The Chaos of Standing Still Read online

  Noticed, but not missed.

  Observed, but not mourned.

  I never would have felt the crushing gravity of her absence.

  I never would have ended up in therapy.

  And I never would have really lived.

  But that afternoon in August, the stars were aligned. I went out to draw on the sidewalk. My mother had plenty of chalk. The sun was shining.

  And Lottie turned left.

  She stopped when she saw me, hopping off her bike and walking it over to where I sat hunched over my latest creation: a purple unicorn.

  She asked me if I always drew unicorns, and I told her no, sometimes I drew rainbows and unicorns.

  She asked if I’d ever seen a unicorn, and I told her I hadn’t.

  “I have,” she swore, crossing her heart.

  And that was the beginning of our friendship.

  An hour later we sat on my front porch, licking orange sherbet Push-Ups that my mom had brought us. I was always very methodical and meticulous about the way I ate my Push-Up. Applying just the slightest bit of pressure to the stick until a thin layer of sherbet surfaced above the cardboard rim.

  Lick.

  Push.

  Repeat.

  But Lottie? She was a rebel. She took her Push-Up and immediately shoved the plastic stick as far up as it would go, until she had a tall orange tower of sherbet balancing precariously on top of the little cardboard cylinder. Then she raced to consume it before the ice cream melted everywhere.

  She didn’t succeed.

  It got on her hands, her face, her fingertips. Some even dripped down onto her knees, which she bent over to lick up.

  I was horrified by her process. Or lack thereof. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just ease the sherbet out a little at a time, like I did. Why she would risk such a mess and so much loss for no apparent reason.

  It was at that moment, in my eight years of life, that I realized there are two kinds of people in this world: those who eat their Push-Up Popsicles a little at a time. And those who try to devour them whole.

  Or in other words: There was me and there was Lottie.

  And despite how appalled I was at the messiness that resulted from Lottie’s method, I would soon come to realize that there’s a place for each of our kind.

  That the world needs both.

  “Sorry,” is the first thing out of my mouth. I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing lately. “I guess I’m not much of a party person.”

  This makes Xander laugh. “I’ll say.”

  I’m almost positive he’s going to ask me about what just happened back there. And I’m almost positive I don’t even know myself. But instead, he says, “That’s okay. We don’t have to go to a party to have a rocking New Year’s Eve.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light, despite the heaviness in my heart. “More train surfing?”

  “Nah,” Xander says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a deck of cards, tapping them twice on the coffee table between us. “I was thinking something more like go fish.”

  My smile is weak but visible. “Where did you get those?”

  He studies the deck in his hand. “It’s so weird. They were taped to the wall in the hotel room. Like some sort of modern art installation.”

  I nod, knowingly. “Lost and Found.”

  Xander gives me a strange look.

  “Siri and Jimmy decorated the party using items they ‘borrowed’ from the Lost and Found.”

  Xander contemplates this for a moment before saying, “Ahh, that explains the dentures in the bathroom.” He removes the cards from the deck and shuffles them once. “So, go fish?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, come on!” he pleads. “I’m really bad at it. You’ll definitely win.”

  “How can you be bad at go fish?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. I ask for all the wrong cards. I have terrible intuition. How about crazy eights?”

  I shake my head. “Definitely not.”

  “Old maid.”

  I grab the cards from him, give them a quick shuffle, and start to deal. “Poker. Five card draw. Nothing’s wild.”

  Xander looks taken aback for a moment as he watches me deal. “Whoa. You just got like way hotter.”

  My cheeks turn to red-hot coals.

  He thinks I’m hot?

  Xander picks up his cards. “So, what are we betting?”

  Oh. I feel disappointed as I glance around the empty lobby. There’s not even a salt shaker or sugar packet in sight. I start to gather up the cards. “Never mind. It was a stupid idea.”

  Xander holds his hand protectively to his chest. “Nuh-uh. I’m not giving these up. These are good cards.”

  “But we have nothing to bet.”

  “That’s not true,” he says, cocking an eyebrow. “We have information.”

  I give him a skeptical look. “What? You mean like state secrets or the true identities of covert operatives?”

  He chuckles. “No, I mean like what’s up here.” He leans across the table and taps my forehead gently with his five cards. He’s so much closer than he was a second ago. Than he was an hour ago. Than he’s been all night. His gaze latches on to mine, and for a moment my breathing gets all wonky again.

  Suddenly, his eyes don’t feel like eyes. They feel like microscopes. Nosy, snooping probes searching for things that I don’t show. That I’ve buried deep. For too long.

  “I don’t follow,” I say, casting my eyes to the table and scooping up my cards.

  “For every hand I win,” he explains. “I get to ask you a question and you have to answer it. Truthfully.”

  My windpipe starts to close. This is it. He’s finally demanding an explanation. For everything. For all the secrets I’ve never admitted to anyone, including Dr. Judy. Especially Dr. Judy.

  I swallow, but only dry air chafes my throat. “So that means for every hand I win, I get to ask you a question and you have to answer?”

  He nods. “That’s right.”

