Chaos Theory

by M Evonne Dobson

  “But if this friend could get hurt, aren’t you obligated to tell us?”

  I think about Gravel Voice, Daniel’s handler. “No, not this time.”

  Everything explodes inside—memories of the smell of Daniel’s copper and brass gory blood, the sounds of his groans and of boots smashing into flesh, the weight and feel of the drug baggie, and the gravel rasp of She-Wants-to-Buy-Drugs’ voice. Like a five-year-old, I climb into mom’s arms and bawl. Side by side, we lie on the sofa while she holds me tight and strokes my back, not saying a word. I love her for that.

  When it’s over, I use another tissue to wipe away tears and snot. I hadn’t broken apart like this even after Grandma died. Then she says, “You’re growing up, Kami. You’ll have secrets, but I’m here when you want to share. Just promise me one thing?”

  It comes out like a planned speech. While I cried, she decided what to say. “What?”

  “Think how you’ll feel if something happens to your friend? We’re here to help.”

  Crappy, but what can Mom and Dad do to help? Daniel’s dealing drugs, but he’s working with the police. Anything we do can screw it up. Mom waits, hoping I’ll share my secret. I don’t. I know her well. She’s going to tell Dad. They’ll give me space to work it out, maybe a week—no more. And then there’d be a TALK. I hate TALKs.

  The TV moves on to Late Night recast of Craig Ferguson. We laugh at whatever he says—funny or not. It’s good to be in Mom’s arms; they’re warm and safe. Why hadn’t I ever climbed into them after Grandma died? Sage…Thud. Sweet honeysuckle…Thud.

  Blizzard warnings for a late Saturday into Sunday storm scroll across the television. Everything will shut down for twenty-four hours once it hits.

  “There goes our ride on Sunday,” I say. Sundays we ride. Mom owns a quarter horse named Suzy and boards her at a nearby stable. They aren’t my thing. I ride, but not well—still, once a week, I’m happy to share her big beast passion. It’s our together time.

  She says, “Lessons will close down early tomorrow. How about we go Saturday instead and try to beat the storm?” Saturdays, the stable arena is booked. Early morning is the hunter/jumper lessons; late morning, the newbies have beginning lessons; and then, in the afternoon, the Western students show up for lessons and ring work. Evening is an older crowd hanging out. Mom’s right. Tomorrow with the blizzard, it would clear out early.

  “Sure,” I say and snuggle down into her vanilla warmth and love.

  Five

  The cold bites at my nose while we saddle. Outside, the bright sun cuts through the tree-lined path to the public riding trails along the river. We follow the snow-trampled prints of other horses. My rented ride’s a long-legged, bay school horse named Henry. Suzy has a shorter stride but the bay’s so lazy, I have to push him to keep up.

  The river we’re beside is the same one from last night, only eight miles north. With that thought, mental images flash of Daniel’s broken body. Remembered sounds of a human body pummeled distract me.

  Mom and Suzy plow down the riverbank through the drifted snow and onto the solid ice. Henry follows with reluctance. I have to pound him a bit with my heels. Surprised, he skitters on the ice past Mom to the other side. Laughing, I leave her behind. As I squeeze my legs, Henry, like a young colt new to snow, leaps up the far bank. On the opposite riding path, I let him out. His long legs leap, but then his pace slows. As snow starts to fall, Mom and Suzy catch up.

  Reaching a large open field beyond the trees, I slow Henry to a jog. A girl I don’t know well is there riding an Arabian lesson horse. She’s a freshman named Trish, Swaps-Stall-Cleaning-for-Ride-Time. She has trekked the gray through the snow, making a giant fox and geese circle with four spokes cutting across it. With a whoop, Mom sends Suzy into it. Like a little kid, she yells out, “I’m the fox!” Trish laughs and cues the gray into a canter, racing away from Mom on the tracks. I kick lazy Henry into the center point, spinning away from whatever direction Mom heads. She leaves off chasing the fast gray and races for me in the center. Surprised, Henry stumbles in the snow and Mom swipes at my helmet. Thump.

  “You’re fox!” She screams.

