The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

  She started to walk away. “Lottie, wait,” I blurted out.

  “What?”

  “I really don’t want to do this.”

  I expected her to look disappointed. I expected her to lecture me about being boring. About stepping out of my comfort zone for once. About how lame it is to go through life always playing by the rules. Always being me. But she actually looked sympathetic. She reached out and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I’m sure.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.” Then she plucked the lip gloss from my hand and started to tuck it into the waistband of her jeans. “I’ll do it, then.”

  “Wait!” I grabbed for her hand. She extended it in a fist and then unfurled her fingers, revealing the pink tube lying on her palm. It looked so small. So insignificant. It was just lip gloss. It was only five dollars.

  Would anyone really miss it?

  Would stealing it really make me feel alive? Lottie was the most alive person I knew, and she stole stuff all the time. Maybe there was something to her crazy theory. It was a small price to pay—five dollars’ worth of stolen merchandise—in exchange for whatever infectious, effervescent life force coursed through Lottie’s veins.

  I snatched the tube from her palm and motioned toward the registers in the front of the store. “Go,” I said. “I can do this.”

  I can do this, I repeat silently to myself as the golf cart ambles along the long corridor. I can do this.

  We finally come to a stop in front of a pair of glass door marked by the words AIRPORT OFFICE, and I’m escorted inside. The plastic zip ties are starting to dig into my flesh and leave unsightly marks on my skin.

  My guards escort me through a set of security doors that require a key card and into an office in the back. On the door is a gold-plated sign that reads CLAUDIA BEECHER. OPERATIONS MANAGER.

  Inside the office a scrawny woman in a navy skirt suit—Claudia Beecher, I presume—is staring out a window at the rioting snow. I can’t see her face. I can see only her stringy, dark hair, which looks like it hasn’t been washed or brushed in days. I can also see puffs of smoke rising up above her head, making her look like she’s actually on fire.

  I peer around the small office. The desk is so cluttered with papers and empty cups and all sorts of other junk, I can barely see the surface. The mess makes me jittery, and I fight the urge to start tidying up.

  When the woman turns, I see how haggard and tired she looks. Lines where there shouldn’t be lines. A scowl that reaches places I didn’t know scowls could even reach.

  “This her?” she asks the officer behind me. It’s the pudgy one. The other one is nowhere to be found. I hope he’s out looking for Xander.

  The traitor.

  The officer must nod, because the woman transfers her glare from him to me.

  “On the radio, you said there were two of them.”

  “There were,” the officer says. “The other fled. We couldn’t catch him.”

  I notice the subtle shift of the woman’s gaze as she takes in the shape of my captor. I’m assuming she’s thinking the same thing I am: There’s no way in hell you could catch him.

  She lets out a sigh and takes another drag of her cigarette, then instantly follows it with a spritz from a can of air freshener on her desk, dousing the office and herself in a fine mist. The fake citrusy potpourri scent does nothing to mask the odor of the smoke. Now the room just smells like burnt citrusy potpourri.

  “Sit down,” she tells me, gesturing to a chair across from her desk.

  I do.

  Then, for good measure, the officer presses down on my shoulders, as if to make certain that I’m really sitting.

  Claudia Beecher dismisses him with a wave of her hand, and I hear the door close somewhere behind me.

  She takes one last look out the window. You can barely see anything through the flurry of white. I can tell the storm is getting worse by the minute. I feel the muscles in my shoulders clench.

  The woman yanks open a desk drawer and snubs out her half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with more half-smoked cigarettes. She spritzes the room and the inside of the desk drawer, closes the drawer, and sits down.

  “Look,” she says hastily, “I really don’t have time to deal with this right now. But we’re required, by law, to bring you in. When someone rides the train loop more than three times, it’s considered suspicious activity by the Department of Homeland Security.”

  Suspicious activity?

  Homeland Security?

  If I ever see that Xander guy again, I swear I’m going to kill him.

  They probably think I’m a terrorist. They’re probably going to hold me for questioning in some dingy cell in the basement. They’re going to use some kind of ambiguously legal torture methods to get me to talk.

  Claudia closes her eyes for a brief moment before opening them again. “Listen up. The trains are for getting from one place to another. It’s not a goddamn amusement park ride, okay?”

  “Okay!” I agree quickly. “I’m really, truly sorry. We didn’t mean anything. We were just wasting time while our flights were delayed. I swear. I—”

  She shushes me again with a raise of her hand. “I believe you.”

  I sag against the back of the chair in relief.

  “But it’s my job to follow protocol, and protocol says I’m supposed to turn you over to TSA.”

  A lump the size of Cincinnati grows inside my throat.

  TSA?

  “Oh shit, Ryn, that’s bad,” Lottie offers her not-so-helpful commentary.

  “Oh God,” I plead. “Please don’t do that. I will never do it again. Isn’t there something you can do? Someone else you can talk to? Please! I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire life.”

  “Well, technically—” Lottie starts to correct. But I cut her off.

  You shut the hell up! I’m not speaking to you. This is all your fault.

  “Ryn Ryn,” she tries, her voice softening, but I slam the door on her again.

