Life at the Speed of Us

by Heather Sappenfield

  Gage chuckled. “Welcome to the club.”

  I pressed my lips because tears blurred my sight.

  “I know who you are, Sovern,” he said.

  “Right. How can you know when I don’t?”

  “I always have.” Gage tapped his chest, which should have been dorky. Instead, it loosed a tear down my cheek. He stepped close, wiped that tear with his thumb, and rubbed it between his fingers. “I’ll take this as a good sign.”

  I watched till he disappeared into the lower hall. I blew out a long stream of breath, like when I used to smoke, and I headed to Handler’s office.

  Bookmark:

  Anthropic Principle

  Brandon Carter

  Data about the universe is affected and biased by our instruments’ limitations and by the necessity that somebody be there to collect the data in the first place. No universe exists until it is observed.

  20

  Handler closed his door but for an inch. Two chairs faced his desk. I slumped into the chair closest to the window. I gazed through the glass onto a courtyard with no doors. I’d looked into this courtyard a bunch, Mom in the other chair, and it always made me wonder about the imbecile who’d designed this building.

  “So you and Gage have broken up?” Handler said.

  “Uh-huh.” A magpie landed on an aspen’s narrow branch and set it swaying.

  “How long ago?”

  “Eight days.”

  “Things look tense.”

  I shrugged.

  “Gage is having … ” Handler squinted.

  “What? Having what?”

  He pressed his lips and shook his head. His turquoise golf shirt had a logo of two palm trees. “Ms. Lindholm tells me you gave valuable input in the class discussion today.”

  I nodded. Was there really something going on with Gage, or had Handler done that on purpose to get my attention? I always scrambled to keep my footing with the guy.

  “You’re listening to recorded books again?”

  I nodded absently, still considering how wan Gage had looked in the hall. How he’d looked equally bad in Shangri-La on Saturday. How fast could a person get cancer from smoking?

  “Somewhere out there your mom is smiling.”

  I smirked. Yes, she was.

  “What?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  His eyes turned hypnotic. I could tell he was headed somewhere I did not want to go.

  “We moved,” I said, to derail him. “To a cabin at the top of Crystal Mountain.”

  His brows lifted.

  “For Dad’s work. We lived there before, till I had to come down here to start school.” I said “school” in my usual way, like it tasted rotten.

  Silence yawned between us. I looked at my hands, then at a photo on the desk’s corner of Handler with two guys. His sons, no doubt. They stood on a putting green, a black-and-white checkered flag behind them, the younger boy brandishing a golf ball. They all were grinning, arms slung around each other. It made me wish I had a photo like this of my ski-patrol family. Maybe someday soon I’d take a picture of us. I closed my eyes and thought, Be good. You can.

  “Everything’s different,” I said. I tapped my lips with my fingertips. “The dishes. The pots and pans. They’re organized all wrong. The pillows on the couch. Wrong. The flowers on the table. Wrong. I can’t seem to get anything right.”

  “In the cabin? Like your mom had it, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “You are your own person, Sovern.”

  “I know.”

  “Your mother’s gone, Sovern.” He said it so kind, it hurt.

  “I know.”

  “She’s gone.” He said it so kind, again.

  I willed myself not to respond. “Never!” I shouted.

  The silence between us weighed a thousand pounds. My adrenaline craving surged in my limbs clear to my fingertips. I flexed them to ease the craving because I’d sworn off Gage, and I couldn’t snowboard. This day had been a zigzag of emotion—Lindholm and Kenowitz’s kindnesses, me feeling like maybe I could keep my promise, Gage confirming Súmáí was real, seeing Súmáí out the window, Gage making me cry. And now this ?

  I pressed into my chair. I ran my fingers over my furrowed brow. That’s what I got for trying. For talking. I anchored my gaze on the courtyard, grabbed a chunk of my hair, and wrapped it—a barrier— across my mouth to block the scream rising in my throat. Me + words = failure.

