Stranded Passenger Bingo
“Open it! Open it!” Lottie bounced up and down, which I didn’t think was the brightest idea, given that we were in the tree house and who knew how stable this construction was. I doubted the previous owners of Lottie’s house had gotten all the proper permits and inspections.
I carefully peeled back the wrapping paper of the small rectangular gift. I’d never been a ripper. I’d always been a peeler. It drove Lottie crazy.
“C’mon!” Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. “Molasses melts faster than this.”
“I don’t think that’s the phrase.”
“The phrase is, ‘Rip it already!’ ”
The Halloween/Ryn’s Birthday Bash was over. All of the guests had gone home, and Lottie had dragged me up to the tree house. I was worried she wanted to drink more and that I would have to restrain her, because she was already pretty intoxicated. But as soon as we made it up the ladder, she didn’t lunge for the tiny liquor bottles like she usually did. She lunged for something else.
My birthday gift.
I peeled off the last strip of shiny silver paper and stared down at the object in my hand.
“Um . . .” I hesitated. “It’s . . .” I looked up at her. “You shouldn’t have?”
Lottie burst into uncontrollable fits of drunken laughter. It lasted a good twenty seconds. At one point she actually hooted. “You should have seen your face! Oh my God. You would have thought I’d given you a dead horse head.”
“I don’t think you have to specify that the horse head is dead. Once they disconnect it from the body, the dead is implied.”
This made her laugh more and stagger backward a bit. I reached out and grabbed her by the arm to steady her.
She half sat/half fell onto the ground and crawled over to her stash. She selected a miniature bottle of Grey Goose, unscrewed the top, and tipped her head back. Most of the vodka went into her mouth. The rest dribbled down the front of her white Twister dress.
I never knew how Lottie’s father acquired so many of those tiny bottles. And I never asked. He always just came home from his business trips with loads of them, and Lottie always just lifted them from his bag.
She grimaced at the taste of the alcohol, then tossed the empty bottle haphazardly over her shoulder, and settled into a cross-legged position.
“So,” I began again, shaking my gift. “Why did you get me a Doctor Who phone case?”
“It’s a joke! Because I know how much you loooove Doctor Who.”
I lowered down next to her, setting the Tardis phone case on the floor. “Yeah,” I responded dryly. “Totally love it. It’s a grown man who travels through time in a big blue box.”
She leaned forward to swat at my leg but missed by about a foot. “Ryn Ryn. You have no imagination.”
Ryn Ryn. She called me that only when she was drunk. Sometimes she added a cheesy effect to make it sound like an old-fashioned ringing phone.
Her failed swatting effort caused her to tip forward, and I caught her just in time. “And you have no tolerance.”
She gave up trying to stay upright and collapsed with her head in my lap. I pulled her long red hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. I always loved that hair. Envied that hair. It was the most vibrant shade of red I’d ever seen. Like a brilliant sunset. Most people thought it was straight from a bottle. Lottie never corrected them. She just let them go on thinking whatever they wanted.
But I knew the truth.
Lottie would never let any chemicals near her perfect hair.
“Ryn Ryn?”
“Mmm?” I murmured.
Her voice changed then. Grew more sober. “I have a serious question to ask you.”
I stared down at her grave expression. “What?”
“Why don’t you like Doctor Who?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. Lottie tried to act offended. “I’m dead serious! This is a very important matter. I’m not sure we can continue to be friends. It’s just too big of an issue.”
“You only started watching it because of your crush on Mr. Bowman in the eighth grade.”
“What does that matter?” she asked. “I still loved it once I started watching it.”
Of course, the crush was totally inappropriate, being that Lottie was thirteen and Mr. Bowman was twenty-seven, but propriety had never been Lottie’s strong suit. When Mr. Bowman referenced the show in science class, Lottie immediately went home and added it to her Netflix queue. It was the most interest she’d ever shown in science in her entire life. By the time the semester ended, Lottie had moved on to her next crush, but she was still hooked on the show.
“Why, Ryn?” Lottie pestered. “Why don’t you love it like I love it?”
“There was an entire episode about farting politicians,” I reminded her.
She tried to push herself up, but it didn’t work out too well. Her head plonked back down into my lap, and I continued to stroke her hair. “It was a metaphor!” she slurred. “About politicians being full of hot air.”
“Ahhhh!” I said, faking an epiphany.
“You get it now?”
“I get it now.”
