Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  I laughed—a defenseless, caught-off-guard sort of laughter.

  Something ignited inside her. She laughed as well. A nervous smile splintered across her face.

  And then it faded.

  “Do you think he hates me?” she asked.

  “What? No! Of course not. He’s stuck around in Carbondale for two years because of you. He was stalking you, for crying out loud! Which is weird, okay, but, I mean…you don’t stalk people you hate. If anything, I’d say he’s obsessed with you. You’re his family. His only family.”

  For some reason, this didn’t seem to make Wynonna feel any better. In fact, she looked worse. She folded her arms over her stomach and leaned forward like she was ill.

  “I hate myself,” she said.

  I stared at her, silently.

  “Not just now,” she continued. “I’ve always hated myself. Deep down. It’s like the core of who I am. This great, big, rotten, fucking core.”

  “How can you say that?” I said—like the world’s biggest hypocrite. I was obviously the King of Hating Myself.

  Or…I had been.

  Now that I thought about it, everything that had happened recently was making it more and more difficult to hate myself. There was something about caring for someone—genuinely caring for them—that made you forget yourself. That made you realize you were part of something bigger. That you were important. That you were loved.

  I realized that now. I was loved. By my family. By my friends.

  “You wouldn’t get it,” said Wynonna. “You’re perfect. You care about everyone, and everyone cares about you. But me? I can’t even visit my mom’s grave because it hurts too much. I can’t even look my dad in the eyes. Goddamn, Ezra, I can’t even hold a polite conversation with Carol! I’m not a human being. I’m a fucking train wreck.”

  “You think I’m perfect?”

  “Dude. I know you’re perfect. You’re like one of the Precious Moments figurines. You’re so perfect, it’s disgusting, and it makes me want to hate you, but I can’t because you’re perfect.”

  “I’m not perfect,” I said. “You know I’m not perfect. Remember when I spent a month meeting with your dad behind your back, and you almost killed me?”

  “Because you were trying to help me!” Wynonna exclaimed. Lines of moisture brimmed in her eyes. “This is who we are, Ezra: You’re the person who helps, and I’m the person who needs…who needs…”

  She mouthed the word “help,” but it came out as a choking sob.

  “It’s like I’m drowning,” she said. “I’m constantly drowning, and there’s nothing to hold on to. The water’s either at my neck, or it’s coming down my throat, and it’s all I can do just to stay afloat. I’m kicking my arms and legs so hard—so hard—just trying not to die. And I’m so tired. And I think: Maybe dying would be easier than this. Anything has to be easier than going on like this, because I can’t do it, I just can’t do it anymore.”

  Finally, she looked at me.

  “Have you ever felt like that?” she asked.

  More than she could ever know.

  More than I could ever tell her.

  “You know what you need?” I said. I removed my phone from my pocket. “You need some Sufjan.”

  “Soo-fawn,” Wynonna repeated, skeptically. She blinked the last of her tears away. “What the hell is a soo-fawn?”

  “Sufjan Stevens. He’s the greatest musician of our time.”

  Wynonna rolled her eyes. “Oh. Awesome.”

  “Close your eyes,” I instructed. I unplugged Imogen’s phone from the adapter. Switched it out with mine. Scrolled through the artists, to the S’s, to Sufjan Stevens’s “Chicago.”

  Chicago.

  Goddamn.

  If ever there was a specific song, meant for a specific person, at a specific moment in time, “Chicago” was meant for Wynonna right fucking now.

  I held my thumb over the play button and glanced at Wynonna. Her eyes were still open.

  “CLOSE THEM,” I commanded.

  “Okay, okay, I’m closing them,” said Wynonna. “Jesus.”

  I pressed play.

  A series of chimes dinged, escalating like some sort of celestial elevator.

  The strings came swooping in, strong and swift and heroic.

  A stampede of folksy instruments paraded through the speakers. The thundering beat of new life.

  And then silence—all except for a faint keyboard chant. This chant became the frame for words—Sufjan’s tender words—of love, and mistakes, and re-creation.

