Sunday Scaries

The double doors of the cafe opened and shut with annoying infrequency. On a patio with yellow umbrellas, patrons with cool eyewear sat alone and in pairs drinking iced coffee from yellow straws.

This was where Aadil and Morgan were posted up for WFH. They wanted to take full advantage of the glorious day, bright outside but not too hot for their dog Kendrick (like Lamar). At their feet and on the table, tiny aggressive birds stalked the area for bits of pastry and hummus pack. The sun cast pretty shadows through the holes in the iron chairs.

They’d met thwarting a conspiracy together at their last company, a massively successful startup that sold toothbrushes that were actually mind control devices. They were nascent engineering grads on a team of talented, attractive young people. Around six months in they realized something was wrong. As the danger encircled them, it became clear they meant a lot to each other — first as friends, then with a fate-sealing kiss. There were some speed bumps in the beginning, a misunderstanding that would’ve been resolved with a text (they couldn’t because their phones had been tapped). But now they were very much together, deeply in love and comfortably ignoring each other and their rescue mix who panted pleasantly under the table.

Morgan manned her laptop with the grim resolve of a pilot flying through weather. There was so much to do: Start the Wednesday deck. Clear the Thursday vertical. Wake up earlier. Be happier. Without breaking her stare, she expertly gathered her blonde hair into a bun. She wore a bracelet stack and an Apple Watch that looked like a real watch.

She was happy: happy about things, but not because of them. If that made sense.

She loved her job, their apartment, the crisp, clean answers she could give people when they asked about her life. And there was a time, she had to remind herself, that she thought she’d never get here.

College was crazy competitive, interview season the same. Getting embroiled in a sci-fi thriller. She knew to be grateful for the stage she was in, but it was like the gratitude couldn’t make its way from her head to her heart. Her memory for how stressful things were was surprisingly short: where she expected relief in her chest was instead a vacuum to be filled with new worries.

So quickly the pain had receded, the agonizing three months when she thought she might lose everything. Her career, her conscience. At one point jail was on the table — not for shooting the CFO, who’d discovered the two doing reconnaissance in the middle of the night. That was a morally unambiguous kill, his dress shoes approaching furiously as he brandished a toothbrush like he was about to mindwipe them. What could’ve pinned them, though, were all the norms they’d disregarded in order to get the truth out. They’d misused their work computers, lied on so many forms…

Back when she was in it she thought about how good it would feel when it was over. For every room in the house of her life to be in order. To finally not be in some weird space where you’re waiting for things to make sense. She couldn’t put her finger on the last time she felt that way — maybe sixth grade? That didn’t sound right. A kid couldn’t be relaxed yet, the same way they couldn’t be “single”. It didn’t count.

Yet now, eighteen months out, she kinda missed it.

Once the story hit the media and she and Aadil were cleared of all wrongdoing (along with their hacker friend, Kofi, who always had a tension-busting joke at the ready), there was something freeing in being at the center of so much drama. She had an excuse to stay in. She felt less pressure to stay on top of laundry or the gym. It was the kind of rest earned from hardship, a close cousin of productivity. It was how she imagined maybe mothers or marathon runners felt when their feat was still new, that friends and strangers could all agree on the magnitude of what you’d just done.

After her bombshell TV interview everyone was thanking her for how “vulnerable” she’d been. Morgan didn’t feel vulnerable at all. It was so easy to tell her story, so easy to wear her favorite sweater and talk about something tough (but not embarrassing) that had happened. This whole situation — upper management unmasked — was a balm to imposter syndrome. It was a thousand Sundays worth of guilt wiped clean from the ledger.

Movement at another table made Morgan glance up from her work. It was two friends hugging and screaming. She sipped dispassionately, her eyes narrowing with slight interest. Inside she burned.

She knew, as Aadil often reminded her, that she had friends. Tons! She was part of three unsustainably large group chats, one for hometown friends and two for her distinct spheres of college friends. Because she’d known so many seniors as a freshman she was in four bridal parties next year. She socialized constantly: apple picking, pumpkin picking, charity foam parties.