  I contemplate all the things I’ve witnessed today and every question I’ve asked myself about Xander since we met. How badly do I really want to know?

  Is it worth the risk?

  If there’s one thing I learned from watching Lottie play poker with her life, it’s that in order to win, you have to be willing to lose.

  And oh, how she did both.

  “Okay,” I agree before I can second-guess myself. But my whole body turns numb as soon as the word is out of my mouth. As soon as my eyes drop to the five playing cards gripped between my fingers.

  I admit, I probably should have looked at them before agreeing to this craziness. This might be the worst starting poker hand in history.

  But maybe that’s exactly what I need.

  Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

  Maybe it’s time I start answering questions for a change.

  Wagering the Truth

  In my hand I hold the two and four of clubs, the seven of spades, the jack of diamonds, and the ace of hearts. My best bet is to keep the ace and try for high pair. I toss the other cards down and announce that I’ll be drawing four. Xander draws two. That’s not a good sign.

  I deal to him, then me, arranging the new cards in my hand.

  I still have nothing.

  Xander puts down three sixes.

  I cringe.

  Why didn’t I just agree to play go fish? Why did I have to suggest poker?

  I show him my garbage hand and he rubs his palms together like a villain in a Bond movie.

  “Aha. First question is mine. Okay, I’ll go easy on you.”

  My muscles relax a bit.

  “Who is Lottie?”

  I nearly choke on my own premature relief. “That’s an easy one?”

  He looks surprised. “Is that not an easy one?”

  “No!”

  He twists his mouth thoughtfully. “Okay, fine. I’ll try something els
e. Where are you flying from?”

  I exhale loudly. “Atlanta.”

  “Why?”

  “Nuh-uh.” I shake my head. “That was a new question. You have to win another hand.”

  He smirks. “Clever girl.”

  He deals the next hand. I get stuck with trash again. I try for a straight but fail miserably. Xander lays down a pair of nines. “Why were you in Atlanta?”

  I suck in a sharp breath. “My dad lives there.”

  “So your parents are divorced?”

  I press my lips together and raise my eyebrows.

  “C’mon!” he whines. “Your answers have to be longer than one sentence.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t remember that being part of the rules.”

  “Well, it is now.”

  “You can’t just change the rules.”

  He stops to think about that for a second, then gathers up the cards and stuffs them back into the box. “You’re right. Let’s just go back to the party.”

  I grab the deck from him and start shuffling. “Fine. Whatever. Yes, my parents are divorced. It happened when I was twelve.”

  Xander opens his mouth to ask a question. I cut him off. “And I don’t know if it was messy because I wasn’t there. They shipped me off to my grandparents’ house for the summer. When I got back, my dad had moved out and it was done.” I glare at him. “Happy, Dr. Hale?”

  This title seems to make him anything but happy. I can almost see the way it shuts him down. I really need to win a hand.

  I deal the cards. This time, I’m confident I’ll win. I have a pair of aces. I keep them and draw three, hoping to secure my victory with a third ace, but no such luck. Xander lays down two pair—jacks and sixes.

  My mouth drops when I see them. “What the hell? Is this a trick deck?”

  “You shuffled,” he points out.

  “Did you count the cards to make sure they’re all there?”

  “Okay, sore loser,” he says, his mood seeming to lighten a bit. “Next question. Have you always lived in San Francisco?”

  I stare down at my loser aces. “No. We used to live in Portland. We moved ten months ago.”

  “Why did you—” Xander starts to say, but this time he stops himself. He grabs the deck and shuffles.

  I know what question comes next. And I know I’m not ready to answer it.

  But I suppose that’s not up to me. That’s up to the universe. The universe that’s never liked me. That’s been dealing me shitty hands for the past year. Maybe even the past eighteen years.

  I pick up my five cards and my throat starts to tighten.

  This hand makes my first hand look like solid gold.

  Xander draws one card—which means he’s either going for a straight, a flush, or a full house—none of which are good news for me. I scrap all five cards and try again.

  When he deals me a new hand, I don’t even bother to look. Looking won’t change them. It’ll only draw out the agony longer.

  Xander lays down another two pair. I hold my breath and flip my cards.

  In my epic, second chance do-over, the universe has dealt me a seven, a four, a nine, a jack, and a king. All hearts.

  Xander lets out a low whistle. “Yikes. I guess that means I’m up.”

  The funeral was one week after the accident. They were going to take my beautiful, bubbly, vivacious friend and bury her in the dirt. It was the most unfitting ending for Lottie that I could ever imagine.

  I refused to go.

  For three days my mom brought me dress after dress, presumably thinking that my decision to attend was only a matter of finding the right clothes. That was so like my mom. Making the whole conversation about a dress. Rather than what it really was.

  I hadn’t left the house since the accident.

  I’d barely left my bedroom.

  The shock had worn off and all that was left was the numbness.

  To be honest, I missed the shock. It felt like something. It had shape and meaning and definition. The numbness was a vast, infinite void with no entrance and no exit that you could feasibly float around in forever.