  I thought about what this song had always meant to me—about how to free myself. “Wynonna Jones, you are no longer of this world,” I said. “You are giving yourself up to the universe.”

  Wynonna smiled at the thought of this. But she kept her eyes closed, and her comments to herself.

  I spoke of disintegrating, dissolving into your surroundings. About atoms coming undone from each other, and being freed from yourself.

  She was free.

  She was free to float upward. There was nothing to stop her. She was floating up through the roof of the car, through the atmosphere, through the stratosphere, into the stars. Into outer space. Her atoms were intermingling with stardust. She was floating up here because this was where she belonged. Her atoms were weaving like thread into the fabric of the universe. Together, they formed a tapestry—a great, infinite tapestry—of stars and nebulae, of death and darkness, of life and creation. Swirling together. Endless.

  She was the universe.

  And the universe accepted her.

  A tear seeped out of Wynonna’s closed eyelid, tracing a line down her cheek.

  “Whoa, hey,” I said, snapping out of my narration. “Are you okay?”

  Wynonna opened her eyes. Gently wiped the tear away. Nodded. “I am now.”

  She looked at me—a look with so much meaning, it contained worlds. A universe.

  “I was wrong,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “What I said about drowning and having nothing to hold on to.”

  • •

  It may have been the deadest of night, but Chicago was electric, pulsating, alive. Skyscrapers jutted from the earth like the long, glassy teeth of some Lovecraftian deep-sea god monster—slowly swallowing us whole. I forced myself into high alert, navigating the jungle of concrete highway ramps, switching lanes to make quick exits.

  Finally, we were on a course to O’Hare International Airport, following the signs to the Terminal 5 departure area. The quickest way to do this was to drop everyone off. From there, it was up to the three of them to make it to security in time.

  Meanwhile, I would look for parking.

  Yeah, it was an anticlimactic end for my leg of the journey. But what can you do?

  As I pulled into the drop-off, I didn’t even come to a complete stop. Doors were flying open and everyone was hopping out of the car like it was a parachute drop over enemy territory. Holden even attempted to do a roll as he landed, Jack Bauer–style.

  Bad idea. He knocked his head on the concrete as he somersaulted.

  “Shit,” he said, cradling his skull, stumbling through the sliding doors of Terminal 5. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Holden, this is no time to concuss yourself!” said Imogen.

  “Dumbass.” Wynonna chuckled, clearly in love with his dumb ass.

  That was the last thing I heard as the sliding glass doors slid shut behind them.

  I sighed. Sank into my seat. Slowly unraveled. Every muscle in my body was a knot, taut with the tension of a four-hour race against time.

  I glanced at the time display.

  It was 3:14 a.m.

  “Oh f—”

  Flash.

  “—ffffffuck!” I said, out of Wynonna’s mouth.

  I screeched to a halt in my combat-boot tracks.

  Imogen and Holden looked at me, then looked at each other, and then just dropped their shoulders and looked disappointed.

&nbs
p; “Come on, Ezra!” said Holden, exasperated.

  “Do you think I have any control over this?” I snapped.

  Wynonna’s phone vibrated in my butt pocket. I pulled it out and—of course—it was “Ezra.” I answered it.

  “Go, go, go, go, go!” said Wynezra. “I’ll catch up.”

  I glanced decisively between Holden and Imogen. They seemed to know exactly what that look meant—because the very next second, we were running.

  I lifted the phone back to my ear. “Ditch the car,” I told Wynezra.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really-really. Before I change my mind.”

  Wynezra chuckled. “Okeydokey, Shrek.”

  She hung up.

  Airline logos gleamed overhead—Delta, Southwest, United. We dashed past individual baggage check-in areas, each with their own conveyor belt systems and ticket kiosks. Each was roped off from the others. Customers herded themselves in, like sleepy, well-trained cattle.

  Finally, we arrived at security.

