“Yeah, I’m so sorry.” I fumble my credit card out of my wallet and hand it to her. “Texas,” I say first as a test, but then afterwards I realize it felt right on my tongue. “Yeah, anywhere in Texas would be great.”
The old lady raises an ungroomed reddish brow. “You don’t know where you’re going?”
I nod furiously. “Uh, yeah, I just mean that I’ll take any bus going to Texas that’s next in line.” I smile across at her hoping she’s buying this load of crap and doesn’t feel the need to have my driver’s license checked out for anything suspicious. “I’ve already been here for six hours. I hope you understand.”
She looks right at me for a long, unnerving moment and then takes my credit card from between my fingers and starts tapping her keyboard again.
“Next bus leaving for Texas is in an hour.”
“Great! I’ll take that one!” I say before she even has a chance to tell me whereabouts in Texas exactly.
It doesn’t matter. And she’s in such a hurry to get home that she’s doesn’t seem to think it matters, either. As long as I don’t care, she surely doesn’t.
I get my brand new bus ticket and shove it inside my purse next to the old one as the counter closes behind me at 9:05 p.m. and I feel a small sense of relief wash over me. Walking back towards my seat, I fish around in my purse for my phone, pulling it out to check to see if I missed any calls or text messages. My mom called twice and left a voicemail both times, but still no call back from Natalie.
“Baby, where are you?” my mom asks on the other end when I call her back. “I tried calling Natalie to see if you were staying with her but can’t seem to catch her. Are you OK?”
“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.” I’m pacing in front of my chair with my phone pressed to my right ear. “I decided to take a trip up to see my friend Anna in Virginia. I’ll be here for a little while hanging out with her, but I’m OK.”
“But Camryn, what about your new job?” She sounds disappointed, especially since it was her friend who gave me the chance and hired me. “Maggie said you worked for a week and then didn’t show up or call or anything.”
“I know, Mom, and I’m really sorry, but it just wasn’t for me.”
“Well, the least you could’ve done was be courteous and tell her—give her a two-weeks-notice—
something
, Camryn.”
I feel awful about how I handled that and normally would not have done something so inconsiderate, but the situation unfortunately warranted it.
“You’re right,” I say, “and when I get back I’ll call Mrs. Phillips personally and apologize to her.”
“But it’s not like you,” she says and I’m getting worried she’s steering too close to the reasons why I really left and all that which I refuse to go into with her. “And to just up and leave to Virginia without calling me or leaving a note. Are you
sure
you’re alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Stop worrying. Please. I’ll call you again soon, but I gotta go now.”
She doesn’t want to and I can tell by how deeply she sighs on the phone, but she gives up.
“OK, well you be careful and I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
I check my phone one more time, hoping maybe Natalie sent me a text message and I just didn’t see it. I scroll back to several days, even though I know full-well that if there were any unread text messages on my phone that there would be a little red circle on the icon indicating it.
I end up scrolling back down so far without realizing it that Ian’s name pops up and my heart freezes inside my chest. I stop it right there and start to run my thumb over his name so that I can read the back-and-forth between us shortly before he died, but I can’t.
I thrust the phone angrily back into my purse.
11
NOW I REMEMBER ANOTHER reason I don’t like soda: it makes me have to pee. The thought of being trapped on that bus with just a tiny matchbox restroom in the back forces me straight toward the facilities inside the terminal. I chuck the half-full soda in the trash on my way.
Passing up the first three stalls, because they’re disgusting, I close myself up inside the fourth and hang my purse and bag on the hook mounted at the top of the blue door. I spread a good layer of toilet paper over the seat so I don’t catch anything; do my business fast and now comes the strategic part. With one foot propped on the toilet seat to keep it from flushing on its own because of the sensor, I fumble the button on my jeans, reach out to get my bags from the hook and then open the door, all still with one foot propped awkwardly behind me.
And then I jump out fast right before the toilet flushes.
