To Get Where You’re Going

To Get Where You’re Going

Growing up, my grandma had a theory. Well, she had several theories, in fact she frequently handed out snappy bits of partially applicable advice like candy, but the one that always stuck with me was the one about choices. Layla, she’d say as her hands deftly made their way through my hair, untangling black strands with careful twists of her wrinkled fingers. As she aged, those fingers slowed, but her voice never wavered. People make choices every day, she always whispered it like a secret only I could know, and those choices make choices of their own. She was referring, of course, to a story she used to tell me when I was small. On those nights where sleep was slow to come, and she needed something to keep me company after the sun was gone. It was about a girl, and how the consequences of every choice she made created an alternate version of her. By the end of the tale, there were a billion versions of one little girl, a billion choices that ended a billion ways. She, my grandma, seemed to find it comforting, while I frequently laid awake at night, shivering in the dark and thinking of all the places I’d chosen wrong. All the people I could have been. 

Making big choices had never been my strong suit, and as I surveyed the full wait area at Gate B7, I felt, once again, a cold pit of dread in my stomach. I’d rushed through security with minimal panic, not including about the fact that I was ridiculously late, but there was something about the crowd now that made my decision seem indefinitely more final. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline wearing off. 

I didn’t have time to worry though, because just then a beep sounded from my phone. Not a notification sort of beep, but a final cry of help, a desperate plea for charge I didn’t have. My phone was a wounded soldier, and we were standing amidst the battlefield that was an airport boarding zone. I surveyed the tattered wreckage of my fellow weary travelers and felt a jolt of hope as I located a free seat. The hope was dashed a bit when I noticed it was between a frustrated looking mom with a very small, very loud, child, and a cramped looking man gazing at the child like it had recently sprouted an extra head. Yay.

I made my way to them, stepping carefully over backpacks, suitcases, and one lonely stuffed animal, before plopping down in the free seat and pulling an earbud out. I turned to the mom, who gazed at me with a weary, and maybe a little desperate, expression. She looked like she could use a large cup of coffee. 

“Is it okay if I sit here?” She nodded and turned back to the child, who had finally stopped yelling. It was gazing at me instead, with giant watery eyes and a single drop of snot dripping precariously from her nose. The knot of tension in my chest eased just a little, and I leaned forward to eye level. “Hi, I’m Layla. What’s your name?”

“My mom told me not to talk to strangers.” Despite the earlier theatrics, her voice came out clear and steady. “But my mom also told me not to talk to my dad, and he’s not a stranger, so I think it’ll be okay.” She stuck out a sticky hand, looking like the tiniest businessman I’d ever seen. A snort of laughter came from the seat on my other side, and I suddenly felt a bit offended for the woman. Who was this guy to judge? I shook the small girl’s hand, gripping firmly and trying not to wince at the bit of slick, warm, something I could feel slipping across my palm. “Zoe. I’m six.” Then she turned back to her coloring book, quietly scribbling across an image of some cartoon character or another. 

“She’s four.” Zoe’s mom corrected, shaking her head and looking a little pink. “I’m not sure where she got the age thing, or the other thing. And, uh, thanks.” I smiled even as my thoughts skipped forward, already back to the imminent flight, and my phones lack of charge. I glanced down and took note of where I had been absentmindedly fidgeting with the corner of my boarding pass. Folding and unfolding. Folding and unfolding. I stopped, jumping a little, as a voice sounded over the loudspeakers. 

“Group C now boarding at Gate B7. Now boarding Group C at Gate B7, Sea-Tac to O’Hare.” Zoe’s mom, I hadn’t gotten her name, stood, collecting the girls discarded toys and layers with practiced efficiency. 

“That’s us. It was nice to meet you, um, both of you, and have a safe trip.” I waved, and so, I noticed with surprise, did the man next to me. 

“You too, and bye Zoe. Good luck with your picture.” My phone beeped again, officially at only 10%, and I leaned down to survey the underside of the seats across from us. Didn’t they usually have charging stations? Oh. The closest one was a seat over, on the other side of the man, and I noticed with dismay that it was already full. 

“I can switch with you if you’d like. You’re probably about to board though, can’t you charge it on the plane?” 

“I’m with Group E, so I think I have time. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Group E? Really?” Ugh, of course he was going to be a boarding group snob. Figures. 

“Yes, that’s what I said. Excuse me.” He raised an eyebrow, pulling his charger from the plug and wrapping it with careful movements. The speakers sounded again, signaling Group D for boarding. 