  For a quarter past three in the morning, security was impressive. The roped-off line was halfway full. Several security stations were manned, filtering people into one of many X-ray lines. These people were forced to empty their pockets, to remove their laptops from their bags, to take off their belts, and their shoes, and their dignity, and to put all this shit in plastic bins. Once a person’s bins made it through the X-rays and TSA had determined they were a non-terrorist, the poor bastards could have their things back. Everything except their dignity. TSA kept that in jars and fed it to their Demogorgon who lived downstairs in the airport TSA dungeon. These were the facts.

  Holden, Imogen, and I shuffled to staggered halts. Our gazes zigzagged through the lines, scouring them for any sign of Roscoe.

  Heavy footsteps clapped behind us, slowing to a stop. Frantic breathing. I didn’t have to look back to know it was Wynezra.

  “Is he here?” she said. “Where is he?”

  No one said anything. We were too busy scanning the lines for the second, third, fourth times over.

  Not seeing Roscoe.

  He wasn’t here. We missed him.

  Eventually, our intense search petered out. Our gazes drifted uncomfortably. We continued to not say anything. What could we say? The disappointment was too big, and words were too small.

  No.

  It couldn’t end like this.

  I refused to let it end like this.

  “Holden,” I said. “Imogen. I need you two to create a diversion.”

  “A diversion?” said Imogen, not liking the sound of this, not one bit.

  “Wynonna and I are going to sneak through security.”

  Wynezra’s eyes exploded in their sockets.

  I looked directly at her. “If you want to, that is.”

  “You do realize,” she said, calmly, “there’s a nine-out-of-ten chance we’re going to get arrested.”

  “I know.”

  Wynonna stared at me.

  “Whaddaya say, Wynonna Jones. Are you ‘down to clown’?”

  Wynezra’s mouth slithered into a great big devious smile. “I’ve been known to dabble in a little tomfoolery.”

  She turned to Holden.

  “Can we count on you, Jack Bauer?”

  Holden’s eyes lit up with the fires of justice, and tactical espionage, and the explosions of every spy thriller he had ever seen. This was probably the single greatest moment of his life.

  And then his entire face morphed into shock, and I realized he was already in a role because Holden had no concept of timing.

  “TAYLOR SWIFT,” Holden screamed, pointing in the general vicinity of Delta. “OH MY GOD, EVERYBODY, IT’S TAYLOR SWIFT.”

  “What?” Wynezra hissed. “Not right now—shit!”

  Imogen—realizing the starting gun had already been fired—clapped her hands to her cheeks and exclaimed, “TAYLOR SWIFT, OH MY FREAKING GOSH.”

  She bolted in the vague general vicinity of Delta’s baggage check-in, hands in the air, like she was on an actual roller coaster or something. Outside of Shakespeare, she was kind of a terrible actor.

  The line to security reacted, all right. All sense of sleepiness was eviscerated. People leaned over the rope, ducked under the rope, abandoned the rope entirely—all for a better look.

  That’s when a guy the size of an offensive lineman bulldozed Imogen into the floor.

  Wynezra, Holden, and I stared, openmouthed. We could barely process what had just happened. It was like watching a galloping giraffe get taken down by a dinosaur.

  “Chicago PD!” said a hostile male voice. “Hands in the air!”

  I didn’t know when, or where, or how, but suddenly, we were surrounded. Men in blue shirts and dark bulletproof vests swarmed us. There were three of them, with three guns pointed at each of our heads—just begging us to give them a reason to go for the head shot.

  We all threw our hands in the air simultaneously.

  The officers moved in, grabbing our wrists, cuffing them behind our backs. They didn’t seem incredibly concerned with our comfort.

  “What the hell, man?” said Wynezra. “What are you doing? You can’t do this!”

  “Yeah, we have rights!” Holden proclaimed. And then, a little unsure of himself: “I mean, we do, don’t we?”

  “Yes, Holden, we have rights,” I said.

  “Are you the owner of the silver Subaru Forester in the drop-off zone?” an officer asked Wynezra. The oldest and unfriendliest looking of the bunch—craggy-faced, square-jawed, no-bullshit vibe. He looked like a disgruntled Josh Brolin playing a cop, which seemed to indicate there was a fifty/fifty chance he was dirty.

