Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall Read Free Book Online

and get him all riled up. Meanwhile I was dealing with a disgusting tampon emergency in the even more disgusting bathroom at the Irving station just outside of some small town in Saskatchewan. When I came out, I sat in the station restaurant for eight hours, smoking cigarettes and eating plates of fries, saying fuck it to the no-carbs diet.
    After two hours I stopped looking out the window for the returning bus. I knew they’d be in Vancouver before the rest of the tour figured out I was gone. With a thin grey hoody and a five-dollar bill, I was undeniably left. Finally, I talked my way onto a truck going to Winnipeg that had stopped to fuel up. The driver said, “My daughter loves your music . ” I curled up in the front seat. The guy’s T-shirt said Good Will Trucking Service. I repeated the slogan. My magical two words: Good Will.
    What can I say about being famous? Why is it such a destination? Because you want to be liked, I suppose, in an exaggerated way. But what’s underneath that, really? It’s a fight against our eventual death. That’s creativity in a nutshell. A messy tug-of-war with imagination to erase that feeling that nothing really matters anyway.
    So I’ve been famous, the kind of famous where girls in grocery stores said to me, You made me believe in myself / leave my abusive boyfriend / forgive myself for the abortion . Sick kids wrote me letters. There were Seventeen magazine articles. Minor endorsement deals. And what did I feel? More scared to die than ever. Before I’d been scared to die, but also, really excited to live and make my dreams come true. My dreams came true. Then I became scared that this was the height of feeling: watching from the stage while crowds sang songs about my silly little feelings. You were not anything they wanted to be, but they believed you were. They believed being you would make such a difference in their lives. Their belief anchored them. Pacified them.
    Therefore, you have no choice but to believe nothing. Because fame makes the whole world seem ridiculous. And stupid people love it. Are fuelled by it, get God complexes and forget how to eat and shit without their assistants. But have an ounce of intelligence and be famous, and you will be fucked in the head forever. Spiritual death. I promise.
    This was why I counted everything. I put things in order. I made it all make sense, because ultimately, nothing did. It was a trick I played on myself and it worked. And even that thought, that nothing matters, was trite. Was no big revelation. But if you felt it in your chest, it hurt. It was a physical pain. A lack.
    I lifted a spoonful of sweet potato to my lips and swallowed, thankful the conversation had shifted away from me. Maria’s mother talked about her new business venture — candle parties. Like Tupperware, but with candles. My fingers stopped tingling. My throat stayed open. My heart slowed. I swallowed and tasted gasoline. My heart started up again and didn’t slow until Maria and I were on the subway home.
    It didn’t matter that I understood what was going on physiologically in my body. My neural thermostat was fucked up. My body went into fight-or-flight response for no good reason. Blood rushed to my heart and legs, away from my fingers and face, causing my extremities to tingle. My stomach shut down, throat constricted. All these things are helpful when you’re faced with an oncoming bus. Need to lift a car to save a baby? Awesome. Sitting at dinner? Absolutely incapacitating.
    Afterwards, at Kennedy Station, Maria and I were a bit awkward with each other, overly polite. She ate one of the chocolate chip cookies her mother had wrapped in Saran for her, offering me one. I declined.
    â€œI’m going to tell my mother about us,” Maria said. “We need some independence. I mean, I know we have different houses now, but we need to spend some conscious time apart.”
    â€œYes,