Page 146 of The Rom-Commers

“Don’t you have…” I started, but then I wasn’t sure what he might have. “A walkie-talkie or something?”

“Awalkie-talkie?” he asked, giving me a look in the mirror.

“Or—some way to get the inside scoop?”

He shook his head as we both looked at all the red, glowing brake lights. “This is the only scoop I’ve got.”

“Is there—some way around it?”

The driver scratched his ear. “Probably not.”

“Can we drive on the shoulder or something?”

“That’s illegal,” he said, likeCase closed.

“I have to get to the airport,” I said. “Urgently. My flight takes off in less than an hour.”

He sucked in a judgmental hiss. “That’s really cutting it close.”

“Yes,” I said, likeI know. “I have an emergency. A medical emergency.”

Why was I explaining all this? He was just as powerless as I was.

“It’ll probably clear up soon,” the driver said then, like that might cheer me up.

But it didn’t.

We made it to the airport with twenty minutes until takeoff, and my flight was already boarding. I got my boarding pass, checked the suitcase, and took off running at a full sprint, dragging my squealing carry-on behind me, for the TSA line.

When I got there, the first line—to show your ID—wasn’t too bad. But the second line—to get scanned—was worse than the freeway traffic. An infinite number of miserable people and squirming children, coughing and staring into dead space in a purgatory-like queue that seemed to fold endlessly in on itself like an Escher drawing.

I’d never make it.

But what else was there to do? I got in line.

And then I took off my shoes. Like being five seconds ahead of the game might make the difference.

And then I waited in line to wait in the next line.

I craned my neck around the endless room for someone who looked official—someone human I could talk to. Someone who might—bless them—solve all, or evenany, of my problems.

But in this giant, overflowing room of people, no one seemed human, somehow.

My hope was eclipsing.

I was going to miss this flight. And then not get home until late tonight. And by then—and I hated myself for even having this thought—it might be too late.

I was panting—hyperventilating, really. How long was a breath supposed to be? Five-point-five seconds? I couldn’t even make it to one.

My father might be dying—and that was the only thing that mattered.

But all around that one solitary horror was a cacophony of other losses: I was bruised where I’d hit the pool water, I was hungover, I was still wearing Charlie’s sweatshirt. I was alone in a feedlot of soulless travelers with a broken bag and no chance to make my flight. I’d broken my contract with Charlie, and given up all the money I’d worked so hard for, not to mention any chance I had of reaching my potential. My baby sister whom I’d sacrificed everything for had just said the meanest thinganyone had ever said to me, besides myself, and I was so incandescently angry that I couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything but anger again. And I was still cringing in shame at the memory of begging my writing hero and desperate crush to take me to bed… and receiving the hardest of hard passes.

That’s when the tears came.

Are tears supposed to make things better?

Because these definitely made things worse.

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