LIV: SPRING BREAK 5.1
Mom drops into the passenger’s seat next to me with a showy exhale, whips her seatbelt around her, and rams the metal end into the buckle. I’ve been waiting for her. I want to set the right tone for today. I want to let her know that I plan to listen more.
But my plans didn’t account her current mood. She’s clearly agitated.
I don’t know why, but Todd’s Camaro flashes through my mind, with weedy flowers in a forest. And with it comes a thought. Show don’t tell.
I grab my phone, open the center console, and drop it in.
“No tech,” I add.
“Thank you,” Mom says. I can feel her body relax.
I look at Lana’s house as we pass, noting how quickly it disappears into the distance behind us, like a forewarning.
“I’m sorry, it’s just—” Mom searches for the right words. “I have a lot on my mind right now.”
“How can I help?”
“You can start by turning off Westheimer. It’s a mess. No road should have five lanes each way. The back way is faster.”
“Okay. Beyond driving, how can I help?” I ask.
She steals a quick glance from the road to me.
“I don’t know, Liv. I wish I did.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she answers, flipping down the visor to put on lipstick.
“I’ve never asked you what you want. That’s what I’m asking.”
“With Renaissance?”
“We can start there.”
She digs through a small makeup bag. My questions seem like more of a distraction. “I want it to make money.”
“That’s the goal?” I ask.
Again, she glances at me, then goes back to hair and makeup.
“I wouldn’t call it the goal, but it’s a goal.”
“So what’s the goal?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“I’m trying to understand you so that I can help you. I can’t do that if I don’t know what you really want.”
I have her full attention. She stops mid-swipe of a brow, lowers her hand, and draws her craned neck away from the tiny mirror.
“Seventeen years,” she says, then waits for me to say something, like her response was clear.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
“I’ve been waiting seventeen years for you to ask me that question.”
“Why? What’s the answer?”
“That is the answer, Liv. You asking me what I want.”
I kind of get it, but it sounds a little too much like a fortune cookie where the answer bends back onto itself. I’m looking for something more concrete.
“Really, other than wanting me to ask what you want, what do you really want?”
“Dammit. I just put this makeup on.” She lightly paws at damp eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not exactly sure what I’m apologizing for.
“Don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s a good thing. Some problems are worth having,” she says, flipping the visor back up and turning off the morning radio background chatter. “You asked a deep question, so I’m going to trust that you can handle deep answer,” she finally says. It’s not a question, but she treats it that way, waiting for me to agree.
“Okay,” I say.
“Do you know what a shadow career is?”
“No.”
“It’s when you find something to work in that’s close to what you’re really passionate about, but it’s safe. It’s similar, but it doesn’t come with any risk. It would be like somebody who really wants to sing, so they work for a record company. They’re not doing what they want, but it’s near enough that it satisfies the itch. Make sense?”
“Yeah.”
“I grew up at Renaissance. I lived at the store. Summers, after school, nights. I was there all the time. And Grandpop was my idol. I wanted to be him, and I think, in a lot of ways, I am like him. But I never had the one thing he had—the courage to try it. You came along. I was a single mom, and I couldn’t only think about me, which is an excuse, but one I believed at the time. I didn’t exactly go look for it, but the grocery store thing just happened. And it felt close enough. It was a store, I talked with customers all day, I knew what people wanted when they shopped, so I was good at it. The company made me feel like the store was mine, and I felt independent from Grandpop, like I wasn’t under his wing. But it was a shadow career, which I knew, maybe not by that name. But I knew in my heart, and I buried that thought. Until Grandpop died.”
We enter the Renaissance lot. I put the car in park as Mom gazes solemnly at the building, as though she’s peering through the walls at the years within them.
“You asked me what I want. I want to make something of my own. I want to do what Grandpop did. People shop for groceries like it’s a race against time and they’re annoyed with it. People shop for toys like they can’t wait to rip open the boxes and play with them. I want to create that experience. I want it back. And I want to give that experience to you.”
She stops speaking through the windshield and looks directly into my eyes. It’s intense. It’s primal. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, hers are wide open and a fierce breeze is howling through. I’m not a hugger, but we embrace spontaneously across a car seat with a center console jammed deep into my ribcage. It feels amazing.
