark blue fabric of a flight attendant uniform.

  And a single lock of shimmering, golden red hair.

  She pauses in front of the doorway, keeping her back to me as she says, “Wanna hear something crazy?”

  A shiver travels through my entire body. My heart pounds in my ears. My fingers twitch restlessly. My legs ache.

  “Always,” I whisper aloud.

  I can hear my voice reverberating back at me a million times. An echo in eternity. My entire life—our entire friendship—mirrored in that one single word.

  Always.

  “It’s almost 10:05 a.m.,” the woman says. And then she turns to leave.

  “Wait!” I call out. Because I don’t want her to go. Because she feels like so much more than a stranger. She feels like someone I might have known. Maybe someone I will always know.

  She stops in the doorway. One foot in and one foot out. A piece of her gone and a piece of her still here.

  “This is the last time we’ll ever talk, isn’t it?” I ask.

  There’s silence on the other side of the room, and for a minute I think she’s not going to answer. That she’s just going to leave. I close my eyes and squeeze them tight, steeling myself against the inevitable.

  Then, in the faintest of whispers, she says, “Yes, it is.”

  Moisture forms behind my closed eyelids. But it’s a different kind of crying now. There are no choked sobs. No desperate need to breathe. No agony.

  It’s just quiet sadness.

  Sadness that I’ll carry around for the rest of my life.

  Sadness that I’ll eventually learn to live with.

  Sadness that will become a part of me. Shape me. Make me stronger.

  Because if I can live through this, I can live through anything.

  “But that’s okay?” I ask.

  There’s a smile in her voice as she replies. “I think that’s okay.”

  When I open my eyes, the woman is gone, and I’m alone again. I reach for my phone and watch the clock tick over to 10:05 a.m.

  For the past year I have been standing still. Too afraid to move forward. Too afraid it would mean leaving my best friend behind.

  There is still so much that I fear.

  Living another day without her.

  Going home and forcing my mother to talk to me like a real person.

  Walking into Dr. Judy’s office and finally telling her the whole truth.

  Basically, everything that comes after this moment.

  But I get up. I move. I walk to the door of the chapel. I open it. I step through to the other side.

  Because the truth is, I’ve already left Lottie behind. Everything I’ve done in the past year, I’ve done without her. Everything I’ve done in the past twenty-one hours, I’ve done on my own.

  I’ve always been Lottie’s best friend. Lottie’s sidekick. Lottie’s (reluctant) partner in crime. Squishy, undercooked peas to Lottie’s scrumptious, perfectly crisp carrots.

  That’s been my identity since the day we met.

  But what’s my identity now? It’s a question that’s been banging on the door of my subconscious for an entire year. And yet I still
can’t answer it.

  Or perhaps I’ve just been too terrified to answer it.

  Terrified that an answer might actually exist. That the answer might actually make sense. That I might actually be someone without her.

  I know where to go now. I know what I need to do. And that gives me the strength to move faster. That gives me the courage to run.

  I pass Xander along the way. He’s coming from the walkway to the A terminal. He’s clearly been looking for me.

  “Ryn,” he tries to say as I sail past. “I’m sorry about—”

  “No!” I shout over my shoulder. “No more apologizing. From either of us.”

  I can hear his footsteps behind me. “What are you doing?” he calls out.

  I don’t answer. I don’t stop. I turn left and head straight for door 612. I barely pause long enough for it to sense my presence and open.

  I run through it.

  Into the quiet, empty street.

  Into the beautiful white chaos.

  Into the storm.

  The fierce wind whips against my face. The violent snow stings my eyes until the world fades and all I can see is white.

  Contrary to what some people think, white isn’t the absence of color. It’s all colors. It’s all things. It’s every possibility blended into one blinding light.

  I may have stood still for too long. I may have refused to move forward and grieve the death of my best friend. But Lottie wasn’t perfect either. She moved too fast. She was always racing to the next thing, trying to be the next person, reinventing herself over and over again.

  All this time, I thought it was because she was so full of life, she simply couldn’t contain it into one existence. All this time, I thought it was because she was fearless.

  That’s what she wanted me to believe.

  That’s what I did believe for far too long.

  But it was an illusion.

  Lottie wasn’t fearless. She wasn’t running to the next thing. She was running from the things that hurt her. The things that frightened her. She moved on so she wouldn’t have to face the demons that chased her.