Her eyes started to sink closed. “Now you like the show?”
“Now I like the show.”
She giggled hot air into my paisley hippie skirt. “You’re such a bad liar.”
“I guess I don’t have as much practice as you.”
That made her giggle harder. “Wanna hear something crazy?”
“Always.”
“I totally let Emmett put Right Hand on Red.”
I gasped in mock outrage. “You did not!”
“I did. And I might have let him explore some other colors too.”
“His Disney princess must have loved that.”
Lottie frowned. “Huh?”
“Never mind. What about the mystery man you said you had your eye on tonight?”
She pulled her legs up to her chest and snuggled tighter against me. “He turned out to be a wanker.”
“A wanker?”
She nodded. “A big wanker.”
“So where’s Emmett now? Why didn’t you bring him up here?”
“It’s your birthday. I wanted to spend it with you.”
I smiled in the darkness of the tree house.
“And besides,” she went on, “I had to give you your big present.”
I glanced at the phone case next to my leg. “Thanks,” I deadpanned. “I’ll cherish it always.”
“Ryn Ryn?” she asked after I was sure she’d fallen asleep.
“Mmm?”
“The phone case was a joke, you know?”
“I know, Lottie.”
“You don’t have to use it.”
I chuckled. “Thanks for the permission.”
“I know you probably won’t use it anyway.”
I leaned back on my hands. “Nope. Probably not.”
I clutch the phone case tightly in my hand and step off the escalator onto the main floor of the A terminal.
“There you are!” a voice shouts. I look around, even though I’m positive the voice is not talking to me. Who would be talking to me? I don’t know anyone here.
“Over here!” it calls out. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
I stop a few feet from the second escalator that will take me down to the train platform and look left and right. My gaze finally lands on a pair of long, scrawny arms waving wildly in the air. I turn around, certain whomever the voice is summoning has to be standing right behind me, but the only person there is a harried-looking businessman pushing past me to board the escalator.
“This is my sister. We’re traveling together.”
The voice is now directly in front of me, and I can see it belongs to a young boy in jeans and an oversize sweater. I recognize him from gate A44. He was slouching in a chair with a misspelled sign around his neck. I peer down to see the sign is still there. And it’s still misspelled.
UNACCOMPANIED MINER
He’s standing next to an airline employee in a dark blue suit with a name tag that reads SIMON.
“Sis, where have you been?” The boy sounds annoyed now.
I’m still confused as hell, convinced a guy with a camera is going to jump out at any minute and tell me I’m going to be on YouTube.
“What?” I ask.
The boy shoots me a look. “I was just telling Simon here that he doesn’t need to accompany me anymore because I’m traveling with my sister who’s older than sixteen and, according to the airline’s company policy as stated on their website FAQ page, as long as I’m traveling with someone older than sixteen, I’m not considered an unaccompanied minor.” He glares back at Simon. “Minor. M-I-N-O-R. Not M-I-N-E-R. I don’t work in a coal quarry.” He turns back to me and lets out a huff. “Amateurs.”
I can tell Simon is fighting off the eye roll of the century. He somehow manages to keep his composure as he asks me, “Is this true? Are you traveling with Troy Benson?”
The boy’s eyes narrow in a disconcerting mix of supplication and warning.
I don’t want to get involved. This is exactly the kind of awkward encounter that I tend to avoid. And yet, there’s something in the boy’s eyes—the same misery I saw back at the gate that I see every time I look in the mirror. And before I know it, I hear myself saying, “Yes. He’s with me.”
And I instantly regret it. I know nothing about this kid. Or the airline’s policies. What if they ask to see my ID? What if they want some sort of proof that we’re related? What if I get in trouble?
Troy’s pink cheeks deflate like two balloons. He wheels on Simon. “See! So now, shoo! Skedaddle. Scram. Go back to being pointless.”
Simon looks like he’s going to clock this kid in the face, but he also looks completely relieved to have the opportunity to ditch him.
Whether or not he actually believes this little charade becomes irrelevant when he turns to me and says, “He’s your responsibility now. Just make sure he gets on his flight.” Then he spins on his heels and stalks away.
The boy—Troy Benson—sighs dramatically and rips the cord from his neck. “Thank you. You saved my life.” He dumps the paper sign ceremoniously into a nearby trash can. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. Do you know how humiliating that was? Having to be chaperoned to and from the lavatory?”
I smile politely. “I can imagine.”