I didn’t know how much I needed this. I think she’d say the same.
“I want to help,” I say.
“You are,” she weeps back.
I smile and silently thank Todd. I’ve solved nothing, and I’ve bettered everything.
My enthusiasm from this morning is waning, slipping further away with each empty-handed chime of the bell as a customer exits.
I’ve spun the Saturn around the lot a few times and gotten some attention, but it hasn’t led folks to the register once.
Mom isn’t despondent yet, but that’s where she’s headed.
Ding! The door opens again and Mom’s eyes widen, though they perk less with each new customer.
A man props the door open with his foot, allowing his young daughter to pass in front of him and into the store. He has a blue baseball cap, several days of salt-and-pepper stubble, and a gracious affect. His daughter bounds from table to table, too excited to focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds.
I take in Mom’s smile as she watches them. It’s a good moment.
“Can I help you with anything?” Mom eventually asks. “We’re offering fifteen percent off to new customers today.” This is the first time she’s mentioned this.
“We’re just thinking of birthday ideas,” he says. “This little one turns eight in two weeks.”
“Thirteen days!” she corrects.
“Not that anyone’s counting,” he says with a playful roll of his eyes.
“You could buy them today. It’ll be fifteen percent cheaper,” Mom suggests, casually enough that I’m the only one who can hear the desperate plea buried in her words.
“I’d love to but I’m actually not the one buying it. Her grandparents and some other family want to get her a few things. I’m taking notes though,” he says, holding up his phone. “We’ll tell them what she wants and where it is.”
My mother reacts like one of those cartoon characters who, after being pumped with air, visibly deflates in twisting loops around store before coming to rest again in the wrinkled shell of her body.
“We’ll look forward to it,” she says. She turns to me as her shoulders swing forward and her head drops. “I have some things I need to do in the back, Liv.”
I hate seeing her like this. It’s like a bird banging her head against a window. It’s gut wrenching. And I can’t think of anything that would help other than slapping a .com on the name and slaying her soul in the process.
I watch silently as the girl bounces through the store with Dad on her heels, trying to keep up by taking notes on his phone. Or comparing prices online. It’s tough to tell.
“I can hold onto the list for you if you want,” I say.
“It’s on my phone,” he answers.
“You could email it to me. We’ll have it in case any of your family comes in.”
He considers it for a moment. “Sure. Why not? That might be helpful.”
I give him my email. Technically, this breaks my resolution, but I’m not really solving anything. I’m only helping him do what he claims he’s doing.
They poke around a bit more then leave like the rest—empty handed.
Mom reappears after the chime of defeat with several manilla folders in hand and a fresh coat of lipstick.
“I have a meeting. I’ll be back in about an hour or two and will bring you some lunch. You’re in charge.”
The store phone rings with a startling chirp, breaking a full hour of silence in the store.
“Renaissance Toys. This is Liv,” I say, suspecting it’s the person who coached me to answer this way.
“Do you like the island life, mon?” Lana says, with a half-baked accent intended to be Caribbean.
“Huh?”
“I know someone who does,” she answers.
“Can you please be less cryptic, Lana?”
“Breck left the tunnel and is on an island,” she says.
Can a stomach sink and rise at the same time? Breck is kicking ass! And I’m not there to see it because I am sitting on a sinking ship doing nothing.
“What happened?”
“It looks like the zipline cart came back and he took it there. Now he’s stranded on this island with a bunch of doors and a riddle.”
“More doors? Is Sam there? What’s the riddle?”
“No Sam. There’s a note on the cart that says to find him. Here’s the riddle,” she answers, repeating it a second time after I grab a pen so I can write it down.
I read the riddle twice, but the only clear thing is the last two lines; Breck has to pick the right door, or this is the end of his journey.
This is killing me. How am I not watching this right now?
“Do you know the answer?”
“I think I do, but I’m also confused,” she says.
“Because?”
“Solve it, then we’ll talk.”
“Dude,” I plead.
“You’re the scientist. I think this is an interesting experiment. Who can get this first, you or Breck? Besides, maybe I got it wrong. Like I said, I’m confused about something.”
“Argh, you’re the worst.”
I stare at my scribbled note. Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone pass by the front of the store, but they don’t enter. Good. All I want right now is to focus on this.