“You’re really going to- “

“Yep. I’ve got it.” He didn’t move, and I could sense his gaze on my back. A warm flush crept up my neck, presumably a symptom of my frustration, and I turned to glare at him. 

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” 

“Not that I know of.”

“Your group is boarding.”

“We’re in the same group.” 

“How do you know that?” He didn’t even respond to that one, just raised another eyebrow. Stupid eyebrow. “Ugh, fine. I can wait.” 

“Oh, no. Don’t let me stop you.” I was barely out of my seat when the loudspeaker sounded for a third time. 

“Group E now boarding at Gate B7. Now boarding Group E at Gate B7.”

“That’s us.” In that moment I felt a little like Zoe, like kicking and screaming and doing something. Something to get me out of this position, something to get me back to the routine I’d been existing in for the past few years. Until, that is, my grandma had to go and flip it on its head.

“You coming?” I realized I was frozen, stuck in indecision. Of course I was coming, right? I thought of my grandmother, and the billion little girls. I thought of the version of me that would stay, the one that froze here and couldn’t thaw. What if she was the right one? What if this moment of weakness turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her? 

I stood, forcing my legs to function, to ignore the voice in my head screaming at them to stop. What if it wasn’t? I thought of all the plane tickets I’d bought in the last few years, the disappointment that grew in my family’s eyes every time I canceled. Then, when those same eyes iced over, and they stopped inviting me at all. I thought of my grandmother’s hands in my hair, their steadying rhythm.  

“Yeah,” I forced the word out of frozen lips, wincing as my voice wavered. “I’m coming.”

---

Walking through the airplane body felt like walking a long plank to my doom. I did it though, forcing my feet to move past row after row. Past Layla had thought to get a seat in the back, farther to run if I chickened out last minute, I guess.

“21, 22, 23.” The man hadn’t found his seat yet either, and as we progressed through the rows, he kept glancing back as if expecting me not to be there. The look in his eyes every time ours locked was one of suspicion, and as we crept along the aisle, I could feel mine twisting to match it. “24, 25, 26.” He turned back, and surprise, I was still there. “27, 28, 29.” 

“That’s mine, excuse me.” He didn’t move. “Excuse me?”

“Which one?”

“29 F.” A crease formed in the space between his annoying eyebrows. 

“Show me.” He held out a hand. Did he want my ticket? Was he serious?

“Um, no. You’re in my way.” 

“I’m 29 E.” Just my luck, getting stuck next to Mr. Arrogant here. What were the chances?

“Great. We can be seat buddies. Excuse me.” The suspicion was still there, but he shifted out of my way, reaching up to put a generic looking computer bag in the overhead compartment. I sat stiffly down in my window seat, lifting the shade to avoid glancing in his direction as he plopped down. 

“I’m going to charge my phone now.”

“You do you.” I let out what I hoped was an exasperated sigh. There were 1,721 miles between Seattle and Chicago. That was 4 hours and 10 minutes according to Google. The man shifted, grazing my arm with his. I shivered. It was going to be a long 4 hours. 

---

Layla, the voice called, beckoning. Layla my dear, wake up. I jolted forward, out from whatever dreamland I was in and into a nightmare. My vision blurred, doubling, and a crack sounded from somewhere behind my eyes. I was being pulled in two different directions; my soul was tearing right down the middle. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t-

“Breathe. Hey, you’re okay.” A hand on my back brought me back to reality. “You’re okay, its just a little turbulence. Look at me.” The two layers of my vision snapped into one, and I was left staring into a pair of concerned eyes. Framed with thick lashes. Oh. 

“Deep breath in, and out.” The man looked very different when he was gazing at me with something other than thinly veiled suspicion. I broke eye contact, flushing and turning to my phone. It had only been an hour.    

“We have three hours of this left.” I felt another jolt, realizing this time it was the plane itself shaking. Was this it? I thought back to my hesitation at the airport, if this was it for me, that girl, the frozen version, would be okay. She’d live if I didn’t. The thought wasn’t as comforting as I hoped it’d be. 

“Three hours and 10 minutes. I looked it up.” A choking laugh shot out of my mouth before I had a chance to catch it, and he shot me a sideways look. “Don’t judge, the last ten minutes are the dangerous part.” He had the decency to look sheepish as the plane shook again, punctuating the glare I threw his way. 