  No way was Mom gone. She was right there in the spruce trees, just a palm away. My resolve to be good evaporated, and I calmed, dropped my hair, and looked Handler full in the face.

  His head tilted. “You all right?”

  “Finished?”

  “If you like.”

  “I like.”

  He opened the desk’s wide top drawer and pulled out a pad of late passes. Keeping track of me down to the minute. He filled one out for Art, even though he must have worked something out with Bennett.

  I snatched it and he ushered me to the door.

  “See you tomorrow?”

  I grunted.

  Handler stood there, watching, as I forced each straight step—one, two, three, four, five, six—along the counseling office’s short hall.

  Somehow I survived to the end of the day. I bolted out school’s doors, headed for the spruce. Handler was an idiot. What had he been trying to accomplish anyway? He had to know I wasn’t about to give up Mom. Ever.

  I strode so fast I passed a jogger, her ponytail swinging like a pendulum. A biker rode by going the other direction, his fat winter tires emitting a high zinging against the pavement that sounded like a machine getting ready to explode. I laughed: it sounded how I felt. I remembered Súmáí pointing with two fingers toward where Mom and little-me had been, then to me, and then gesturing an explosion. I remembered Wash pointing to his eyes then back at me, and my promise.

  I stopped and shoved my fingers into my hair, tasting my need for adrenaline. My promise to be good, Gage’s broken heart, Handler’s manipulation, Súmáí, the vandalism, Tara’s black eye, the vision-Mom, my freaking dyslexia, the anniversary of Mom’s death, and my rebellious mouth that kept speaking when I needed to stay silent—I couldn’t sort them into order, couldn’t find control. The woman I’d passed jogged by, and then I bent double, hand pressed to my innards. No doubt about it: I was going insane.

  Ski boots clumped a rhythm. The Millhouses’ bed-and-breakfast was farther down this path, and no doubt that’s where these people were headed, even though it was a long walk from the lifts. Their approaching steps were steady, and men’s loud, confident voices overlapped them. I straightened, pulling my hood forward to mask my face just before they rounded the corner.

  “I told Hardy, but he didn’t believe me,” one guy said.

  The other guy shook his head. “That’ll cost him.”

  A third guy laughed and said, “Yes, about a grand.”

  The three walked abreast, taking up the path’s width, each carrying his skis on his shoulder and his poles in the other hand. Their steps seemed an inexorable rhythm, and though they saw me, they showed no sign of stepping aside.

  As I slunk to the path’s edge, I realized I’d been slinking for a year. Fate had taken Mom and ruined my relationship with Dad, and I’d just slunk aside and let it. This weird thing happened then. Maybe cold + that zigzag day = hallucination. All I know is those guys transformed to wearing robes and became fate—so confident and cocky—and I loathed them with everything I had. I marched back onto the path, forcing them to swerve or collide with me, and I shouted, “I hate you!”

  It was like a movie. The rhythm of their steps turned to chaos as they stared at me in horror. Two guys bumped into each other, one of them clocking the other in the helmet with his skis as he tripped off the path’s edge. On
the other side, the third guy gave me a wide berth. They walked along the path’s sides for a bit, glancing over their shoulders—obviously afraid of me—before stepping back to the middle. Just before they disappeared from sight, I yelled, “I decide my own life!”

  I reached the spruce. Up close, this trunk had sap spots too. Dried tears. I traced my fingers over one, seeing Gage as he’d rubbed my tear between his fingers. I blinked back the image and smirked at my hand. Just a palm away. I pressed that palm against bark.

  Drunk bee bumping my parka.

  Mountain biker zooming past.

  Airborne pollen softening

  everything’s edges.

  My nose tickled and I sneezed.

  Steps approached. “Sov? Why aren’t you at school?” Mom strode toward me.

  My mouth fell open, but no words came. I melted with relief. Handler was wrong: Mom lived.

  “Sov? Why are you wearing that parka?”

