The Comfort of Strangers
The A terminal is already awake. People are milling around in search of food and information about the storm.
I run back to the shopping rotunda and up the escalator to the small deserted balcony I found yesterday, but it’s completely overrun.
So I keep going.
I cross the bridge over the snowed-in runway, bypassing every moving walkway I encounter. That was how I got into this mess. By taking mechanical sidewalks. By cheating. By trying to move faster than one is supposed to move.
That’s how I crashed into Xander and this whole nightmare began.
Along the way, through my haze of snot and tears, I search my phone. I search the whole damn Internet for a solution.
How do you recover a deleted text message?
The answer is, you can’t. Not with messages that old.
They’re gone forever.
Just like Lottie.
Just like her last words to me.
The interfaith chapel in the concourse building is empty and dark when I burst in. I collapse into a seat in the back row and sob. I haven’t cried this hard since I was ten years old and I broke my wrist when Lottie decided she wanted to teach me how to Rollerblade but forgot to teach me how to stop.
The chapel is small but homey. Three rows of upholstered chairs face the front of the room. Books of various faiths are spread out across a single nondenominational altar.
I’m grateful to find a place where I can finally be alone.
I bow my head and weep into my hands, thinking about everything I’ve lost in the past year. Everything I’ve lost in the past twenty-four hours. I think about every piece of evidence I’ve collected that proves life isn’t fair. That bad things happen to good people. That the world is a storm that will do anything to suck you in.
Surround you.
Suffocate you.
Until you can’t even remember what calm feels like.
Until chaos feels normal.
“Are you okay?” a female voice asks, startling me out of my thoughts and tears.
I could have sworn I was alone in here, but when I lift my head, I see someone—a woman—sitting in the front row. Her back is to me but she looks years older than me. She must have come in while I was crying.
I try to get a look at her face, but her entire body is cast in a strange, eerie shadow. I can’t figure out what light source is causing it though. This is a windowless room.
I sniffle and rub my finger under my nose. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
The figure remains motionless, facing forward, but she repeats the question. “Are you okay?” Her voice is soft yet strangely familiar. An echo of something so close I can touch it. It wraps a blanket of warmth around me.
I consider lying. Why would I tell a perfect stranger the truth when I’ve barely admitted it to myself?
Then it hits me that I’ve already done that.
I’ve already told Xander things that I haven’t told anyone.
“My best friend died,” I say woodenly, and I’m awed by how freeing it feels to say that aloud again. “One year ago today. And no, I’m not okay.”
When the woman doesn’t respond, or even turn around, I keep going. Because it feels good. Because it feels right.
Because it’s time.
“And I thought I could hang on to her forever. I thought if I could just keep one tiny piece of her alive, then everything would be fine. She would never really be gone. But now that piece is gone too, and I feel so alone. I feel more alone right now than the day she died. I thought if I could just control the rest of the world, then this one uncontrollable part of it wouldn’t matter. Or it wouldn’t hurt. But it turns out, I was wrong. Because it hurts like hell.”
The tempest of tears is back, dripping down my cheeks like melted snow on a window.
I wait for the silhouetted woman to react the way everyone reacts. With shock. With sorrow. With vows of empty sympathy.
But she doesn’t. Instead, in a calm, even tone, she says, “I lost someone too. A long time ago. Someone really close to me. Someone who protected me. Who looked out for me even more than I looked out for myself.”
Something about her words hits me deep in my core. Rattles around in my brain. Drifts over my skin, leaving behind a wake of tiny goose bumps.
“Do you miss them?” I ask, my throat thick with fire.
“Every single day.”
“Does that ever go away?”
She lets out a sigh. “No.”
I suddenly have this vivid memory of sitting in Lottie’s tree house the morning after my birthday party, drawing the landscape I saw outside the window. Exactly as I saw it. Exactly as it was.
“You’re lucky,” Lottie said, sitting next to me and staring out that same window. “That the world looks real to you.”
But it doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t look real. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a giant cosmic joke, and I’m the punch line.
“The world just looks messier without her,” I whisper so softly, I don’t even think it’s audible. I’m not even completely sure I said it aloud.
But I must have. Because a few seconds later, the woman responds. “Grief changes the way you see things forever. Because it changes you forever.”
More tears well up in my eyes. Will they ever stop now that they’ve started? I bury my head in my lap and cry for the loss of my friend. For the loss of my real world. For the loss of everything I thought I could hold on to.
“But I think that’s okay,” the woman says. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I reply in a shattered voice. “I don’t know if I know anything anymore.”
“You probably know more than you think you do,” she offers kindly.
I lift my head and wipe at my cheeks. “I know that this has been the worst year of my life.”
“But the New Year is only a few hours old,” she reminds me. “Maybe it will be better.”
“Maybe,” I admit.
We sit in silence for a long time, listening to the melody of the canned sound track piping in over the speaker system. Some generic meditation music. It doesn’t make me feel better, but it doesn’t agitate me either. It just is.
“Well,” the woman says with a note of finality. “I should probably go. My flight is leaving soon.”
She stands, and I crane my neck to try to get a look at her face, but the strange shadow seems to follow her through the chapel.
Where is it coming from?
