Fear of Missing Out

by Kate McGovern

“How much, do you think?”

  “How would I know? Hold on—there’s this thing called Google.”

  She starts tapping away at her phone. Almost immediately, I realize I don’t want to know, because knowing will make it all the more real, and quite possibly make it totally impossible.

  Across from me, Chloe squints at her screen, then lets out a quiet whistle.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s not cheap. Maybe they do a Black Friday deal.”

  “How not cheap are we talking?”

  “Around thirty thousand.”

  “Thirty thousand U.S. dollars?”

  “No, it’s priced in Chinese renminbi.” She makes a face. “Yes, U.S. dollars.”

  I laugh, only because it’s so ridiculous. I could never get my hands on that kind of money. My mother certainly doesn’t have it. It’s just as well, really. I shouldn’t get my heart set on some far-off, near-impossible possibility anyway.

  Chloe taps her fingernails on the linoleum tabletop. “I mean, we could raise the money. If you wanted to.”

  “Funny. What are we going to do, organize a car wash for freezing my remains? A school bake sale to preserve my dead body?”

  She waves me off. “Crowdfunding. On the internet, obviously. You’d just need, like, a vlog.”

  “A vlog?”

  “A video blog. Hello? We make some videos about you and your story. We post them to a crowdfunding site.”

  “So basically Kickstarter for sick people?”

  “Basically. We share your story. Other people share it. People send money. We get you a cryopreservation installment plan, if you will.”

  “That sounds insane.”

  “More insane than the idea of freezing your dead body to begin with? Because you’re the one who brought this up.”

  I consider Chloe across the table, the sprinkle of freckles on the bridge of her nose that I was always jealous of when we were younger, and her hazel eyes that are green today to match her sweater, and her curly hair. She’s my best friend, and she’d do anything for me. Including, apparently, using the internet to buy me a next-to-impossible possible future.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  “Just thinking.”

  Chloe nods. “Well, I’d give you the money if I had it. But since I don’t … I give you the internet.”

  12.

  The second time Mohit and I hung out outside school, back in the fall of ninth grade, it was the night of a Perseid meteor shower. He met me in front of my building after jazz band rehearsal, just as the sun was setting, and we returned to Bunker Hill Monument, because it already felt like our spot, and because we knew it would have a good view of the sky.

  The park was lit only by a few flickering streetlamps. We sat on a bench in the dark and angled our chins toward the sky.

  “Orion’s belt,” he said, pointing to the line of three stars over our heads.

  I followed the stars in their familiar path with my finger. “And Draco’s head.”

  “Nice one.”

  “My mother used to make me keep a sky journal,” I said. “Hence I can identify an uncanny number of constellations.”

  “Is a ‘sky journal’ a thing I’m supposed to know about?”

  I laughed. “Not if you don’t have hippie parents, I guess. You know, it was like, every night when she wasn’t at work, we’d go outside to the exact same spot—it was the top of a hill near our house when we lived in the country—and I’d draw a picture of the sky in my notebook, where the moon was that night, what shape, and then we’d talk about our observations of how it was different from the night before. And she’d point out whatever constellations we could see.”

  He nodded, but I could tell he already thought I was weird. I guess his parents never made him keep a sky journal. He probably just remembered the constellations from when everyone learned about them in middle school. I liked thinking of Mohit in middle school, on the other side of the country, walking on the beach with friends, maybe going to music camp in the summers, living his very different life so far from mine before the moment when our worlds overlapped.

  After that, he didn’t say anything for a long while, longer than seemed possible or normal, but he was apparently not bothered by the silence, so I tried not to be, either. The wind picked up, and we inched closer to each other. I noticed; I assumed he did, too.

  “Where’s your dad?” he asked, when he finally spoke again. I didn’t think I’d mentioned my father to Mohit; in fact, I was sure I hadn’t.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You talk about your mom all the time. She’s a midwife, she makes you keep a sky journal—”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Fine, not anymore. Sorry, is that an intrusive question? About your dad?”

  “I mean, kind of?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have a habit of asking questions that other people seem to deem inappropriate. That’s what my mother says, anyway. You don’t have to answer.”

  “It’s okay.” It genuinely was. I liked that Mohit would ask the things other people wouldn’t, and that he seemed to really want to know. “My parents split when I was twelve. Dad made some different lifestyle choices, I guess you could say. He wanted to live totally off the grid. My mom could do the hippie thing if it meant growing her own vegetables, but not, like, eschewing wifi.”

  “Eschewing wifi, huh? That does sound radical.”

  “Right? He moved to a commune in Arizona, and we moved to the city so my mom could be closer to work.”

  The truth is, my father left us because he fell in love. Not with another woman, in the predictable midlife-crisis kind of way, or with a man, which would’ve been at least understandable had it been the case. My father fell in love with the promise of a life free of attachments to the material world, from reliance on consumerism, from the “sickness that comes along with being tied to capitalism, and government, and mass-produced energy.” Or something like that. He fell in love with a group of people who were collectively committed to living off the grid on a place called simply the Ranch, following the guidance of a frumpy white guy named Roger and showering infrequently. As far as I can tell.