  I stared at my Converse.

  “Sov, honey. What’s wrong?”

  The care lacing her voice made tears charge my sight. Behind her head fluttered a brown butterfly with white-outlined wings.

  “Did you and Gage break up?”

  I straightened. “Gage?”

  “Are you two having trouble?”

  “What?”

  “Push back that hood.” Mom stepped forward, reached out, and my hood fell. She noticed my missing arm and unzipped my parka so the collar relaxed down, and she squinted at my sling. “What happened? Why wasn’t I called?”

  She noticed my red T-shirt, my dirty jeans, my Converse, and her nose crinkled. “You didn’t leave home in those clothes. Sovern, what’s going on?” She reached out to wipe my cheek, but I stepped back.

  “Mom?” It was all I could muster.

  She glanced at her watch. “Our meeting with Mr. Handler is in ten minutes.”

  “I need you.” I started bawling.

  She tilted her head. After a minute, she reached out to hug me. I wanted that hug so bad. “Step away from that tree, silly.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “I’m not from here. I’m another Sov.”

  “What?” Worry built in her face.

  “Could you just hug me? Just a hug?”

  She seemed to actually see me then, how altered I must have been from the Sovern she lived with. She touched my cheek, and a wave shimmered out of it. Mom stepped back like she’d been shoved. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, and she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.

  A stronger wave moved through us, and spruce needles rained down, but she held tight. I wished I had an arm to wrap around her too, instead of it being there between us. The love and comfort emitted by her embrace was exactly as I remembered it. My tears soaked her shoulder, but she didn’t move till I stopped crying. I finally pulled back and dared her scrutiny.

  “I think you owe me some answers,” Mom said. “We’re missing a meeting. You know how I feel about that kind of thing.”

  She still didn’t get it. I studied her face, plain by anyone else’s standards, yet so beautiful to me. I looked at her eyebrow’s crescent scar and realized that another me was sitting in Handler’s office, staring into that doorless courtyard and wondering where this Mom was. Mom was never late, and that other me would be worried. I was stealing Mom from myself. Like fate had stolen her from me. It made my head spin.

  “I’m not your Sov.”

  “Of course you’re mine.”

  I shook my head hard, but my lower lip trembled. I felt my palm against that trunk, bringing me to a Mom I could never have. How long could I keep her? “Go! Sorry!”

  Mom nodded. “Okay.” She held out her arm. “Come on.”

  Handler was right, after all. “I’m not your Sov! Be happy, Mom. I love you.” I pulled my hand from the spruce.

  Snow’s crunch underfoot.

  Cold’s bite. Blue light.

  A sense of transparency forced me to my knees. I gulped yet couldn’t drink enough air. I wobbled to my feet but fell back down. I curled into a ball to hold myself together, to keep from disintegrating into a billion molecules that drifted away on the frosty air.

  Bookmark:

  Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

  Werner Heisenberg

  In the very measuring of an object, we affect it. The same is true for observing an object’s position. This creates uncertainty when determining data.

  21

  Sovern?” A chick’s voice.

  I reached toward full consciousness but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk.

  “Sovern! Are you all right?”

  I knew that voice. I’d heard it today. Yet I still couldn’t place it.

  “Sovern, I’m going to call for an ambulance.”

  Great: Shelley Millhouse. Could this day get any worse?

  With every ounce of will I had, I sat up, swaying, my hands reaching out. No doubt I looked drunk.

  “I’m calling now.” I heard Shelley slide her phone from her pocket.

  I forced out, “No!” My eyelids were bricks. They inched open, searching for light, but it was dark out. Had that much time passed? I discerned Shelley crouching next to me, phone in hand.

  “You look terrible,” she said. “We should call an ambulance.”

  “No!” I rolled onto my hands and knees. The world swayed, and I rocked back to kneeling. I glanced at her. Judgment covered her face.

  “I’m not drunk. Or stoned.” Despite trying not to, I slurred my words. “I’m not!”