Blame it on Myth Busters; I was mortified for months after the episode on how the toilet really does spray invisible germs on you when it flushes.
The fluorescent lights in the restroom are duller than the ones in the waiting area. One flickers above me. There’s two spiders burrowed behind webs tangled with dead bugs in the corner wall. It stinks in here. I step in front of a mirror and look for a dry spot on the counter to put my bags and then I wash my hands. Great, no paper towels. The only way I’m drying my hands is by that obnoxious blower hanging on the wall, which never really dries anything, but just spreads the water around. I start to wipe my hands on my jeans instead, but I hit the large silver button on the hand drier and it roars to life. I wince. I hate that sound.
As I’m pretending to dry my hands (because I know in the end, I’ll be wiping them on my jeans anyway), a moving shadow behind me catches my eye in the mirrors. I turn around and at the same time the hand drier turns off, bathing the room in silence again.
A man is standing at the restroom entrance, looking at me.
My heart reacts and my throat goes dry. “This is the ladies restroom.”
I glance at my bags on the counter. Do I have a weapon? Yeah, I did at least pack a knife, though little good it’ll do me when it’s several feet away inside a zipped-up bag.
“Sorry, I thought this was the men’s room.”
Good, apology accepted, now please get the hell out of here
.
The man, wearing dirty, old running shoes and faded jeans with paint stains on the legs, just stands there. This isn’t good. If it really was an accident that he came in here, surely he’d look more embarrassed and would’ve already turned tail and left.
I march over to my bags on the counter and I notice from the corner of my eye that he takes a few more steps toward me.
“I…didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.
I throw open my bag and dig around inside of it for my knife, while at the same time trying to keep my eyes on him.
“I’ve seen you on the bus,” he says and he’s still drawing closer. “My name is Robert.”
I swing my head around to face him. “Look, you’re not supposed to be in here. It’s not exactly the place for conversation and I suggest you leave. Now.” Finally, I feel the contours of the knife and grip it in my hand, keeping my hand hidden inside the bag. My finger presses down on the thin metal piece to set the blade free from the handle. I hear it click open and lock in place.
The man stops about six feet from me and smiles. His black hair is oily and slicked back. Yes, I remember him now; he’s been on every bus change with me since Tennessee.
Oh my God, has he been watching me all this time?
I pull the knife out of the bag and hold it up clutched in my fist, ready to use it and letting him know that I will not hesitate.
He just smiles. That scares me, too.
My heart is banging against my ribs.
“Get the hell away from me,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I swear to God I will fucking gut you like a pig.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, still smiling eerily. “I’ll pay you—a lot—just if you suck my dick. It’s all I want. You’ll leave the bathroom about five hundred dollars richer and I’ll get this image out of my head. We’ll
both
get something out of it.”
I start to scream at the top of my lungs when suddenly another dark shadow catches my eye. Andrew barrels into the man, hurling his body over a two foot space and onto the long counter. His back crashes into one of the mirrors. The glass shatters and shards rain down all over the place. I jump back and shriek, pressing my back against the hand drier, waking it up again. My knife fell from my hand at some point. I see it on the floor, but I’m too afraid to move right now to pick it up.
Blood drips off what’s left of the mirror when Andrew pulls the man off the counter by the front of his shirt. He pulls back his other hand and buries his fist in the man’s face. I hear a nauseating
crunch!
and blood pours from his nose. Again and again, Andrew rains blows down on his head, one bloody hit after another until the man can’t hold his head up straight and it starts to bob and sway drunkenly on his shoulders. But Andrew goes in for more, digging both of his hands into the man’s shoulders and lifting his feet from the floor, bashing his back twice against the tile wall.
He knocks him out cold.
Andrew lets go and the man’s body falls against the floor. I hear his head thump against the tile. Andrew just stands there hovering over him, maybe waiting to see if he’s going to get up, but there’s something disturbingly untamed in his posture and his enraged expression as he stares down at the unconscious man.
I can hardly breathe but I manage to say, “Andrew? Are you alright?”