“Such imbeciles!” he rants, still riled up from the incident. “I have a college degree from Stanford. I’m currently getting my master’s at Harvard. And I was walking around with an ‘Unaccompanied Minor’ sign around my neck. And it was misspelled!”
I blink in surprise at him. “You’re getting your master’s? How old are you?”
He hooks his thumbs cockily into the straps of his backpack. “Fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” I spit back. I could have sworn he was ten.
The cocky expression on his face vanishes. “Well, don’t sound so flabbergasted about it.”
I school my face. “Sorry. I just—”
“Okay, so technically I’m still thirteen. I turn fourteen next week.” His bitter scowl is back. “But those idiots at the airlines have some inane policy that you can’t travel by yourself unless you’re fourteen. I mean, seriously. It’s six days, people!” He’s yelling now, shouting into the crowd, as if they’re all to blame for the inane airline policy. I cringe and take a small step away from him. “Sorry,” he offers. “I can get a little agitated. You should see me in class when we discuss condensed matter.”
My head is swimming. “So you’re some kind of child genius?”
“We prefer the term ‘prodigy.’ ‘Genius’ was tainted when those morons at the Apple Store started using it. Ooh! Look at me! I can do a hard reset on your phone! I’m a genius!” His voice gets all high and squeaky. Then it cracks. He clears his throat, looking embarrassed. “Anyway. Thanks for your help. I’m off to observe the second law of thermodynamics as proven in an isolated airport environment.”
I squint, hoping it will make this boy less confusing. It doesn’t. “The what?”
“The second law of thermodynamics,” Troy repeats, then motions to the masses of people swarming around us, as if this simple gesture will help clarify the garble coming out of his mouth. “The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time?”
I shake my head, still not following.
Troy sighs. My ignorance is obviously a complete inconvenience to him. “Basically, it says that any system, if left unattended or isolated, will eventually result in entropy. Or chaos.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hands. “Take this airport, for example. We’re all trapped here in this snowstorm—hence, isolated—with nowhere to go and left to the whim of the worthless blockheads running the place. And what do you get?” He points to the food court where the zoo animals are still fighting for control of the limited resources. “Chaos.”
I follow the direction of his finger, my gaze lingering a beat too long on two parents trying to distract one screaming child while keeping the other from running away in a fit of giggles.
When I turn back around, Troy is gone. Panicked, I scan the busy shopping rotunda, finally spotting his dark hair bobbing up and down as he makes his way through the crowd. I run to catch up to him. “Wait!” I say. “You can’t just leave. I’m kind of responsible for you now. Simon says.”
He chuckles at the pun. “Simon also says, ‘Touch your nose!’ ‘Touch your ears!’ ‘Touch your head!’ ” Then he walks off again. I jog to keep pace with him. He stops and faces me. “Look. You’re nice and all, but I’m kind of on a mission here.”
“A mission?” I ask dubiously.
“No offense, but you wouldn’t understand.”
“I—” I stammer, unsure how to respond to that. I’ve never had my intelligence blatantly insulted by an almost-fourteen-year-old before. “I—” I repeat lamely.
“Yeah, you keep thinking about that. I’ll catch ya later. Thanks for helping spring me from the pokey.”
Then once again, he’s off, disappearing into the chaos. And I’m left too dumbfounded to follow.
Lottie and I would often spend the night in the tree house. Half the time it was because she was drunk and didn’t want her parents to know, the other half it was because she just didn’t want to go inside. I never understood this. Her house was gorgeous. It had everything you could ever want in a house. And yet, every so often, Lottie would just refuse to go in.
The morning after my birthday party, I woke up with the sun. Lottie was still passed out on her sleeping bag. I didn’t want to wake her, so I quietly reached for the sketch pad I kept in the tree house, flipped to the first blank page, and started to draw.
I wasn’t picky about my subjects. I drew whatever I felt I could do justice to. Whatever I could realistically bring to life. That morning it was the view from the window. Lottie’s stunning Mediterranean-style garden lit up by the sun.
“It looks like a photograph,” Lottie said, startling me. I hadn’t realized she was awake. I also hadn’t realized how long I’d been drawing.
This happened a lot. I would often get lost in my sketches. Minutes and hours would disappear right into the page, blending in with the shadows and smooth lines.
