Departure

I thought I had made up my mind until I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and suddenly wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

I didn’t recognize the number that lit up my screen, which sent my heartbeat into a frenzy. This was it. I felt a nervous tingle work its way from my chest all the way down to my fingertips as they hovered over the green “accept” icon, paralyzed with uncertainty. I inhaled sharply before tapping the screen, mind racing as I lifted the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

There was a long pause on the other line. Must be a junk call. My hammering heart slowly sank in my chest. “Hello?” I repeated with a sigh, anticipating an automated voice and generic message to follow.

“Hi.” The voice was neither the one I’d expected nor the one I’d hoped for. It was muffled, hesitant.

“Who is this?”

“Who is this?” the faceless entity echoed.

I couldn’t decide whether I was disappointed or relieved. I was waiting to hear back from an extremely important job interview, one that would finally allow me to enter into the professional world—and out of unemployment, not to mention my parents’ basement. On the other hand, I would be moving very far from my parents’ basement should I choose to accept. If I said yes, or rather oui, to this teaching position in France, I would have to pick up everything and move across the ocean, where I didn’t know a soul.

“Shouldn’t you know who you’re calling before you dial?”

“Shouldn’t you know who’s calling before you pick up?”

“I actually was waiting on someone to call,” I said. Now that my pulse was settling down from the initial shock, I felt a defensive tone creeping into my response.

“Well I was waiting to have someone to call.”

There was another moment of silence, and I debated pressing the red telephone icon in the middle of the screen.

“I’m Foster,” he added after a beat.

“Avery.” The response tumbled off my tongue out of instinct. I glanced around the mostly empty airport terminal and sighed again, sinking a little further into my chair.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“Where did you get this number from, Foster?” I asked, unnerved by his nonchalance.

There was another pause and then some sort of indistinct shuffling noise. His voice sounded muffled again when he finally responded but got clearer as he spoke. “Somebody carved it into a tree.”

“A tree?” I repeated.

“A tree.”

“Well where at?” I said, confused.

“Lockegee. It’s in Kentucky.”

I had never been to Kentucky in my life, and I didn’t know anyone else who had. “That’s kind of creepy,” I remarked, suddenly feeling unsettled in the pit of my stomach. I nervously swirled around the half empty cup of coffee I’d bought earlier, which had already started to cool.

“Well,” Foster mused. There was another series of shuffling noises, and I could faintly hear him breathing on the other line. He must have started moving. “It probably wasn’t actually meant to be yours. Some of the carving was pretty illegible, I had to fill in a few numbers at random.”

“So you just decided to call?”

“My service out here is actually surprisingly good,” he said, seemingly unfazed by the peculiarity of the whole situation. “And like I said, I needed someone to talk to.”

A sudden flow of suitcase laden travelers making their way through the terminal caught my attention. I could tell where they had come from just judging from the excess of Mickey Mouse ears and small children.

“Alright,” I conceded, begrudgingly. If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t mind the distraction. “What are you doing in, uh… Lock and Key?”

“Lockegee,” he said, and I thought for a moment he was going to stop there. “It’s this like, this big rock. I came to… well I wanted to clear my head. Basically, I’m running away.”

“Well where are you going?” I asked, feigning interest. Another spurt of people began to enter into the terminal, this time from the other direction, headed toward security. The airport’s moving sidewalks and high-speed trams separated the perpetually late and the habitually early: those rushing to catch their flight and those strolling along calmly because they had arrived hours in advance. And then there was me, neither early nor late, just waiting.

There was some more shuffling over the phone, and then I heard a small laugh in between Foster’s breaths, a bit heavier now than before. “I like that,” he said. “I think most people would be inclined to ask where from instead.”

“I guess the destination’s more important,” I said, glancing over at the giant digitized screen I was seated adjacent to, which listed updates on the arrival and departure times of flights from all across the country, all across the world.

“Well,” he began. “I don’t know yet.”

“Are you lost?” I asked.

He chuckled again. “You could say that. But not geographically speaking. I used to come here with spray paint all the time. This place is known for all of the graffiti in the caves, a lot of which is mine. I know this trail forward and back.”

“Well then you have to know where it ends,” I pointed out.

“Where are you going, Avery?” There was a strain in Foster’s voice, and his inflection suggested he wanted to prolong the conversation even though he changed the subject.