  Henry takes off at a run. He almost plows into the caught-off-guard gray and I swing a hand at the freshman’s arm. Thump. Now she’s fox. With a great deal of skill, she slides the Arab into a stop with snow plowing up all around her, rolls back, and races past me for Mom and Suzy. Henry, once more the tired old fellow, saunters back to the center and do our best to stay out of their way as the faster and younger horses chase each other. Snow that started as a wisp turns to a trickle and then a steady shower.

  Tired of the game, we work our way, three abreast, along the riding path back into the woods. Fresh snow has filled the frozen riverbed. Mom frets. “I hope we didn’t leave too late.”

  “Me too. I don’t want to share a stall with Henry tonight. He’ll forget I’m there and step on me.”

  Mom laughs, but she pushes Suzy into a trot, breaking a snow path for us to follow.

  Swaps-Cleaning-Stalls-for-Ride-Time and the Arab fall in beside me. “Your mom is cool.” She pulls out her phone and reads her texts. “Yep. My mom’s ticked. The city stopped plowing. She’s worried about how to get me home. Our car is in the shop and not working. Usually I walk it, but in this mess…I’ll probably have to sleep in the common room.”

  I’d been kidding about sleeping in a stall. The stable common room is heated with a small diesel oil stove, but even cranked up, the damn thing makes you Mercury—boiling on one side, freezing on the other. Students do get caught in storms and have to sleep over, which is why the stable owner, Peggy, keeps some ratty-smelling sleeping bags in the supply closet.

  Entering the stable yard, the wind picks up to white out conditions, and Peggy is waiting for us. She doesn’t say hi or smile. She shouts through the wind, “You’re the last.”

  Thank God Mom’s with us or Peggy would give us hell. She opens the extra-wide human door with its window rather than the big sliding doors. She’s already locked those down against the weather. We dismount, leading the horses through and out of the cold wind. The storm’s roar gives way to metal roof creaks. Horse hooves thump on the aisleway. There’s a special smell when you enter a stable—hay, wood shavings, underlying astringents from horse liniment, and yes, horse hair and manure, but it’s not an overwhelming gag like cattle or hogs give off. It’s kind of sweet and earthy.

  We set to work unsaddling the horses and bed them down. Swaps-Stall-Cleaning-For-Ride-Time looks scared. I say, “Hey. If we get our cars out of here, I’ll take you home, okay? If not, we’ll be sleeping right next to you.”

  With a nervous grin, she sends off a text to her mom.

  Mom and I came in two cars, assuming that if the blizzard held off, she’d stick around to gab with other riders. When it’s time to leave, Peggy leads the way in her big dually pickup, making it down the curving drive and then plowing up the rise to the county gravel road. Snow spews out behind her. She waits for us, safely out of our way. Her tail lights wink through the blowing snow and the open barb and chain-link sliding gates. The two panels are rarely closed. Mom’s SUV struggles, but she guns it, making it out. Trish and I grin at each other as I floor it too, sending EB roaring up the little hill. Like the trooper she is, EB charges through the snow, although her for-once-pumping-hot-air heater abruptly stops working in spiteful retaliation.

  Through a frosted window, Swaps-Stall-Cleaning-for-Ride-Time waves to my mom and we head for her home through unplowed streets. I follow her instructions to a 1970s duplex. The front porch light is on.

  “Geez, how are you going to get inside?” The snow’s drifted up to the door handle, and the attached single-car garage looks like a postcard from Switzerland.

  “There’s a side door. I’ll get in.” As she picks up her riding helmet from the floorboard, she stops and reaches for something, turning it o
ver in her riding gloved hands. “What are you doing with Julia’s photo?”

  “What?” I pull off one of my winter mittens and take it from her.

  “Julia Jamison. That’s her school photo from eighth grade. What are you doing with it?”

  What an innocent face. Most school photos are stupid and ugly, but this girl’s an angel. Her curly blond hair caps her head like a halo and she has one of those Irish noses that tip up. Her eyes are the kind of blue in fairy tales. They’re Daniel’s eyes. Not only does she look pretty, even in a school sweatshirt, but you can tell she’d been bubbling with laughter when they snapped the photo.

  This little girl died from an overdose using Daniel’s illegal drug stash? How could such an angelic face like this commit suicide?