“Thanks,” I said, putting the finishing touches on the big leaf maple that stood in the center of the garden, next to the gazebo. The real tree outside was already scorched with the fiery shades of fall, but I never drew in color. I preferred the simplicity of my black sketch pen. It turned everything into black and white. Right and wrong. Truth and lie.
It uncomplicated a complicated world.
“How do you do it?” Lottie asked, sitting cross-legged beside me so she could peer over my shoulder. “How do you make it look it so real?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess I just draw what I see.”
She leaned back on her hands, quietly pensive for a moment. Then she mumbled, “You’re lucky, then.”
My pen came to a stop as I turned to look at her. Even with the hangover that I knew was swirling around her like a storm cloud, she still glowed. “Lucky how?”
She turned and glanced out the same window I’d been staring out for I don’t know how long. At the same beautiful house surrounded by the same beautiful garden. I watched two lines appear between her eyebrows—a barely visible crack in her otherwise flawless façade.
Then she sighed and said, “That the world looks real to you.”
I have to take the train to get to the B gates. It reminds me of a much cleaner version of the BART. And much emptier. I’m the only person in my car. I imagine during a normal airport day, these trains are packed full with passengers arriving, departing, connecting, but today is not a normal day. No one needs to get anywhere within the airport. Everyone’s waiting upstairs to leave the airport.
I disembark onto another deserted platform and ride the escalator up. The B terminal is even worse than the A terminal. There are so many people, I can barely see the other side of the shopping rotunda.
It’s clear, from my limited view, that this is the nicer terminal. Every airport has one. An updated, fancy terminal that all the money goes into. The restaurant selections here are better. The shopping is more diverse. Even the modern art sculpture in the center of the rotunda is more impressive.
According to the signs, gate B89 is all the way at the end of the terminal. I feel like I’m walking for miles. I must be halfway to Kansas by now. I glance out the nearest window just to make sure the storm is still out there, and I haven’t walked clear into another climate.
It would be faster if I just took the moving walkways, but I think I’ve proven I can’t be trusted on those.
I hit a literal dead end at gate B60 and, for a moment, wonder if I’ve been going the wrong way this entire time. Then I notice a narrow corridor leading off to the right, like a back alley. Do airports have bad neighborhoods? Because I feel like I’m walking over to the wrong side of the tracks.
The corridor opens into a smaller extension terminal. Less crowded. Brighter. Definitely a well kept secret.
The burger place Muppet Guy was talking about is called New Belgium Hub. There’s a menu just outside of the seating area, and I’m pleased to see that it does, in fact, have a veggie burger, among many other selections.
“Hey! Ocean! Danny Ocean!” I hear the familiar voice and look up to see Muppet Guy standing at the back of the line, waiting to place his order at the counter.
I blow out a breath—here goes nothing—and sidle up to him.
“You came,” he states the obvious and, admittedly, I get a tiny surge of delight watching those perfect teeth flash as he smiles. Only because they’re so damn straight. They should be in a museum or something.
“I came,” I restate the obvious, feeling incredibly stupid.
I don’t talk to guys. Lottie always did the talking. I just did the standing around and nodding. But I have a feeling that tactic won’t work so well here.
“I was hungry,” I add.
There’s that chuckle again. “I’ll try not to take offense by that.”
My face warms. “It wasn’t . . . I mean, I wasn’t . . .”
“Relax. I’m kidding.” And then he touches me. It’s the simplest, most innocent of touches. On my arm. A graze. It’s nothing.
It’s nothing.
“So,” he says, changing the subject. “How long have you been a vegetarian?”
Eleven months, thirty days, and eighteen hours.
I swallow. “About a year.”
He nods. “That’s cool. I was a vegetarian for about a week.”
“Only a week?”
He runs his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, it was really just to piss off my parents. They took me to some expensive steak restaurant to celebrate this big career accomplishment, and I told them I was a vegetarian.”
“Did it work?” I ask, genuinely interested.
“Better than expected. My dad was all sorts of ticked off. He accused me of lying to purposefully try to spoil their big day. So, to prove him wrong, I had to keep the act up. But it only lasted for a week. I was so freaking hungry all the time.”
I let out a small laugh, surprised by how it sounds coming out of my mouth. Like a foreign language. Like a Martian language.
Sell yourself.
That’s all I’m doing. I’m going door-to-door selling normalcy like a sweaty bald guy selling vacuums.
This one comes with the giggling girl attachment. For all your hard-to-reach places.
“What about you?” he asks. “Why are you a vegetarian? Health reasons? Animal rights? To piss off your parents?”