The literal meaning of these words doesn’t get me anywhere. I need more. I need to see what’s around him.
“Can you describe the island with more detail?” I ask.
“You don’t have anything you can look at it on?”
“There’s a computer in the back, but—”
“But your mom won’t let you use it,” she finishes my sentence.
“No, not exactly. She’s not here.”
“What! Use it. It’ll take two minutes.”
I don’t reply.
“You’re wasting time. You spent two months programming 24/7. You deserve to see this, regardless of what your mom thinks. And she’s not even there.”
This feels wrong, but Lana’s also right. And I want this so badly.
I stare at the front door and the empty parking spaces beyond it. Wasted seconds tick away.
It’s not like I’m shirking a store full of people hammering me with questions and beating down the register to buy stuff. I’m babysitting toys.
“Log off so I can log on. Then call me back in thirty seconds,” I blurt, hanging up the phone and bolting for the back door.
I prop the heavy office door open with a coffee mug so I can hear if anyone enters the store, then I flop into the computer chair and navigate as quickly as I can.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Breck is long gone from where I saw him last. He’s sitting in the sand with his head propped on his chin like he’s modeling for a Greek Thinker statue. In front of him is a wooden stand with the riddle and the lettered doors. Behind him is the empty cart with the instructions to find Sam. All around him is water.
I pick the phone up on the first ring, but don’t say anything.
“Are you there?” Lana asks.
“Yeah, I’m thinking.”
“So’s B. You’re on the clock. Who’s going to solve it first—you or him?” She hums a bar of the Jeopardy theme music.
Maybe I’m missing something obvious. Or maybe I got some of the words wrong when I wrote it down.
I zoom in and check. No, I got it correct the first time.
What am I overlooking?
Between the threat of Mom returning at any moment and the race against Breck, my heart is slamming. It’s hard to think straight.
I zoom out and take in the whole scene again. The island sits in an inlet, with open ocean on one side and wall of tall pines lining the nearest shore, an unswimmable distance away. Beyond this, there’s a stone tower peeking over a few of the treetops like the tip of a Disney castle. It’s probably the final challenge. The high sun beats down, casting stubby shadows on the only fifteen things on this island other than sand—twelve doors, the stand, the cart, and Breck.
Sam’s footprints?
I search, but only see wavy sand, blown over by a breeze that rustles the trees in the distance.
Crack!
I jerk my head and nearly jump out of my seat.
“What was that?” Lana asks.
“My door prop slipped,” I say, pulse blasting, staring at the coffee mug lying inside the door frame.
Breck rises to his feet, grips the sides of the stand, and hovers over it with a determined gaze. I study the words once again, this time over his shoulder. From this vantage point, one of the lines strikes me differently.
I’m all you have left.
Is this the general you? It must be. Because it spoke to both Breck and Sam. What do they have in common that would be left in their journey? They didn’t start with much. About the only similarity between them is that they are on the same path.
Left
Not, as in remaining. As in a position. To their left. And on Breck’s left is nothing but sea.
Yes! I tilt my head back and release a victorious sigh. I check it with the other lines in the riddle and it all fits. It’s a sea. Door S! It could be ocean too, but there is no O and that doesn’t match all of the clues.
“I got it. It’s a Sea.”
“Well done. Is it wrong to admit that I was pulling for Breck?” Lana asks.
“No. I think I was also. For bonus points, can I guess why you’re confused?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“How the heck did Sam solve this?” I ask.
“Bingo. That, in itself, is a riddle. Lucky guess?”
“He’d have to be really lucky.”
Something about this doesn’t sit well. Like the riddle. It’s like we’re missing something. It took me a few minutes of brainpower to muscle through this. There’s simply no way Sam could have solved this, and if we’re playing the probabilities, he didn’t guess it correctly either.
I close my eyes and think. What would Sam do? He would explore. He would push on doors. Knock on them. Do anything except what he was told not to do—open the wrong one.
I imagine Sam standing in front of the post, like Breck, reading the same riddle. What did he see that I don’t?
“What are you doing?” A whispered scream blasts from behind me.
I nearly jump off the chair.
My mom hovers in the doorway, her presence taking up the entire space.
“Oh crap,” Lana’s chimes, though I barely hear this as I draw the phone away from my ear.