I glanced across the way to where lonely kiosks filled with gimmicky souvenir items sat in waiting. The adjacent coffee shop was bustling by comparison, full of tourists and businesspeople alike, all eager to get their fix before catching their connection. Or maybe they were just waiting, like me. I took a sip of my coffee and winced as the bitter, lukewarm liquid hit my taste buds. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “At least not yet.”

“Literally or metaphorically?” he asked, followed by a series of shuffles.

“Both,” I conceded.

“And is that why you were waiting for a call?” His breathing was labored.

He was really perceptive. I traced the patterns in the carpet beneath me with the toe of my shoe, feeling a sudden wave of uneasiness. I was eager to steer the topic away from myself. “Yeah, I guess. But I got a different call instead. From someone with a whole different issue.”

“It’s more like I am the issue,” Foster interjected.

“Most people run away from their problems,” I said. “I’ve never heard of a problem running away from people.”

My comment elicited a chuckle through the receiver. “I guess I’m just a considerate problem.”

I found myself smiling a little despite the bizarreness of it all. “Well I guess you can’t do too much damage out in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s really not that obscure of a place,” he argued. More shuffling. “People come here from all over!” More heavy breathing.

I glanced again at the arrivals and departures chart, scanning the rows of green “on time” and yellow “delayed” stamps. None of the flights were mine, though. I was somewhere in between arrival and departure. Stuck in the uncertain, unpredictable middle. I hadn’t come here to catch a flight, but instead in hopes of making a decision. I had hoped seeing other travelers would help me imagine myself in their shoes, but every time I looked back down I was still stuck in my own ratty, worn out black sneakers.

“Avery? Are you still there?” There was a note of anxiety in his voice.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, tearing my eyes from my feet and back to the empty seats around me.

“Avery, I can’t go back.”

The background noise had gotten quiet on his end, so he must have reached a stop. The Disney crowd had cleared out of the terminal, and once again I was left almost completely alone at the small airport. The sudden silence plunged the entire room into a strange sort of limbo.
“Me neither,” I admitted.

“I dropped out of college,” Foster said quietly. “No one understands. My family is so disappointed in me.”

“I mean,” I replied, feeling my cheeks begin to flush. “I put in all the work and time and money and graduated, and I still haven’t been able to secure a job that could even begin to touch my student loans. And now that I have the opportunity, I’m too scared to even take it.”

“I can’t make them understand that school just isn’t for me. My mind doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t make sense to me.” He sighed audibly. “But like, out here, this… this is what clicks. I wish I could make them see like me. Out here it’s just me and my art. That’s all I want.”

“But you’re already out there. You’re already going for it. You’ve already got the hardest part behind you,” I mused. “I’m just sitting here at an airport trying to convince myself that I actually could go somewhere if I tried.”

“Avery, I think you’re the first person to ever argue that dropping out of college is the ‘hard’ part. It was easy getting this far, what’s scary now is that there’s no going back.”

“Exactly,” I cried, feeling the heat begin to take over my face. I blinked fiercely. “I had made up my mind that if they offered me the position, I was going to decline. It’s not worth the risk to leave everything I’ve ever known.”

“But it doesn’t seem like everything you’ve ever known is exactly working out for you either.” His tone was observant, not condescending. “I think you know it, too. You said it yourself, you can’t go back.”

Another incoming flight began to swarm the terminal, and suddenly the silent spell was broken. I wiped away the tears that had begun to well up in the corner of my eyelids and sniffed self-consciously. No one around me seemed to notice though. They were all more focused on their destination.

“I know,” I admitted again. I stretched out my legs against the patterned floor, sighing and shaking out my shoulders. “And you know, the thing about art is that it’s meant to be unconventional. Maybe it’s okay that you’re taking an unconventional path too.”

I heard a rattling noise from Foster’s end and then a whoosh. “I suppose. Hey Avery, I’m inspired,” he said suddenly. “This painting’s for you.”

“Oh? What’s it a painting of?” I asked, but whatever he said next was interrupted by a harsh beep. I jerked the phone away from my ear, and with a sharp intake of breath I realized what was happening.

“Foster, I’m sorry, I have to take this. I have another call,” I breathed, frantic.

“Wait, what are you going to say?” he asked, voice sharp with excitement.

“I-I don’t know! But, but I have to go.”

“Alright,” he said, and I heard another long whoosh in the background. “You’ll just have to come see it for yourself someday, maybe take a little detour once you figure out where you’re going.”

I stared down at the phone for a second before accepting the new incoming call, heart pounding harder with every ring. “I guess we’ll see.”

“Hello?”