“Personal reasons,” I reply vaguely, hoping this will suffice and he won’t expect me to elaborate.
No such luck.
“Let me guess,” he says, tapping his chin. “You had a pet cow as a kid?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“You were a cow in a previous life.”
Despite myself, I laugh again. “No.”
“Your best friend died from mad cow disease?”
I fall quiet and stare at the floor, forcing myself to take deep breaths.
Oh God. This was a huge mistake.
How am I supposed to have a conversation with this person—with any person—when every single topic is a land mine? At the time I made the decision to come here, all I could think about was the food, the promise of a brief reprieve from the anarchy of the shopping rotunda. I didn’t consider the fact that I was about to have a meal with a stranger. Someone who would ultimately ask me questions. Someone who would expect answers longer than two words.
Thankfully, just then, the customer ahead of us finishes ordering, and we find ourselves face-to-face with the girl running the cash register. I’ve never been so happy to see another human being in all my life.
I can feel Muppet Guy looking at me. I keep my gaze trained on the menu posted behind the cashier’s head and try to pass off my silence as indecisiveness.
“Do you know what you want?” he asks, and I hear the tinge of confusion in his voice. He’s trying to figure out what he did wrong. He’s trying to ascertain if I really did have a best friend who died from mad cow disease.
“Um . . .” I stammer, frowning at the menu.
“Ooh! Ooh! BINGO!” the girl cashier yells, startling me out of my deliberation process.
Confused, I glance behind me, then back at her. “Excuse me?”
She turns to a large, plump young man in a white chef’s jacket who’s filling up a cup from the soda fountain behind her. “Bingo! I win!”
The man turns and studies me, hand on hip, mouth twisting to the side. “Hmm. I don’t know. She doesn’t look mopey enough.”
The cashier lets out a huff and gestures theatrically to me. “Are you serious? Look at her! She’s the poster child for mopey. She’s the eighth dwarf, Dopey’s long-lost cousin . . . Mopey!”
“Uh,” I falter, glancing down to make sure I hadn’t accidentally spilled something on the front of my shirt. “What are you talking about?”
The cashier turns back to me. She looks to be about my age, tall and slender with rich, toffee-colored skin and a dark brown bob. Her eyes are heavily lined with inky black makeup, and she has a diamond stud in her nose.
“Sorry,” she says with a tilt of her head. “We get bored sometimes. We make up games. It helps pass the time. Today we’re playing Stranded Passenger Bingo.”
Muppet Guy takes a step closer to the counter, suddenly intrigued. “What’s Stranded Passenger Bingo?”
The girl lights up at his interest. “Oh! It’s so much fun. We create bingo cards for each other with different types of passengers that we have to find. If you get five in a row, you call ‘Bingo!’ and you win.”
“I still need a Couple on the Verge of a Breakup,” the guy at the soda fountain says. “So if you see one, be sure to let me know, mkay?”
Cashier Girl nods to me. “You were my top left corner.”
“Me?” I say, feeling the walls of the restaurant closing in. “Me specifically?”
She laughs. “No. Not you, specifically. That would be creepy. See, Jimmy back there”—she jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the guy who’s placing a plastic lid on his cup—“he put Mopey Girl on my card.” She pulls a folded up piece of paper out of her apron pocket and smoothes it out on the counter. It’s a grid made up of twenty-five boxes. Inside each one, someone has scribbled things like, Gay and Doesn’t Know It, Dresses Like It’s Still 1995, and Unhealthily Obsessed with Hair Gel.
Several of the boxes have large X’s scratched through them. Then, in the top left corner, where the cashier’s long, black-painted fingernail is tapping, are the words “Mopey Girl.”
“I’m not mopey,” I say dryly.
Muppet Guy laughs beside me. “You’re a little mopey. But that’s okay. I like mopey. I seek out mopey. It’s kind of my thing.”
I’m not sure who I’m currently more infuriated with. This random girl who just insulted me, or the guy standing next to me, who agreed with her assessment.
“Sorry,” Jimmy says, punching a straw into the top of the drink he just filled and taking a sip. “I created the card. I get final veto power. She’s not mopey enough.”
I don’t like this spotlight on my face. I don’t like all of these strangers assessing me and my level of mopiness like students huddled around a microscope. I can’t even handle when Dr. Judy stares at me for more than five seconds.