“Clearly that was information I needed.”

“Oops.” Silence fell, and I focused on the hushed voices of the people around us. They blended with the noises coming from outside my window, until it sounded as if the plane itself was speaking. I’m worried, it whispered, and you should be too. Shivering, I noticed that the overhead fan directly above me was on. I didn’t do that. 

“So, you sure you’re okay?” 

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I’m good, thank you.” Or I thought I was, but then the plane hit a particularly bad bit of turbulence. I threw out an arm with a gasp, catching the man and holding on almost involuntarily. He winced, and I let go with an apologetic smile. “Totally good.”

“I think there’s snot on my arm.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I glanced over at him, realizing he looked just as pale and shaky as I felt. 

“A question?”

“I could use the distraction.” 

“Only if I get to ask one back.” I didn’t really have anything to ask, but I also didn’t like the idea of giving up something for nothing. 

“What’s in Chicago?”

“Family.”

“That’s all I get?”

“Was there something else you were expecting?”

“I guess not.” He looked mildly disappointed, and for some reason I didn’t like it. For some reason, I opened my mouth and the truth I’d been avoiding came out in a rush.

“A funeral. My grandmothers.”

“Oh. We’re you close?”

“Yeah, we were.” I coughed, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “My turn.”

“But it can’t be the same question.”

“Says who? You can’t just make up rules as we go.”

“Says who?” Ugh. 

“What’s in Seattle? What are you flying from?”

“Maybe I’m flying toward something, like you. Why can’t that be the case?” Was I flying toward something? That’s not how it felt in the airport, it felt like I was deciding to fly away. Away from myself, maybe. Or a version of me. 

“Are you?”

“I don’t know. My family’s in Seattle, my jobs in Chicago. I go back and forth so often, sometimes it’s hard to tell which I’m running from.” Frustration played clearly across his face, and I realized something. I didn’t know the man’s name. 

“I’m Layla.”

“Max.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.”

---

Why did it always rain at funerals? Was it some unspoken rule of the universe? A way for the world to tell us that the people we mourned mattered? That it, too, was sad that they were gone. Or maybe it was pure coincidence that the sky was dark now, that the hills around us shimmered with the worlds shed tears. They dusted the ground, and filled the air, and every breath was full of them. Full, too, of a bone deep chill that didn’t abate no matter how tightly I pulled my coat. 

“She was a beautiful soul, who touched and shaped the lives of so many. She will be missed.” That didn’t feel like enough. None of this was enough. There was nothing I could say, that any of us could say, to fill the hole my grandmother left behind. Nothing that would perfectly capture the feeling of her hands in my hair, her voice in my ear, the way it never wavered, not even now that it was gone. That she was gone. 

The tears on my face dripped slowly, mixing with frigid air, and stinging as they froze. I thought of the life she’d led, and what would have happened if I’d boarded a plane earlier. If I hadn’t boarded a plane at all. If I’d listened to Max when he asked me to stay with him in Chicago instead of making the drive home.

We’d talked through the entire flight, until, by the end, I knew more about him than I knew about myself. His favorite color, where he grew up, how much it hurt when his parents divorced. I felt, for the first time, like I’d chosen correctly. Like all the choices I’d made in my life were leading me to that moment, the moment I bought the ticket, and boarded the plane, and sat down next to him. 

He’d asked me to stay with him, to see the city, and for a moment I was tempted. For a moment I had the strength to renounce the choices, the versions of myself I was running from. Then, in the next moment, I was frozen. Stuck once again between the layers of what could be. 

I thought of the look of hurt on his face when I remained frozen, when even the feeling of having chosen correctly couldn’t thaw the obligation I felt for my grandmother. Couldn’t quiet her voice in my head. 

I turned back to the tear-soaked hills, thinking of the last thing she said to me. All those years ago. 

“I chose wrong, Layla, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry that my choices became your burdens and I’m sorry I don’t get the chance to make them right. Don’t do what I did. Don’t let life pass you by just to avoid the consequences of choosing. Sometimes you have to choose wrong, sometimes that’s what it takes to get where you’re going.”  

But I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t think she did either. I stood frozen as they lowered her slowly into the ground. As the people around me dispersed into the fog. Until the only thing left was one lone woman standing on the crest of a rain-soaked hill. All I could think was that if I had chosen to go with Max, if I’d chosen differently, there would have been nothing here left to prove that she’d ever lived at all.