  Claudia opens her desk drawer and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. She stuffs one in her mouth and lights the end with a shaky hand. She looks contemplative as she takes a long drag. I can see her chest expanding as her lungs make room for the dark, nicotine laced air.

  I wait for her next words with the anticipation of a death row inmate waiting on the results of her final appeal.

  She turns her head and exhales the smoke to the side. It seems to snake out of her mouth and make a ninety-degree turn in my direction. I watch it slither toward me. I feel it wrap around my neck, squeeze all the good air out of me, replace it with nasty, burnt tar.

  She grabs the air freshener and chases after the smoke with a long, continuous spray. I let out a small cough as the charred citrus odor hits me.

  Claudia opens her mouth to speak, and I can immediately see from the way her haggard face somehow grows even more haggard that the news she’s about to deliver isn’t good.

  But before she can get a single word out, the phone on her desk rings. She looks about as relieved as I feel to have a distraction. “What?” she snaps into the receiver.

  I can’t make out what’s being said on the other end. I hear only soft, muffled murmuring. But Claudia’s eyes dart accusingly at me as she listens.

  “Really?” she asks, sounding genuinely intrigued. “I’ll be right out.”

  She hangs up the phone and stands. The barely touched cigarette clutched between her fingers suffers the same snubbed fate as the rest in her drawer. She starts toward the door, then hastily turns back, grabs the can from her desk, and sprays it hurriedly around the entire office in a messy scribble, as if she’s graffitiing the air.

  “You wait here,” she barks, and then disappears out the door, leaving me alone with the bitter taste of regret and fake fruit coating the inside of my mouth.

  I stood in the makeup aisle, listening to Lottie’s melodic voice loft through the store a
s she flirted shamelessly with the cute cashier. I could no longer feel my feet. Or legs. I suspected my hands would soon go too.

  I stared down at the lip gloss tube pinched between my fingers. I rolled it back and forth three times, willing the blood to keep flowing.

  It was so small.

  Just a tiny pink tube.

  How could something so small cause me so much grief? How could something so tiny and insignificant make the blood stop pumping to half of my body?

  “You simply have to let me come over and see that sometime!” Lottie exclaimed, raising up her voice a few decibels so I could hear. “I would looove that.”

  That was my signal. The magic words. It was go time.

  I took one final look at the lip gloss in my hand.

  So tiny.

  So insignificant.

  I bet they lose a thousand of these a year by sheer human error. Products disappear. Things fall off trucks. Someone records the wrong number in an inventory log.

  They won’t miss it.

  It’s nothing, I told myself. It costs five dollars. Probably only fifty cents to actually make. Maybe even less.

  Lottie had stolen a dozen of these. And a dozen other more expensive things.

  But you’re not Lottie.

  My own thoughts echoed back at me in stereo surround sound. And they were right. I wasn’t Lottie. I’d never been Lottie. Lottie was already too much Lottie to leave even a tiny sliver for anyone else.

  I angled my body toward the shelf to block the view of the security cameras, just like Lottie taught me. I pretended to sneeze, giving me a reason to double over slightly. As I bent forward, I swiftly lifted up the hem of my shirt and stuffed the lip gloss into the waistband of my pants.

  It was over so fast.

  One second I was an innocent shopper, the next I had a bulging lump in the front of my pants that I was convinced could be seen from outer space.

  I surreptitiously glanced down, searching for any sign of the bump. But my waistline looked perfectly smooth.

  So tiny.

  So insignificant.

  Then, why did it feel like I’d just stuffed a fifty-pound dumbbell down my pants?

  “Here,” I heard Lottie say, “I’ll give you my number.”

  I knew what came next. It was all part of the plan. She would punch a fake number into his phone with a fake name to go with it. Then she would leave, and I would purchase my decoy pack of gum with the confiscated merchandise weighing down my pants like a toddler carrying around a huge load in her diaper.

  “Cool. I’ll totally call you.” That was the cashier. His voice was low and kind of husky. Like he’d been chain-smoking since he was five.

  No doubt he would call.

  They always called.

  I took a deep breath and started toward the front of the store. I could feel a million pairs of eyes on me, even though the store was mostly empty. When I reached the cashier, I perused the impulse shelf, plucking a pack of gum and placing it on the counter next to the register.

  “Just this, please,” I said, and I swore my voice shook like I was riding a lawn mower.

  The cashier studied me for just a beat too long. I could feel cold sweat starting to pool on my lower back. Could he smell the perspiration? If I turned and ran, would he see the stain on the back of my shirt? Would he chase after me?

  Or is a five-dollar lip gloss just not worth the effort?

  I peered out the window and saw Lottie standing on the sidewalk, tapping casually into her phone.

  The cashier ran the pack of gum across his scanner. “Eighty-five cents,” he said, staring at me. His eyes morphed into X-rays. A humming sound filled the air, growing louder by the second, until I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts.

  I produced a dollar bill from my purse and thrust it at him. I was so eager to get out of there, to run and never stop, I almost said, “Keep the change,” but I knew that would only make me look suspicious. No one says “keep the change” at a drugstore. Especially not a teenager.