But these practicalities always felt less persuasive than the last text she’d received (“Haha”), especially if Morgan’s mindset was already poisoned by lack of sleep. Sometimes her pictures flopped on Instagram. Sometimes other people’s pictures hurt so much she had to delete the app. She was good at telling herself stories about how everyone was hanging out all the time. She knew from someone great she followed that that’s all they were: stories.

Still, the mere sight brushed her raw nerve of comparison. It was the feeling of the world moving on without her. Like you could be killing it in every arena only to find out you’ve been neglecting something else. Is this what we’re doing now? Buying houses? Having best friends? It was like being home sick, where it’s fun at first but then you start getting better and you hear the school bus and suddenly you’re not home sick at all — you’re just watching TV in your pajamas.

Morgan had tried many cures for her feeling of not-enoughness. All of them, even the gentle self-esteemy ones, invariably attacked the problem by demanding her to be more. More fit (running), more disciplined (yoga), more enjoying of tough love (therapy). She bought a planner with a seventies design and free stickers inside. On the cover it said in a serif font, the kind you see outside old, shitty supermarkets, the words accomplished bitch.

It was a mystery where this lack sprang from. She’d had such a normal upbringing, the foyer in her childhood home crammed with pictures of her big blonde family. Her parents met in middle school and if they’d ever fought, she had no idea. She and her sister and brother played sports their whole lives.

Something went off on both her devices, a simultaneous notification from Gmail on desktop and mobile. It was nothing, but it still made her stomach drop. As much as she was killing it at this job she always felt on the precipice of getting fired.

In better moods, she knew she had this part down. She had a direction and a 401k. A question she dreaded getting, however: what did she like to do? She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t even remember, truthfully, the background software that held this biographical datum always short-circuiting at events and on Zoom. Like trying to recall what you had for lunch, lost to the trash compactor of the mind.

It was the perfect use case for the utility of those stickers that came with the bitch book: tacos, tennis balls, roller skates, turntables. The point of the planner, more than scheduling events, was to organize her life all the way down to her interests. To externalize these qualia in a way that felt contained and coordinated. There was even a page pre-printed with little TV sets for logging the shows she’d completed this year.

A Netflix limited series about what happened was coming out soon, and that should’ve been exciting. But Morgan just found herself comparing her looks to the actress playing her: a 20-year-old named Wells Reynolds-Rapp. Wells’ nose had that Hollywood slope, her lips not fuller but somehow superior in shape.

They really did look alike, which was actually more damaging. Despite being the same size and shape as a celebrity, the same poreless skin, Morgan felt the dismay of the silver medalist. At this moment she snuck a sideways glance at who was exiting the shop, a woman in boring clothes with a huge carabiner on her belt loop. Morgan panged with envy. She looked so virtuous with her waterproof pants, probably a biologist who never ever went online.

It was official: the list of things that could make her insecure was endless.

Weirder still, she could even make herself jealous. Snap Memories of the recent past brought comparison to new heights. She compared her own jawlines, her Fridays and Saturdays. That winter a picture had popped up from when she was deep in her dystopian crisis. She was throwing a blasé peace sign while clearly in tears, her face beautifully flushed from crying, a hoodie pulled tight around her head. Seeing it made her ache for when her hair was longer. Morgan knew all the facts about that moment, how awful it had been. But the hypnotizing effects of nostalgia were simply too strong.

Looking back on that time actually did feel like a streaming show, all vibes and atmosphere. Her crime-solving outfits were always so good: smart leggings, Sorel boots. Puffers in Black, Charcoal, and Smoke.

Some of her initial attraction to engineering had been aesthetic, admittedly. Just like the men in her classes, easily identified by their shell jackets and subscription-box watches, the women had a singular way of dressing. She loved taking notes with her huge stash of highlighter pens. And there was the work-hard-play-hard mentality that brought them all together in games of pong and Kings, an epicurean streak that made their grinding STEM track bearable.

Startup life had held the same appeal and she was pleasantly surprised to find out how much it was college redux. There were coffee-powered huddles late into the night, company-issued pullovers from L.L.Bean. One of her favorite photos ever was a tag of her and Aadil before they got together, unintentionally twinning in the same sweatpants and gleaming white shoes.