  How does Daniel live with what happened?

  Trish starts crying. “What are you doing with it? You don’t even know her.”

  “I don’t know,” I stutter.

  She jumps out of the car saying, “You’re just like them. All those crazy people that came to her funeral bawling. They didn’t know her! They didn’t care!” Then Trish takes off through the deep snow.

  I turn the school photo over and read the inscription, I love you Daniel and will miss you! I hate Dad for sending you away! Every inch of the photo’s back is covered in tiny X’s and O’s. It had obviously fallen out of Daniel’s wallet when I’d thrown it at him.

  ***

  Sunday, I hole up with Mom and Dad, spending all day thinking about Daniel and Julia. At 8 p.m., I phone Peggy to get Swaps-Stall-Cleaning-for-Ride-Time’s phone number and then punch in the numbers to call her. Finding Julia’s photo in my car has thrown her. She tries to put me off.

  “Why ask me about Julia? She’s gone. I don’t want to talk about her. You didn’t even know her!”

  “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  “You had her school photo in your car. What kind of sick person are you? Leave her be.” Trish speaks faster and faster, ending that last bit like an accusation.

  Afraid she’ll hang up, I say, “Trish, it’s complicated, but I promise I don’t have some morbid fascination with death or anything. I have a reason.”

  I want more data about Daniel’s sister. Trish has answers. “Listen, I know this hurts, but can we talk? Wednesday night at the stables, okay?” Then, there’s silence for a long time. “Trish, I’m just trying to figure out what happened. Don’t you have questions too?”

  Trish’s sob is painful to hear. She says, “Yes, but she’s gone. We’ll never have answers. I don’t think we can have answers. She’s dead, Kami. For most of my life, she was my best friend and she’s dead. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “Please talk with me, Trish. Wednesday night, okay? I’ll help you clean stalls and feed. Afterward, we’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

  Trish sniffs and clothing rustles. I imagine her wiping her eyes and nose with her sleeve. “Okay. And Kami?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m only doing this because I had fun with your mom. You’ve been going out there every Sunday for years. You’ve never said more than hi.”

  It’s my turn to be quiet. Yeah, I can overlook the social niceties like that. “I’m sorry.” And mean it. Heck, in my mind she’s She-Who-Swaps-Stall-Cleaning-For-Ride-Time. “Wednesday night, I’ll be there. And thank you, Trish.”

  On my desk, Julia’s angel eyes sear my soul.

  Six

  Early Monday, I stand in front of my five-by-one-by-one-foot locker. Additional weekend Internet searches failed to redeem my chaos theory experiment. It’s hopeless. Out of my backpack, I pull a leftover HIPAA brochure from Daniel’s ER visit and add it and a control marble to the locker. No clinkers.

  Julia’s photo is in my backpack. I spend the day looking for Daniel to give it back. Once, we meet in the hall, each heading the opposite direction. For a quick breath of Irish Spring soap and pine trees, we stand face-to-face, but then we hurry past each other. It’s the perfect time to give him Julia’s photo, but I don’t.

  Sandy’s “Know Your Locker” sign creates a buzz and people ask about it. “Private joke,” I laugh. Then after classes, Sam and Sandy are standing in front of it, holding hands, and isn’t that cute?

  He asks, “Sandy says your science project is about chaos theory? She says it’s a bust?”

  “Yeah. It isn’t going anywhere. It’s going to be a yearbook footnote for everyone to laugh at all their lives.”

  “And it’s about chaos in your locker? It’s in there?”

  “You tell me.” I open it up to reveal its glorious chaotic guts. The locker likes Sam, because nothing flies out at him.

  Sam the Literate Journalist comes up with a stunned, “Zonkers.”

  Sandy pokes him in the side to recharge him. “Wanna see how it works?”

  “Sure.”

  Why not? I say, “What looks interesting?”

  He peers into the locker like a kid at a grab-it arcade game. “That.” He points to a suspicious lump about two thirds of the way down.

  I note the details in my chaos journal: Blue w/white swirl — Sam from the school website. Then I balance the marble on top of the locker jumble. I know what the strange lump is. It’s a small advertisement football bearing an insurance logo. During the opening game, it went astray and landed at my feet as we marched off the football field after halftime. I’d picked it up.