Then, just as she opens the door, just before she steps through, a sliver of sunlight breaks through the darkness. Cuts through the storm like an omen of things to come. A sign that everything gets better. That tempests don’t last forever. It casts a single beam of light across the woman’s back and left shoulder, illuminating the familiar dark blue fabric of a flight attendant uniform.
And a single lock of shimmering, golden red hair.
She pauses in front of the doorway, keeping her back to me as she says, “Wanna hear something crazy?”
A shiver travels through my entire body. My heart pounds in my ears. My fingers twitch restlessly. My legs ache.
“Always,” I whisper aloud.
I can hear my voice reverberating back at me a million times. An echo in eternity. My entire life—our entire friendship—mirrored in that one single word.
Always.
“It’s almost 10:05 a.m.,” the woman says. And then she turns to leave.
“Wait!” I call out. Because I don’t want her to go. Because she feels like so much more than a stranger. She feels like someone I might have known. Maybe someone I will always know.
She stops in the doorway. One foot in and one foot out. A piece of her gone and a piece of her still here.
“This is the last time we’ll ever talk, isn’t it?” I ask.
There’s silence on the other side of the room, and for a minute I think she’s not going to answer. That she’s just going to leave. I close my eyes and squeeze them tight, steeling myself against the inevitable.
Then, in the faintest of whispers, she says, “Yes, it is.”
Moisture forms behind my closed eyelids. But it’s a different kind of crying now. There are no choked sobs. No desperate need to breathe. No agony.
It’s just quiet sadness.
Sadness that I’ll carry around for the rest of my life.
Sadness that I’ll eventually learn to live with.
Sadness that will become a part of me. Shape me. Make me stronger.
Because if I can live through this, I can live through anything.
“But that’s okay?” I ask.
There’s a smile in her voice as she replies. “I think that’s okay.”
When I open my eyes, the woman is gone, and I’m alone again. I reach for my phone and watch the clock tick over to 10:05 a.m.
For the past year I have been standing still. Too afraid to move forward. Too afraid it would mean leaving my best friend behind.
There is still so much that I fear.
Living another day without her.
Going home and forcing my mother to talk to me like a real person.
Walking into Dr. Judy’s office and finally telling her the whole truth.
Basically, everything that comes after this moment.
But I get up. I move. I walk to the door of the chapel. I open it. I step through to the other side.
Because the truth is, I’ve already left Lottie behind. Everything I’ve done in the past year, I’ve done without her. Everything I’ve done in the past twenty-one hours, I’ve done on my own.
I’ve always been Lottie’s best friend. Lottie’s sidekick. Lottie’s (reluctant) partner in crime. Squishy, undercooked peas to Lottie’s scrumptious, perfectly crisp carrots.
That’s been my identity since the day we met.
But what’s my identity now? It’s a question that’s been banging on the door of my subconscious for an entire year. And yet I still can’t answer it.
Or perhaps I’ve just been too terrified to answer it.
Terrified that an answer might actually exist. That the answer might actually make sense. That I might actually be someone without her.
I know where to go now. I know what I need to do. And that gives me the strength to move faster. That gives me the courage to run.
I pass Xander along the way. He’s coming from the walkway to the A terminal. He’s clearly been looking for me.
“Ryn,” he tries to say as I sail past. “I’m sorry about—”
“No!” I shout over my shoulder. “No more apologizing. From either of us.”
I can hear his footsteps behind me. “What are you doing?” he calls out.
I don’t answer. I don’t stop. I turn left and head straight for door 612. I barely pause long enough for it to sense my presence and open.
I run through it.
Into the quiet, empty street.
Into the beautiful white chaos.
Into the storm.
The fierce wind whips against my face. The violent snow stings my eyes until the world fades and all I can see is white.
Contrary to what some people think, white isn’t the absence of color. It’s all colors. It’s all things. It’s every possibility blended into one blinding light.
I may have stood still for too long. I may have refused to move forward and grieve the death of my best friend. But Lottie wasn’t perfect either. She moved too fast. She was always racing to the next thing, trying to be the next person, reinventing herself over and over again.
All this time, I thought it was because she was so full of life, she simply couldn’t contain it into one existence. All this time, I thought it was because she was fearless.
That’s what she wanted me to believe.
That’s what I did believe for far too long.
But it was an illusion.
Lottie wasn’t fearless. She wasn’t running to the next thing. She was running from the things that hurt her. The things that frightened her. She moved on so she wouldn’t have to face the demons that chased her.
And through it all, I was right there beside her. She needed me just as much as I needed her. I was the planet to her sun. I lit up because I was near her. I spent so many years trying to catch a fragment of her light that I failed to realize I could shine on my own.
And Lottie. She needed someone to orbit around her.
In the end, we both lost. And we both won.
Xander is suddenly behind me. I turn around and grab his shirt and pull him to me. I keep pulling and pulling until I can feel him everywhere.
“Are you crazy?” he yells, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I release a wild, uninhibited laugh. “Yes!” I scream, and then I press my lips to his.
What if life is unpredictable?
What if people leave for no reason?
What if losing is just another part of living?
What if the universe can’t be controlled?
What if chaos is good?
What if some questions can never be answered?
What if that’s okay?
I think that’s okay.