These were the rare times she felt truly complete: in the right place with the right clothes and the right crew, not too far from her next or last achievement. Social media just made the moment more permanent and real, increasing the likelihood she could recreate it later. A way of telling the universe’s algorithm: more of this, please.

This was why, when she posted his hand for the first time knowing ex-friends and almost-boyfriends would see it, it was just slightly more exciting than the electricity bouncing between their spinny chairs.

Make no mistake, what they had was endgame: she could still feel the butterflies from when they first realized how much the other knew. She was heading to bed at one of their team all-nighters when a toothbrush — a regular one from Walgreens — fell out of her bag. He looked at her with a conviction she didn’t know he possessed, this douche with the squared-up stubble and perfect hair. To great protest, he pulled her into a bathroom and flipped on the fan. He was mouthing desperately as he revealed a blue travel brush from his own pocket.

The day she soft-launched Aadil she loved him more than ever, and only continued to. But it was just the ugly truth of posting. The validation of acquaintances would always mean more than the smart, funny, surprisingly sweet person beside you whose fondness was already yours.

One way Morgan dealt with The Lack was to make big life changes. She got by for a good while on the complexity Kendrick added to their already busy lives, a joyful blur of brown and white who loved eating her Birks. But as he matured they could start to fold him into their routine of hikes, road trips, and even restaurants like this. On her 24th birthday she got a cartilage piercing, a decision which shocked everyone. Instead of the defiant hoop her family was imagining she wore a tasteful crescent moon.

Morgan was gripped by the sudden desire to leave. She didn’t know why, either — she was having a good time. Cloudless days like this were just anxiety-inducing in a way beneath her detection.

For one thing, she always felt extra guilty not taking full advantage of them. But now she was dealing with the figurative aspect: having nothing looming on the horizon made her feel placeless and strange. She’d gotten so used to the tension in her body she found novel ways to generate it with her own mind. Through podcasts and helpful quotes on Pinterest, she was learning that she might be addicted to pressure.

At the same time she knew this complex was contrary to her true nature, an interloper she carried around like a virus or vestigial twin. She was a born leader. Lacrosse champion. Editor of a yearbook that felt like a newswire the way emergencies blared all the time, last-minute submissions and drama with the printers. She’d handled these things with a preternatural calm until around 2013, tenth grade. She recalled this as the epoch when motivation was less easily found for writing papers. She had changed nothing about her routine but start using Snapchat.

She pulled up Expedia. She was looking-not looking, pawing through flights like racks of dresses at the store. It’d been a while since they’d taken a vacation and merely bookmarking the tickets would feel productive in a way she so needed.

Should she schedule a nail appointment too? She knew from recent conversations that they’d be getting engaged soon. They wanted to do it when they were both settled enough into their new jobs, and of course for Kendrick to get acclimated to all the changes, too. Thoughts of the wedding steadied her. With this would come more planners, more pens, a clear, medium-distance goal.

The sound of an important bulletin rang out.

She and her boyfriend both stopped what they were doing to notice a push notification on their phones. It was Reuters announcing a massive pileup on a major interstate highway. The cause was an 18-wheeler going too fast, the resultant crash spilling bright green pavement-eating acid in all directions. It would have huge ramifications for the already-buckling supply chain, choking an essential route for long-distance truckers for as long as it took to rebuild the road.

Morgan scrolled with infatuation. This news felt surprisingly good to read, hitting her chest and stomach like a piece of juicy gossip. It was relieving like watching the teacher get very mad — no, disappointed — at a portion of the class that had fumbled an assignment. She’d felt the same way when that boat got stuck in the Suez Canal.

There were fatalities, which made her excitement feel gross. She tried to refashion her titillation into an informed concern, like a contractor plainly and confidently explaining why you definitely want a dark bottom pool, not a white one.

The tragedy was part of the comfort though: someone else, not her, had done something very bad. For a blessed moment the hammer over her head retreated.

After a few minutes of distracted bliss, she felt Aadil’s presence at her back. He was standing with his hands around his backpack straps, bouncing casually on his toes as he waited for her. Wordlessly and efficiently she packed up her work area, shutting the laptop on her day and her thoughts. They chatted happily as they discarded their cups and walked back to the car.