  To reach him now, we call a number that goes to the main lodge, which houses the only generator on the compound, and they get a message to him and he calls us back. Dad lives in a tiny house on the property with his new wife, Suzanne, and they don’t have a phone of their own. Or internet. Or running water. But they have Peace and Love and Health, apparently. Or something along those lines.

  It’s not really as bad as I’m making it sound. Mostly it’s just bizarre. But people make their choices, as my mother always says.

  Mohit’s eyes flicked over my face, considering me. Then he brushed his finger against my leg, so lightly it could almost have been an accident except I knew it wasn’t, and I felt that same shiver that I’d felt the last time we were here together, when he’d reached for my hand at the top of the monument.

  “Sucks that he lives so far.”

  I shrugged. “I mean, my brother and I visit him once a year or so. His place is pretty wacko, but it’s not terrible. It’s like camp. It’s fine.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

  I got the feeling that he actually did know what I meant, even though I was fairly certain his parents were still married and his house had electricity. We went quiet again. I averted my eyes from his—it was too much to keep looking at him—and then, suddenly, the silence was too much, too. I pointed to his sax case. “How long have you been playing?”

  “Since I was seven. I was barely big enough to hold it.”

  “Play me something?”

  The request took him by surprise. “Here?”

  “Yeah, here. You’re the guy with the saxophone in the park. Why not?”

  He opened the case and took the instrument out, cradling the pieces deftly the way I’ve seen my mother handle a brand-new baby. He put the mouthp
iece in place, licked the reed. I liked watching him feel his way around the sax, the lightly tarnished brass looking well loved. I bet he could do it all with his eyes closed.

  He started playing, a slow, beautiful, sad melody I didn’t recognize.

  He was good at playing sad songs.

  Then a bright streak shot across the sky, and another, and another. The Perseids, pieces of burning comet debris, lighting up the night.

  13.

  On Sunday, I wake to my phone vibrating against the bedside table, which means I’ve either slept through the scheduled “Do not disturb” function, which goes until 9:00 A.M. on weekends, or someone (there are only two possibilities, really) has called me multiple times in a row, thereby disabling DND.

  It’s the former: 10:05, and Mo is calling.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” I mumble into the phone.

  “Rise and shine, my beauteous princess!”

  “Gross.”

  “Please, you love it.”

  I rub my eyes and open them wide against the light to force myself awake. “What’s up?”

  “It might be the last beautiful day of the season. I think we should go on an adventure.”

  It’s the end of October. Any day now it could turn cold and not turn back until practically May, and by the time the warmth returns … who knows. Plus, I start chemo next week, every Thursday afternoon for at least the next twelve weeks, which means my weekends will probably become a blur of lazing around with an emesis basin within reach. I assume Mohit is thinking of all this, even though he doesn’t say so. He was around the last time; he remembers.

  I look out the window. He’s right about the weather. The cloudless sky is an unbelievably crisp blue against the reds and yellows of the leaves.

  “But I’m tired,” I whine. “How about you come over and we watch a movie in my bed?”

  “I don’t want to lie around inside, and neither do you!” Mo says.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Quite sure. Listen, I have two words for you.”

  “So far it sounds like a lot more than two.” I stretch out from under the covers with considerable effort.

  “Two words, Astrid: Yankee. Cannonball.”

  “And that would be?”

  “It’s the last weekend of the season at Canobie Lake Park. Come on. How long has it been since you rode a roller coaster?”

  “Canobie Lake Park? I haven’t thought about that place since I was, like, twelve. We went there in middle school once.”

  “Exactly. You did, but I, alas, have never been, because as you know I spent my childhood on the superior coast, where we had, you know, actual Disneyland. We can get fall discount tickets today. I already looked online. Let us go relive the thrills of your youth with legions of middle schoolers.”

  “The thrills of my youth, huh? You’re really in a poetic kind of mood today.”

  “I’m just thinking about kissing you at the top of the Giant Sky Wheel. It’s so vintage.”

  * * *

  Canobie Lake Park is forty minutes up 93 from Boston, just over the border in New Hampshire. Even that bit farther north, most of the leaves have already fallen. Bare trees stretch their branches toward the road.

  Mo is driving, which I’ll acknowledge he’s getting better at, the more I make him chauffeur me around. We’re in my mother’s Honda, which she allowed us to borrow after only a moderate amount of cajoling. I got the sense that her desire to allow me any small pleasures that won’t kill me outright overruled her desire to protect me every minute of every day.

  I sit in the passenger seat with my feet up on the dashboard. Behind the wheel, Mohit has a small, peaceful smile on his face like he’s thinking of something that’s involuntarily making him happy. Every time I glance over at him, he seems to sense it, and shifts his eyes over to meet mine.

  “Eyes on the road, partner,” I remind him. Surprising for such a nice fall weekend, 93 is mostly empty, but still, I’d rather Mo not be so disarmed by my captivating beauty that he drives us off the road. I shift in the seat so my body is arched toward the driver’s seat, closer to him. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You just did.”

  “You’re hilarious. If music doesn’t work out for you, you should really consider stand-up.”