  I pull the small football out and the jumble shifts. Gravity does the rest. Sam’s and other marbles roll and rattle against items inside the locker walls. The locker pays him homage; one marble clanks with an entirely different sound as it drops onto the locker’s metal base. That is a crowning victory.

  I drop to my knees, eager to find it. Sandy literally bounces in her cowboy boots. “A clinker!!!! Is it one of mine?” She and Sam join me on the floor. Most of the guys passing by in the hallway stop too. Not because they’re interested, but because we’re blocking it. With nothing else to do while they wait, they turn to watch. With long practice, I reach into the locker and run my hand across the bottom. Things shift again, but Sam and Sandy keep me safe from any escapees by lifting their arms and hands up, making interlocking X’s to hold stuff back. Like this one, most of the marbles fall into one of the two back corners. It’s running about fifty-fifty on the right or the left side.

  While I ease the marble out and inspect it, Sandy slams the door shut and spins the combo lock. Students in the hallway jam up, but Sam and Sandy remain on their knees with me as I flip through my data notebook to the master marble list.

  “Whose is it?” Sandy asks in a hushed voice.

  Running my fingers down the page, I find the notation for the clear marble with its yellow stripe. “It’s Coach Jordison’s.”

  Sandy says, “I remember!! He added it himself after the playoff game last November! You pull out a tiny plastic football and Coach Jordison’s marble drops? What are the odds on that?”

  They look awestruck. “Hey guys, it’s just coincidence, the luck of the draw. There’s no secret meaning behind it.”

  One of the backed-up students says, “Great. You’ve found the universe’s mysteries in your locker; now can we get by? I’m going to miss my bus.”

  “Sorry.” We all climb to our feet. The hallway jam unplugs and people flow by again.

  Sam asks, “What exactly is chaos theory?”

  While I explain it, he takes notes on a small moleskin notepad—far better than his usual napkin scribbles. One of them is stuffed in my locker. The moleskin meant Sam was upping his reporting habits. The crowded hallway empties fast as Sam asks his questions. When he finishes, he asks, “Is it okay if I post a vid interview on the school website?”

  My closed locker and data are meaningless without a formula, so outing it isn’t a problem. “Sure. Nobody wants the jump on this experiment.” We
open the locker again; pause life for clinkers (none), and then Sam takes a smartphone video while Sandy and I stand beside it. He repeats his questions for YouTube posterity. What does it matter if it’s on the ‘Net? Chaos theory in a five-by-one-by-one-foot experiment is dead in the water. It’s nothing more than a carnival game now.

  He asks one last question. “Any advice on the care and feeding of your locker?”

  “Yeah, don’t put anything organic in there. It starts to stink.” Sam’s camera hand jiggles and the camera bobbles when he laughs. He and Sandy leave. It’s funny how neither of them mentions the sweet honeysuckle and sage scents that drift out. And for the official record, I never put anything into my locker that would smell or rot away. I have my standards of insanity. Sticking my hand into that locker and finding a big fat cockroach rather than a marble isn’t my definition of science investigation.

  Closing the locker on the haunting scents, I listen for any further clinkers. Nope. The locker’s spoken all it wants today.

  Daniel doesn’t show up at the college library on Monday (no MA for us, him for injuries and me because of the snow), Tuesday, or Wednesday. Maybe he found another place to hang out. I hope so, but it’s odd to feel alone in my hideaway. Julia’s photo remains in my backpack.

  ***

  My meeting with Trish is late Wednesday and it’s one of those yucky sub-zero-cover-your-nose days. Cover your nose or you’ll get frostbite. I wrap up in endless clothing layers and curse my Julia fixation. I’d X’d Daniel out of my life, but Julia’s suicide was a whole different story. I’d Googled her. The Tribune had photos of her with her mom and dad at charity events. There were soccer photos and even an old photo of Brownie-uniformed Julia and Trish in front of the annual cookie sale table. It could have been a duplicate of the one published of Sandy and me at that age in front of the same table in the same store. My need to understand Julia’s death hasn’t faded; it’s grown.