“We have TWO customers out there . . . and you’re in here?” Mom barks in a continued whisper, quiet enough to not carry into the store, but powerful enough to strike me speechless. Her eyes flicker between furious and disappointed as they dart in a quick loop from me to the screen and back.
“Excuse me?” A voice comes from inside the store.
“Be there in a moment,” Mom pipes in a sugary tone, quickly flipping in her follow-up to me. “Why did I have to come find you in here? You were in charge. Get out there. Now!”
She quickly pivots and disappears. The door booms shut.
As I’m putting the phone to my ear to tell Lana what she already knows, I freeze, as my mom’s final words strike a different chord. She had to find me.
We were answering the wrong question.
With your goal in mind, the riddle reads. The goal of this challenge was never to solve the riddle. Breck’s goal could not have been more brief and clear—Find Sam. And we were right. Sam couldn’t possibly solve this.
I stare from Breck’s point of view in front of the stand, and what Sam did becomes immediately clear. The tower in the distance rises above only one of the doors. Door G. This was how Sam would have decided—by choosing the most direct and obvious path. The riddle is a diversion.
I got so caught up in clues that I never thought of it from the bigger picture. This challenge was never intended to test how Breck thinks, but rather his ability to imagine how others think—the next Piaget stage!
As if on cue, Breck reacts. He suddenly leaps into the air, arms flailing, fists pumping, legs running in circles around the post. It’s not like anything I have ever seen before from him. He looks as though he is celebrating, which means he must have—
“Oh crap!” I blurt.
He solved the riddle. And he’s about to go through the wrong door.
“What’s happening?” Lana asks.
Her words hang unanswered. I’m staring down a ridiculous choice that I’m not at all prepared to face. Breck is going to dart toward the wrong door, fling it open, and lose any chance of moving forward in the time remaining.
Do I intervene?
I don’t even know what a one-week elapse means. Will Breck only have to park on the sand for a week, or will the whole thing explode like the room and reboot a week later, which means—with only days left in the contest—that he will cease to exist and never return?
I don’t know enough to make this decision!
This isn’t the gray space of talking with Breck. If I interfere, it will be one hundred percent against the rules. I will lose all I have fought for. I won’t win the contest. But if I don’t interfere, there’s a good chance it will end all conversation with Breck. Lana’s plan would suddenly stop. I would lose any chance of my best friend not moving away. And I would know that I had chosen the contest over her.
There’s no right choice here.
I could lie. I could deny this timely epiphany. Lana would never know. Her plan is a longshot anyway. Or is it? Doctor O was talking about writing some academic paper this morning about Breck.
Doctor O’s comment about perception of time comes to mind. It’s glacial right now, nearly frozen, but still inching forward, poised to destroy whatever I put in its path. And no decision is a decision in itself.
Tick.
Tick.
“Liv,” Mom’s faint voice calls from beyond the door.
“One moment!”
I need more time to think! I don’t make rash decisions. I’m a planner. A plotter. I’m calculated. This isn’t fair. It’s too big to rush.
Tick.
I could ask Lana, but there’s not enough time. Not with Breck poised to act and mom breathing down my neck. And it’s not fair anyway. It would be a copout. I would be shoving the decision on her, knowing what her answer would be. She’d put me first. But is it what she would really want?
Maybe the question I’m wrestling with is whether I am willing to put her first?
“Hold on,” I say to Lana, dropping the receiver on the desk without hanging up. “I have to call Breck.”
I dial him through the platform. The ringing phone plays through the computer speakers as I watch Breck reach for the device in his pocket.
Answer, answer!
I sneak a peek at the closed office door.
“I did it,” he chirps.
“I know. I’m watching, but—” I say, when he cuts me off.
“You can see me?” he asks, looking up as if I’m hovering in the blue sky above him.
“Yes.”
“How? Where are you? Is there a camera here?”
“We can talk about that later. I have to tell you about the door, and I need you to listen. It’s a trick.”
“I know,” he says.
“No,” I groan. “Not a trick like a riddle, but the riddle itself is a trick.”
“I know,” he repeats.
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Sam would never be able to answer it, so the right answer doesn’t matter.”
I collapse into the back of the chair.
Holy crap. I didn’t intervene. I didn’t have to. He already knew.