  “I don’t know, the field for South Asian comedians is really competitive right now.”

  “You could hold your own with Aziz Ansari.”

  “Not with Mindy Kaling, though.”

  “True. Not with Mindy Kaling. Sorry,” I say. “Anyway, I meant an actual question. You don’t have to answer.”

  “Ask away, my beauteous princess.”

  “You can stop with the beauteous princess BS, you know.”

  “Fine, fine, ugly grouchy lady-in-waiting. What’s the question, then?”

  “Are you offended by the idea of cryopreservation?”

  He doesn’t answer for a long time, which is one of my greatest Mohit pet peeves. It’s not that he’s not listening, I’ve learned; it’s just that he likes to think before he speaks. But the silence makes me nervous.

  Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Hello?”

  “I’m thinking. You know I’m thinking.”

  “I know, but … fine.”

  He clears his throat, turns the radio down. “Why would you think I would be offended?”

  “Well, because of what you said about how the ultimate goal in Hinduism is to free yourself from rebirth. And with cryopreservation, I would be kind of opting for rebirth, in a sense. And maybe interfering with the natural process of things. So I was just thinking about how you might, I don’t know, feel weird about that. Or your parents would, or … Hindus in general.”

  “I can’t really speak for Hindus in general.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  He goes on thinking for another long moment. “Well, you’re not just asking about Hinduism, right? Hinduism has one set of beliefs about mortality and the afterlife, but really, every faith has its own corresponding set, and they all tend to involve theories of what happens to the soul after death. So you might ask the same question of a person of any faith. It’s not a Hindu-specific concern.”

  “Fine, I get that. But you and your family are basically the only religious people I know, so I’m asking you.”

  Mo laughs. “Got it. So now I speak not just for all Hindus but also for all people of any kind of religious faith. No pressure.”

  “Come on. I’m just curious if you, Mohit Ramchandra Parikh, are personally offended by the idea of science manipulating life after death. And don’t sit there quietly for another ten minutes, please.”

  He shakes his head and chuckles to himself, like his girlfriend and her existential questions are just that amusing.

  “Okay, here’s what I think. Personally, I believe in respecting other people’s beliefs. Your atheism doesn’t offend me. But, I mean, if it were me, I think I would worry about what would happen to my consciousness. I would question if I was impeding the process of rebirth if I were, sort of, trapped, in a sense. Trapped in this in-between state, dead but not dead. That, and I think it’s very unlikely to work. So I’d worry that you were in this in-between state for no good reason, because nothing would ever come of it.”

  “But what if it gave you a chance to see me again? Even much later?”

  Mohit turns to me, eyes now fully off the road. “Astrid, I would do anything to see you again—you know that. I just believe in a plan.”

  “God’s plan?”

  He smiles, looking back to the road. “I know you think it’s ridiculous, but yes.”

  “I just don’t get it. You really think there’s something controlling all our moves here? Mapping it all out? Not just in this life but, like, after our deaths?”

  “You know what I believe. We have agency, we make choices, but yes, there is a bigger plan.”

  “But what if … I don’t know. What if the plan is wrong?”

  “That�
�s the point of faith, Astrid. You have to figure it’s not wrong.”

  * * *

  The Yankee Cannonball is one of those old wooden roller coasters that creaks while you work your way up the hills. We ride it three times in a row. Mohit grabs his phone out of his pocket and insists on taking a video of us screaming the whole way around, even though there are multiple huge signs that say, THE TAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHY OR VIDEO ON THE YANKEE CANNONBALL IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Like when he snuck us into the Bunker Hill Monument on our very first date, it’s exhilarating to break the rules just a little bit, even though I’m afraid he’ll get us kicked off the ride, or at the very least drop his phone and lose it forever in the grassy restricted zone below the coaster. He manages to avoid both.

  The first time through, I grip the safety bar with every ounce of strength my hands can muster and squeeze my eyes shut against the twists and drops. But the second time, I watch each hill approach, take in the feeling of losing control as we creak toward the top, and then let go of the bar—tentatively at first, then completely. The air whooshes past my fingertips as Mo snaps a selfie of us with our arms aloft.

  After the third time around, though, my skull is starting to vibrate and I feel like my brain stem could use a rest. We sit for a few minutes and share a Coke on a bench by the bumper cars. Mo plays back the video. The footage is wobbly and ridiculous, our faces going from anticipation to fear to involuntary exhilaration and back again with every dip and curl of the ride.

  I lean back on the bench and close my eyes against the bright day.

  “What’s next?” he asks.

  In truth, my head is pounding, and my vision is getting twinkly. I don’t want to ruin his adventure day with my stupid brain cancer, though. “Skee-Ball?”

  “Excellent.”

  * * *

  The wooden Skee-Balls knock against the ramp with a satisfying thwack. I used to be very good at this game, my skills honed over years of county fairs when we lived in the country and their parking-lot equivalents once we moved to the city. We’re kitsch people, Mom and I—we’ve never driven by a carnival we didn’t pull over for. But today I can’t quite focus, can’t get my arm to aim exactly in the right direction or with the right amount of force. I throw a bunch of lousy tens in a row, then one twenty.