I consider screaming at all of them. I consider yelling something dramatic like, “You know what? You can’t walk around labeling people you know nothing about!” and then storming off to find something else to eat. I consider reacting.
But when I open my mouth, all that comes out is, “I’ll have the veggie burger, please.”
Cashier Girl snatches up the bingo card and stuffs it back into her apron pocket. “You’re mad. I’m sorry. That was totally inappropriate. I shouldn’t have shown you that. It’s just that you two looked cool, and, let’s face it, you’re like the only people here who are our age, and I’ve been in a foul mood today—”
“She’s in a foul mood every day,” Jimmy says, passing behind her with his drink.
“Get back into the kitchen and make some burgers!” she growls.
He winks at her and disappears behind a door.
“I’m in an especially foul mood today,” she clarifies. “You see, I was supposed to go to this killer New Year’s Eve party in like”—she squints at the cash register screen—“five hours, but it doesn’t look like anyone is getting out of here tonight, so—”
“That’s not true,” I blurt before I even realize what I’m doing. “My flight is leaving at 7:41 p.m. The board said.” The desperation tastes salty in my mouth.
“Um.” Cashier Girl gives me a blank stare. “I can’t even dig my car out of the parking lot. You think they’re going to be able to get a 737 off the ground in this shit?”
My throat catches fire.
No. I have to get out of here.
I can’t stay here.
I can’t be here tomorrow.
“Don’t they have special tools and trucks and stuff for clearing the runway?” I ask, glancing frantically between Muppet Guy and the cashier. Neither one looks particularly helpful. “Why would the board say we’re leaving if we’re not leaving?”
“Sweetie,” the cashier says, her voice taking on an odd syrupy cadence that makes my skin crawl. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you’re stuck here. We all are.” She pulls the crumpled sheet of paper from her apron pocket again. “May I interest you in a game of bingo?”
I collapse into a chair at one of the tables and numbly sip my soda. Muppet Guy lowers into the seat across from me, holding on to the plastic number eleven we received for our order.
Eleven used to be my lucky number.
Back when I used to have things like lucky numbers.
Back when I believed in luck.
“Look,” he says, trying to be helpful. “What does she know? She’s just an employee at a restaurant. She doesn’t work for air traffic control. If the board says your flight is leaving at 7:45—”
“7:41,” I correct.
“Right. If the board says that, then it’s true.”
I appreciate his efforts, even if they’re not making me feel any better.
“So,” he says, sipping his drink. “Are you coming or going?”
I blink and look up at him. “Huh?”
“San Francisco? Is it home?”
“Oh,” I say, feeling stupid. “Yeah. Home, I guess.”
“Home, you guess?”
“It’s where my stuff is.”
He chuckles. “Okay.”
“And you? You said you were going to Miami? Is that home?”
“Noooo.” He elongates the word, lowering the tone of his voice to the point where it could almost pass for the voice of the Muppet on his shirt. “Not home. Los Angeles is home. My parents are in Miami. I’m flying out to meet them.”
“That’s nice.”
He releases a strange noise from the back of his throat. It’s the first sound I’ve heard from him that can’t be described as “jovial.” “Nice. Sure. I guess that’s one way to put it.”
“You don’t want to go to Miami?”
“I don’t have a problem with Miami. I just don’t want to be anywhere near my parents.”
“Oh.” I fall quiet, sensing that I’ve inadvertently crossed some sort of line. The kind of line you don’t cross until you’ve known someone for at least a full day.
I’m incredibly grateful when he changes the subject. “I should probably ask your name, huh? So I don’t have to keep thinking of you as Phone Girl.”
A ghost of a smile cracks the concrete surface of my face.
“Is that funny?”
I take another sip of soda. “I’ve been thinking of you as Muppet Guy,” I admit softly.
He peers down at his shirt, as if he forgot what he was wearing. “Ah. Right. Well, as creative as those names are, I have another idea.”
“What’s that?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but just then the cashier arrives with two trays. “Here we are!” She sets down a monster double bacon cheeseburger in front of my dining companion and a much daintier-looking veggie burger in front of me.
It’s only then that I notice the cashier has a name tag pinned to the front of her red apron.
I stare up at her in disbelief “Your name is Siri?”
She gives me a hard stare. “Yeah. So?”
“Nothing,” I say hastily, “It’s just—”
“The name was fine until those douchebuckets at Apple decided to make it synonymous with information,” she snaps, indicating I’ve hit a sore spot.