  His cash drawer opened with a bang, shattering the humming in my ears. He scooped his finger into one of the change slots. I could tell from his expression that he didn’t have enough.

  “One second,” he said, and retrieved a roll of coins from under the cash tray. He banged it against the side of the drawer. Nickels came raining down, a few dropping to the ground.

  “Shit,” he mumbled, bending to gather them.

  My heart pounded harder. Was this some kind of stalling technique? What if he’d already called the cops and was keeping me distracted until they got here? My eyes darted to the window again. I swore I could hear sirens, but I couldn’t tell if they were actual sirens or some imaginary noise I was making up in my head.

  I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans, feeling the lip gloss shift inside the waistband.

  I froze.

  Oh God.

  It was slipping.

  I could feel it inching its way out of the waistband grip. Any minute now it was going to slip right down my pant leg and tumble to the ground.

  While the cashier was still scooping up fallen coins, I wiggled slightly, trying to shimmy the tube back into place. But my movement was all wrong. I was all wrong. And the lip gloss slipped farther.

  I could feel the cold, hard surface of the plastic tube against my upper thigh now. If I took one step, I was certain it would fall. And it would all be over. I went to put my hand in my pocket to try to hold the tube in place, but then I remembered these pants didn’t have pockets. Lottie picked them out, claiming that the pocketless design would make me look slimmer.

  Damn you, Lottie, and your keen fashion sense!

  I settled for placing my hand on my hip instead, pressing tightly against the slipping tube. I knew it probably looked like the most unnatural pose in the world, but it was better than hearing the echoey plink of the lip gloss hitting the tile floor.

  “You know what?” I said shakily to the cashier. “It’s fine. You can just keep the change.”

  “No, no,” he said, standing up with a handful of nickels. “I got it. Besides, if you don’t take your change, then my count will be all messed up, and I’ll get in trouble.” He dumped the coins into the tray and handed me my change and receipt.

  I kept one hand firmly pressed to my hip while trying to stuff everything into my bag with the other. The cashier gave me another strange look, and I attempted to cover the whole thing with a smile.

  This was a disaster.

  But it was almost over.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Then I ran. I didn’t care that it made me look suspicious. I didn’t care about anything anymore except getting out of this store. Getting this thousand-pound lip gloss out of my pants and then burning them.

  “Wait!” the cashier called after me. “You forgot your gum!”

  I turned back just long enough to see him holding up my purchase. My decoy. The one thing that was supposed to make me look innocent. And I’d left it behind. Typical. I was dreadful at this. I don’t know why I even agreed to do it in the first place.

  “Keep it!” I yelled over my shoulder and kept running.

  When I reached the automatic glass doors, I skidded to a halt, staring down at the threshold that divided the inside of the store from the outside world. The tile floor from the cement sidewalk. My innocence from my corruption.

  I gulped in lungfuls of air, never seeming to get enough.

  Then, before I could change my mind, I dug my hand ungraciously down the front of my pants, grabbed the lip gloss, and threw it on the tile floor behind me. I’m quite certain that it must have landed with the very same plink that I’d been dreading, but I’ll never know for sure because I didn’t wait around to hear it. I sprinted from the store without looking back.

  Lottie saw me coming at her with the determination of a bull, and her eyes widened.

  “What happened?” she asked, but I didn’t slow. I ran right past her and jumped into the pa
ssenger seat of her car.

  She got in behind the wheel and, sensing my urgency, started the engine and backed out, tires squealing. Once we were three intersections away, she asked again.

  “What happened? Did you do it?”

  I fought to catch my breath, to calm my pounding heart.

  And then I tilted my head in a nearly imperceptible nod.

  So tiny.

  So insignificant.

  Yet, my whole body shivered with the shame of deceit.

  Lottie giggled in delight. “Oh my God! How do you feel?”

  I swallowed. My throat was dry. My lungs burned. My heart hammered. “Alive,” I told her, and it was the truth.

  78. I blame the company that installed the cameras in the airport trains.

  79. I blame the useless snowplowers for not plowing the runways fast enough.

  80. I blame cute guys in Muppet shirts for luring me into bullshit time-wasting games.

  81. I blame my overly chatty dead best friend for talking me into it.

  82. I blame myself. For listening.

  When the door to Claudia Beecher’s office opens again, the pudgy guard saunters in and gently removes my plastic cuffs. “You’re free to go.”

  What? Just like that?

  I want to ask what happened. Why the sudden change of heart . . . and policy? But I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut and just go with it. Probably the smartest thing I’ve done all day.

  I grab for my phone and clutch it in my hands. My skin sings with the relief of touching the phone again. The familiarity of the hard plastic case and cool glass screen. The closeness of answers. Of truth.

  But I make myself wait to search for anything until I’m far, far away from this place.

  I walk outside into the main airport office and immediately lurch to a stop when I see who’s standing there. Casually laughing and joking around with the tall, skinny guard.

  Xander.

  “What are you doing here?” I snarl.

  He looks surprised by my question, placing a hand to his heart. “I came to set the record straight and spring you from this place. I’m your knight in shining armor.” Then he actually bows. “M’lady.”