“How the hell did you figure that out?” I ask, floored.
“I couldn’t solve the riddle, which was making me feel aggravated. Then I thought about why I was aggravated, and I realized it was because I couldn’t solve something that Sam had solved. Then it occurred to me that maybe there was a simpler answer. Previous challenges have used distractions, and the most obvious distraction here would be the riddle itself. So, then I thought about how Sam might pick a door without the riddle. The riddle says to choose wisely based on my goal. That’s finding Sam. And his only clue would be the direction of the tower, which is above Door G.”
If I didn’t have Doctor O’s skeptical voice flooding my head, I’d say he sounds proud. No, he sounds like he’s freaking beaming with pride. That makes two of us.
“Go Breck!” Lana’s cheers trickle from the phone receiver on the desk.
I’m about to respond to Breck when the office door blows open once more.
“What are you still doing in here?” Mom screams at full volume.
“Who is that?” Breck asks.
“Liv’s mother,” she barks, looking at the computer. “Who are you talking to, Liv?”
“This is Breck.”
I’ve never made a more reluctant introduction.
“What the —” She stares into the screen. “You’re in here talking to a computer?” Her already full volume rises impossibly louder.
“I had to do something quickly. It was important.”
“What could possibly be more important than you being responsible for the one thing I asked you to do?”
“He was about to . . .” I search for the right word to quickly capture the severity of the situation to someone who doesn’t know or care anything about the contest, “. . . die.”
“Why would I die?” Breck asks before my mom can respond.
Crap. If I could only backspace my words. I know where this is going. I want to crawl under the desk and wish it all away.
I start to say something, but Mom throws both hands high in the air, waving me off.
Please don’t say it.
“Doesn’t he end in two days anyways? And he’s not even real! You know what is? The two customers that left, one of them because she asked about her granddaughter’s birthday list, which I didn’t know anything about. I assume you do? Not that it matters now.”
“I was coming right out.”
“No, you were here playing make-believe on the computer. And they left.”
“They’ll be back.”
“That’s what every freaking person who walks out that door says!”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Breck interrupts. “How can I end? What do you mean by me not being real?”
“He doesn’t know any of this,” I whisper a plea to my mom, not that it even matters. He heard. And I can’t even begin to process what this means, but there’s a good chance that everything I worked for just evaporated. I know I was going to do this only a minute ago, but that was my choice. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make. And I thought I had somehow skirted around it. There’s no skirting around this mistake. This colossal, regrettable mistake.
Mom looks at me like the cheese is fully off my cracker. She takes an aggressive step toward the desk. The door, no longer propped open, seals us in the echo of her roar.
“How the hell was I supposed to know that? And he wouldn’t have heard anything if you had been doing what you said you would be doing—watching the store.”
“Is this what you said I wouldn’t understand?” Breck asks.
“I’m going to lose my shit. Turn it off,” Mom barks.
I comply. No goodbye, no nothing.
“Now get out.”
“Mom,” I start, but she won’t let me speak.
“The worst part is that I really believed you this morning. You really let me down.” She steps aside, making a path for me to leave the narrow office. “You can go home now and do whatever you want.”
I stand and take a few sheepish steps until I reach the door. I pause.
Mom speaks, anticipating what I’m going to say. “You’re seventeen and ten minutes from the house. You can figure it out.”
BRECK: SIMULATION #38.1
My thoughts are a knot of questions.
What could it mean that I am not real? I don’t know how to process this. It contradicts the definition of real—all that happens is real. The only thing not real would be something imagined. But I am not imagined. I am the imaginer. I close my eyes and see penguins that are not real. They do not close their eyes and see me. Or do they? How would this work? Can something imaginary imagine something else?
It cannot. This would make no sense.
So, if I am not real, then how could I imagine everything occurring around me right now?
I could not.
Unless it is real, and I am not.
But I exist. I experience things. This makes me real. I think. How would I be able to distinguish between real and imagined, if everything feels real to me?
And what does it mean that I end in two days? How can something not real come to an end, as it would have never really existed in the first place?
The knots tighten.
Perhaps they were right. I do not understand any of this.
In front of me lays a path to the tower, and presumably Sam, somewhere along the way. But my feet don’t budge. The path I’m on within my own mind overwhelms thoughts of moving forward in any other way.