She and Troy should really get together. They could commiserate for hours over their beefs against Apple.
Siri goes on. “Now everyone thinks it’s so funny to ‘Ask Siri,’ ‘Ask Siri,’ ‘Ask Siri.’ ” She groans. “You don’t know how many customers I get every day asking me stupid shit like, ‘Hey, Siri, what’s the weather in Palm Springs?’ or ‘Hey, Siri, what’s the Broncos score?’ They think they’re sooooo clever. My parents joke that they should have just named me 411.” She tucks the tray under her arm and scowls. “I still don’t understand what that means.”
“You could always ask Siri what it means,” Muppet Guy suggests, and I hide another hint of a smile behind my cup.
“Oh, you two are hilarious,” she says. “You should have a Web series on YouTube.” She stalks away, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing.
“Hey, Siri!” Muppet Guy calls after her. “Can we get some napkins over here?”
“Get ’em yourself!” she calls back.
He stands. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“I suppose you did.” But my amusement fades the moment he leaves and I’m left alone with our food. I eye his giant double patty burger a mere foot away and try to swallow back the bile that rises in my stomach. The dark, grilled meat is hanging off the side of the bun. A small pool of red-tinted juice has formed on the plate next to it.
I hold my breath, but it’s too late. I catch a whiff of the cooked beef and suddenly a slew of images are flickering across my vision.
Regurgitated hot dog pieces floating in the toilet.
Lottie’s brain splattered against the dashboard.
10:05 a.m.
10:05 a.m.
10:05 a.m.
Forever and ever and ever . . .
“I hope it doesn’t bother you if I eat meat,” Muppet Guy says, returning with a pile of napkins. He slides back into his seat. “If so, I can order something else.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s fine.”
It’s so not fine.
What are you doing here?
You shouldn’t be here.
“Relax,” Lottie whispers seductively, and I almost sink in relief at the sound of her voice. “It’s just meat. It’s not like he’s consuming a live cow in front of you.”
Where have you been? I hiss silently back to her. You convinced me to come meet this guy and then you totally abandoned me.
“Awww,” she coos, the sarcasm thick in her tone. “Did you miss me?”
I can’t do this alone.
“I hate to break it to you, Ryn Ryn. But you are alone.”
Are you drunk? I ask her.
“Are you?” she asks with a gasp.
You only call me Ryn Ryn when you’re drunk.
“That was when I was alive. Now that I’m dead I can call you Ryn Ryn whenever I want.”
I watch Muppet Guy take a big messy bite of his burger, ketchup oozing out the side and meat juice running down his chin. He grabs for a napkin and lazily wipes the juice away. I avert my eyes and focus on my veggie burger. I’m still starving, but my appetite seems to have evaporated in this mile-high climate. I set my phone down next to my tray, grab the plastic knife that came with my food, and start cutting my burger into perfect quarters.
“Anyway,” he says, chewing and swallowing, “I was about to tell you my brilliant idea.”
“God, he’s so cute,” Lottie pipes in. “Look at those blue eyes. With his skin tone, that’s very rare. You should totally find some janitor’s closet to make out in. There’s probably even beds in one of the first-class lounges . . .”
I clear my throat. “Yes, you were.”
He takes another bite, chews, swallows. “I was thinking instead of introducing ourselves, which is so totally normal and boring, let’s make up new people to be.”
“Oh, I really like him,” Lottie approves.
“New people?” I ask dubiously.
“Yeah. You know, we’re mysterious strangers, stuck in an airport on New Year’s Eve. We’re never going to see each other again. We could be anyone we want.”
I finish cutting my burger and pick up one of the pieces. “I guess so, but why?”
“I don’t really feel like being myself today,” he says by way of explanation. I wait for him to elaborate, but he just takes another bite of his burger.
His suggestion instantly makes me suspicious. What is he hiding? Why doesn’t he want to be himself? Is he a serial killer on the run? Is he wanted in forty-nine out of fifty states?
Then again, if he doesn’t have to be himself, that means I don’t have to be myself, either. It gives me a free pass to lie. To forget about busted dashboards and unread text messages and Doctor Who phone cases.
I’m not sure why I didn’t think about it before. Lottie used to reinvent herself all the time. Why can’t I?
It’s the ultimate sales strategy
Be someone else entirely.
And let’s face it. It’s probably the only way I’m going to get through this meal.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’m in.”