  “What?” she said. She glanced down at herself. “Well, I am now, I guess, but…c’mon, guys, I was gonna come back for it!”

  “Sure you were. Right after you distracted security.”

  In my peripheral, I noticed the dinosaur of a cop who took Imogen down peeling her off the floor like a piece of string cheese.

  “I can’t feel my anything,” she mumbled.

  “We’re gonna take you kids down to the station,” said Officer Brolin. “Maybe find out why you felt it necessary to visit the airport at three in the morning and leave a suspicious, illegally parked vehicle outside the terminal. So, you know…you have the right to remain silent, anything you do say can be used against you, so on and so forth. You’ve seen the movies.”

  I had seen way too many Josh Brolin movies to feel comfortable with this scenario. All I knew was we were royally screwed.

  “Wynonna?” said a familiar voice.

  The voice came from the security line.

  An adult male voice.

  But it wasn’t Roscoe.

  The flow of traffic had led him to our end of the retractable belt barriers. He was holding hands with two mousy-haired children—a boy and a girl—four and six years old. I only knew this because I knew him. He had a mustache, and his hair was receding, but not nearly as receded as the midlife crisis he once wore like a toupee.

  It was Theo. The restaurant manager from Newell House.

  “Theo?” I said, startled. “What are you doing here? Have you seen Ros—? Have you seen my dad?”

  “Uh…” said Theo, thoroughly flustered. “He didn’t…tell you?”

  I stared, blankly. “Tell me? Tell me what?”

  Officer Brolin glanced between Theo and me. “Sir, you know these kids?”

  “I know her. I work with her father. Or…worked with her father. He actually, um…he helped me get my new job.” He glanced nervously at me. “In Switzerland.”

  “WHAT?” said Wynezra.

  “You’re going with him?” I said.

  “Not with him,” said Theo, laughing nervously. “Roscoe actually…well, he checked himself into a rehab.”

  Wynezra’s mouth was open so wide, I could have stuck my fist inside it.

  “Rehab?” said Officer Brolin.

  “For alcohol,” Theo clarified, eyeing
the officer. He ducked under the security rope and stepped out of line. “Our flight is actually a little delayed, so I have some time. I’ll be glad to explain everything to you if these fine officers don’t mind.” Theo glared at the other officers before returning his attention to me.

  “I think I know what this is all about,” he said.

  • •

  Roscoe was in rehab, sure. But that wasn’t the reason he wasn’t taking the job.

  Roscoe just couldn’t leave without Wynonna.

  After his and Wynonna’s blowout, he realized he could never leave without her.

  So, he decided to stay.

  He told Leif this. But he also told him he knew a damn good chef who hated his job and hated living in Carbondale ever since his husband left. From there, things escalated very quickly. Leif was desperate, and Theo was eager to GTFO. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, Leif basically agreed to fly Theo out—with accommodations—until he and his small family got on their feet.

  So basically, we drove four hours to Chicago and got arrested for nothing.

  But it didn’t feel like nothing. In all honesty, it felt like a very big something. The sort of something you cherish because you fought for it.

  To Wynonna, I knew this something was everything.

  Wynezra, Holden, Imogen, and I were still taken to the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago. Technically, it was a guilty-until-proven-innocent situation. However, the nature of the arrest had softened significantly. Officer Brolin looked only slightly disappointed that his terrorist arrest was most likely a sham. Offisaurus rex—whose name was Winston—even apologized to Imogen for pulverizing her into the earth’s mantle. As a token of peace, he offered her a pink frosted donut with sprinkles.

  Since it was the middle of the night, we were placed in individual holding cells—narrow things with brown brick walls; cold, sandy-speckled floors; a bed that more closely resembled a cot; and a silver sink-toilet combo. (I so wish I was kidding.) In my cell, however, someone had painted the narrow back wall into a pure and simple work of art. It was blue, with a hopeful-looking white bird standing off to one side, and words:

  DON’T LET WHAT

  YOU CANNOT DO

  INTERFERE WITH

  WHAT YOU CAN DO.