  The service was scheduled to begin at eleven in the morning. My mom came in at ten fifteen, dressed in a wool, gray pencil dress and matching coat. She had one more contender in her arms. A last-ditch effort to convince me to bear witness to the most horrific sight imaginable: my best friend being lowered into the cold, unforgiving ground.

  She held up the dress. This one was navy with a wrap tie.

  “How cute is this?” my mom asked.

  I rolled over and blinked at her in disbelief. My best friend was dead, and she thought I gave a shit about looking cute?

  “Everyone is going to wonder where you are,” she prodded.

  I shrugged. “So let them.”

  “Funerals are for the living. For saying good-bye.”

  “Good for them.”

  I watched my mom struggle. I watched all the things she wanted to say but couldn’t flash across her face.

  I needed her to say something real. Something not taken straight out of a textbook for grief. But she couldn’t do that. So she stuck to what she knew.

  “Lottie would have wanted you there.”

  I rolled back over and faced the wall. I’d had a lot of time to contemplate that wall, and I wasn’t finished.

  The truth was, she had no idea what Lottie would have wanted.

  None of us did.

  Lottie was an enigma. That’s what made her Lottie. In fact, if I had to bet, I would say Lottie would have wanted us all to skip the funeral, because funerals are sad and depressing and boring and good lord, why are you putting me in the goddamn ground? I want to fly!

  My mom left without another word, and I curled my body around my phone, incessantly turning the screen on and off to check the time. After Googling about funerals the night before, I’d determined that services usually last about one hour before the coffin is lowered into the large, gaping chasm.

  I counted the minutes that Lottie was still on this earth, and not buried six feet under it.

  When I couldn’t bear to count anymore, I stood up and rummaged around in my bottom dresser drawer until I found the birthday gift Lottie had given me only three months earlier.

  I slipped the Doctor Who case over my phone and turned it round and round in my hand, examining the blue Tardis from all sides. It was a hideous thing. Why would anyone choose a bulky blue police box as their phone cover?

  But it was the one thing I knew for sure that Lottie would have wanted.

  I turned on the phone again and scrolled absently through the pages and pages of apps. How did my phone get to be such a mess? How long had I been haphazardly installing apps without bothering to care where they were? How did I ever find anything in here before?

  All of a sudden, I didn’t know how I could live like this. I didn’t know how I would survive this chaos.

  I spent the next thirty minutes Googling phone organization tips, deleting unused apps, and sorting everything else into appropriately named folders. I organized and reorganized and sorted and resorted until everything had a place and a purpose. Productivity, health, social, media, travel, entertainment.

  When I was done, my phone was clean, but my life still felt like a mess.

  And Lottie was buried in the ground.

  I opened the text message app, which I’d placed front and center on the home screen, so it was the first thing I saw when I turned on my phone.

  Lottie’s last text to me shone bright and vibrant against the white backdrop of the screen.

  One unread message.

  It had been a week since it arrived. A week since she pushed Send, turned the key in the ignition, and drove right to her death.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  10:05 a.m.

  My fingers trembled over the screen. Of course, I wanted to read the message. But then I thought of Lottie in the coffin and the coffin in the ground
and the dirt filling the hole, filling her mouth until she could no longer speak. Until she could no longer say anything to me ever again.

  My trembling hand fell to my side.

  I wouldn’t read it. I couldn’t read it. Because all I could think was:

  This is the last thing Lottie will ever say to me. As long as that’s alive, she’s alive.

  And then, right there, sitting alone in my bedroom, while the community of Portland, Oregon, tossed ceremonial dirt on my best friend’s grave, Dead Lottie spoke to me for the very first time.

  And she said, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, Ryn.”

  I take my time selecting my first question. It needs to be a good one. Because who knows how long it will take for the universe to deal me winning cards again? But the pressure of picking the best question is too much, so I just go with the first one I can think of.

  “Who was on the phone before? When I found you in the concourse?”

  I watch Xander’s body wilt as though this is the subject he was dreading most. That either means I picked the worst possible question or the best one.

  “Right,” he says, emboldening himself. “Okay.” He takes a breath. “That was my parents’ publicist.”

  The answer takes me by surprise. And also relieves me. I just assumed the worst. That he was talking to a girlfriend.

  Why would that be the worst?

  The question pops into my head immediately, and I immediately dismiss it. It’s not my turn to answer the questions anymore. It’s my turn to ask them.

  It appears Xander is going to stop there, so I give him the same look he gave me. “No one-sentence answers. New rule.”

  He chuckles. “Karma’s a bitch, huh?”

  I just smile.

  He hesitates, selecting his words carefully. “Something happened. Something that is going to deeply impact the sales of my parents’ new book, which just released this week. The one you were holding in the bookstore.”

  I think about the news article I saw on Troy’s phone earlier. “Is this about your expulsion?” I ask.

  The shock on his face lasts only a moment before fading away. I wonder if he’s used to people knowing more about him than he knows about them. I imagine, with parents like that—who fill their books with every nuance of your childhood—you kind of have to get used to it. “Nuh-uh,” he scolds. “That’s another question.”