He snaps out of it and jerks his head around to face me. “
What
?” He shakes his head and his eyes narrow under lines of disbelief. He marches over. “Am
I
alright? What kind of question is that?” He fastens his hands around my upper arms and stares deeply into my eyes. “Are
you
alright?”
I try to look away because the intensity in his eyes is overpowering, but his head follows mine and he shakes me once to force me to look at him.
“Yeah…I’m fine,” I finally say, “thanks to you.”
Andrew pulls me into his rock hard chest and wraps his arms around my back, practically squeezing the life out of me.
“We should call the cops,” he says, pulling away.
I nod and he takes me by the hand and pulls me with him out of the restroom and down the gloomy gray hallway.
By the time the cops get here, the man has disappeared.
Andrew and I agree that he probably slipped out right after we left. He must’ve gone out the back while Andrew was on the phone. Andrew and I give the cops a description of the man and our statements. The cops commend Andrew—sort of vacantly—for stepping in, but he really just seems to want to stop talking to them altogether.
My new bus to Texas left ten minutes ago and so once again I’m stuck in Wyoming.
“I thought you were going to Idaho?” Andrew says.
I had let it slip that my ‘bus to Texas’ just left without me.
I bite gently on the inside of my bottom lip and cross one leg over the other. We’re sitting near the front doors inside the bus station, watching passengers come and go from the tall windows.
“Well, now I’m going to Texas,” is all I say, even though I know I’m ‘caught’ and have a feeling I’ll be spilling some of the truth very soon. “I thought you left in the cab?” I say, trying to divert the subject.
“I did,” he says, “but don’t turn this around on me, Camryn. Why aren’t you going to Idaho anymore?”
I sigh. I know he won’t stop asking until he gets it out of me so I throw in the towel.
“I don’t really have a sister in Idaho,” I admit. “I’m just traveling. Nothing more to it, really.”
I hear him let out an irritated sigh next to me.
“There’s always something more to it—are you a runaway?”
I look over at him finally. “No, I’m not a runaway, at least not in the underage illegal sense.”
“Well then in what sense?”
I shrug.
“I just had to get away from home for a while.”
“So, you ran away from home?”
I let out a sharp breath and look right into his intense green eyes staring right through me. “I didn’t
run
away, I just had to
get
away.”
“So you jumped on a bus alone?”
“Yes.” I’m getting irritated at the drilling.
“You’re gonna have to give me more than that,” he says, relentless.
“Look, I’m more appreciative than you know for what you did. I
really
am. But I don’t think you saving me gives you the right to know my business.”
A small wave of insult subtly stuns his features.
I feel bad instantly, but it’s the truth: I’m not obligated to tell him anything.
He gives up and looks out ahead, propping an ankle on the other knee.
“I saw that piece of shit eyeing you since I got on the bus in Kansas,” he reveals and has all of my attention. “You didn’t see it, but I did so I started watching
him
.” He still hasn’t looked over at me again, but I’m staring right at him from the side as he explains. “I saw him get into a cab and leave here before I did and only then did I feel it was OK to leave you here by yourself. But on the way to the hospital, I just had this bad feeling. I told the cab driver to drop me off at a restaurant instead, and I ate. Still couldn’t get it out of my head though.”
“Wait,” I say, interrupting him, “you didn’t go to the hospital?”
He looks at me.
“No, I knew if I went that…,” he turns his eyes away again, “…I wouldn’t be enough in my right mind to pay attention to the bad feeling I was having if I was staring down at my dying father.”
I understand and I don’t say anything else.
“So, I went to my dad’s house and got his car, drove around for a while and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I came back here. I parked across the street and waited for a while and sure enough, a cab pulled in and dropped the guy back off.”
“Why didn’t you come inside instead of waiting in the car?”
He looks down in thought.
“I just didn’t want to freak you out.”
“How would that freak me out?” I realize I’m smiling a little.
Andrew looks right at me and I see that playful, smartass look start to crawl back into his features again.