  She stood and looked down at me with horrified pity. “Okay, Sovern, you’re not drunk or stoned.”

  I squinted at my knees till I could make out the weave in my jeans. My legs were very cold, I realized. My feet were pins and needles. My hands ice. I was shaking. I probably could use an ambulance, but ambulance + me = how would I explain this to Dad?

  I took a deep breath and coughed on the icy air. I tried to stand. Shelley’s arm came around my waist. With her help, I staggered to my feet, but I was bigger than her, and she worked hard to steady me. We swayed, and without thinking, I pressed my hand against that spruce.

  Recreation path gone. Wildflowers.

  A brown butterfly with white outlined wings.

  Shelley gasped, and I yanked back my hand. I winced as she stumbled against my right side and flinched, mouth open.

  “What was that?” she said.

  “You saw it?”

  Conflicting thoughts played across her face. I should have let her think she was crazy. I definitely owed her, after how she’d ended our friendship.

  “I told you I’m not drunk,” I said.

  She studied me. The dark translated her brown coat and hair to black.

  “Fine,” I said. “You’re crazy.” I turned and started toward the gondola, but I had to rest my hands on my knees to steady myself.

  Shelley gripped my arm. “You need to get someplace warm.”

  “Can you help me to the gondola?” A quarter mile—I could endure her that far. She’d become such a goody-two-shoes—I couldn’t stand her—yet she’d seen that vision. This crappy day’s second confirmation that I wasn’t insane.

  “I live at City Center,” I added. “Please, I’m trying to go home.”

  “You live on the mountain again?” Her face was contorted by how hard she was thinking.

  “Obviously,” I said.

  She moved to my right side. She eyed me, and then touched me, testing. When nothing happened, she draped my arm across her shoulders. She glanced at the spruce.

  We shuffled along the path. I was four inches taller than her, so my arm wasn’t uncomfortable, but she still struggled to keep me upright and moving. After a hundred yards or so, I started to feel my feet touch the frost
y asphalt. Sensation crept up my legs, and I began carrying my own weight.

  Another five minutes, and I said, “I think I can walk now.” Shelley let go but escorted me like a bodyguard across Gem Bridge and up Ruby Street.

  The gondola appeared, all lights against the night, ready to haul folks to dinner at the top. No skiers were around. The clock tower read 5:30, and I felt a millimeter of relief. At least it wasn’t midnight. Dad would be home by now, but he hadn’t been there long—I could come up with an excuse for being this kind of late. I straightened, willing myself strong enough to act like nothing had happened. We walked across the groomed snow to the gondola’s maze.

  “Thanks.” I said it snotty.

  Shelley gnawed her lip, definitely trying to make sense of the last twenty minutes.

  I blew out a breath. “Actually, thanks.”

  “You made that happen,” she said. Not a question.

  “Don’t tell anyone.” Our eyes locked. “Please.”

  Dad’s voice startled us. “Well, hello, Shelley. I haven’t seen you in ages.” He approached, holding a clipboard pressed against his chest.

  Shelley croaked, “Yes.”

  He studied our odd expressions, but we didn’t offer any explanation. “How are your folks?” he said.

  “Good.” Shelley Millhouse, reduced to one word answers.

  Dad assessed us. “Going up?” he finally said to me.

  I nodded, and he strolled to the lifthouse. Shelley and I watched him.

  “See you,” I said.

  “See you,” Shelley said. Her hands, deep in her pockets, pushed out the front of her coat.

  At the lifthouse door, I glanced back, and she still stood there, watching. I nodded to her, and she nodded back. I followed Dad into a gondola car, my mind scrabbling for what to say. I slouched down, and Crystal Village rushed small below us as the car began its ascent.

  “I had a meeting that ran late.” Dad looked at me, expecting a reciprocal explanation, but I couldn’t make myself lie, and I certainly couldn’t tell him the truth. I slouched back against the glass wall, worn out.