Also, it occurred to me that some of the others who get on the bus might not be the best at typing on notepads, or they might feel awkward writing about themselves. There’s a dictation app I’ve used before, Speech Awareness Audio Recorder, that has a really simple interface, with voice-recognition software that can identify who’s talking, and doesn’t take up much space. Just click record and it’ll auto-transcribe the whole thing to text, then store the .mp4 file when you hit stop. I’ve attached the latest version if you want to give it a shot.
Thanks again for pulling this all together. I’ve felt really alone since making my decision to end things. It’s good not to feel that way anymore.
* * *
From: Mark Antonelli [email protected]
To: Lisa Rousseau [email protected]
Subject: Re: Chipping In
Hey, Lisa—
While installing some new software, I glanced at the server log and noticed that you hadn’t written anything yet in the “My Story” folder, or even logged on. So I wanted to fire over a quick reminder that it’s important for everyone to contribute to the cause. Write what you can when you can. Hope this doesn’t ping and wake you up, know you had a long night.
All Best—
Stupid Fucking Dickface
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
VOICE 1: Testing, testing… just seeing if this app works. One two three four five six seven.
EDIT VOICE? Y/N Y
ENTER VOICE 1 NAME: MARK ANTONELLI
VOICE 1: Is this working now?
INCREASE MICROPHONE VOLUME TO ASSIST WITH VOICE IDENTIFICATION.
MARK ANTONELLI: Is this better? Good. Okay, I think we’re locked and loaded.
VOICE 2: Who wants some music?
VOICE 3: No, Dylan, come on, some of us are trying to sleep.
VOICE 4: How about something low?
VOICE 3: No. Later.
VOICE 5: I think we should stop for pork chops. Who wants pork chops smothered in onions?
VOICE 2: I do. Or how about liver? Fried liver and onions.
VOICE 3: Fuck all of you.
EDIT VOICE? Y/N Y
ENTER VOICE 2 NAME: DYLAN
ENTER VOICE 3 NAME: LISA
ENTER VOICE 4 NAME: TYLER
ENTER VOICE 5 NAME: KAREN
TYLER: Hey, Mark, is that the voice recognition app? Did you get it working?
MARK ANTONELLI: Yeah, just a second, let me—
END RECORDING
* * *
Username: LIsa
My name is Lisa Rousseau, I told you that part already, 24, WTF, why are you bothering me with this shit stop sending me stupid emails asdfkaldiflmh12345 whatever leave me alone I’ll finish this later fuck.
* * *
Karen_Ortiz
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the daylight.
The only thing I wanted at the bar last night was ten minutes when Lisa wasn’t talking. Well, she’s not talking now, that’s for sure. She’s SO hungover, OMG, just crashed out against the window with her coat over her head. Every once in a while she sits up a little, squints out from under the coat, then goes back to sleep again.
I know I shouldn’t be enjoying her distress, I’m pretty hungover myself, but payback can be pretty funny sometimes. I don’t even know what she’s doing here or if she’s even halfway serious about this. Seems to me like the only people who’d want to kill themselves are the ones who have to put up with her.
On the other hand, Tyler seems interesting. It’s like he knows everyone is staring at him because of how he looks, so he’s always smiling. That way they won’t feel they’re bothering him by staring. Or maybe he just likes to smile. Either way, he seems really nice, if a bit shy.
It’s funny how we’re breaking into high school cliques, the Sickos versus the Wackos. Tyler and I (the Sickos) get along like he’s my older brother even though he’s actually a bit younger than me, and Lisa (Wacko) definitely has her eye on Mark. Dylan is kind of in the middle. As the driver, he belongs nowhere and everywhere. After the incident at the strip club, I thought maybe there might be a thing between us, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I think he’d care too much, and I don’t need or want that right now.
I didn’t get on the bus to start something.
I got on the bus to end something.
Stick to the program.
To kill time I went online and browsed Pinterest until we reached Cambridge, Ohio, one of those big/little towns that went to sleep a long time ago and nobody bothered to wake it up. Lots of old, red-brick buildings with flags on every corner and hand-made posters announcing Homecoming for the local high school (Go, Bobcats!), craft fairs, scheduled meetings of the Chamber of Commerce, and who won the latest Spirit of Community Award.
We got lunch at a little restaurant on Dewey, then split up to stretch our legs and check out the area. Even walking slowly hurts, something else I have in common with Tyler, but if I don’t do at least a little every day I start to pull back from the world, so I headed toward a clutch of little shops. Some of them were cute, others more industrial looking, selling used clothes, hardware and toys, things that once belonged to someone who decided one day that he didn’t want them anymore and sold them to the store so they can sell them to someone else who’ll have them for a while then lose interest and sell them again.
Maybe everybody in town should just get together once a year and swap everything they have, I thought. It’d save time and sales tax.
By now the Spider was awake and crawling around my nerve endings, looking for something to bite, so I was about to head back when I noticed a sign across the street for The Museum of Cambridge Glass.
Might be pretty, I thought. Five minutes then I turn around.
The Spider said nothing, its mouth too full of me.
The museum was a rainbow of shapes and colors: glass vases and plates and bowls and ornaments and candle-holders and dishes and perfume bottles and Buddhas and doorknobs and wineglasses in lime green and purple and red and blue and clear crystal that fractured the light into a million colors that shifted every time you took another step. When I was a girl, my dad had an old kaleidoscope that he kept on the mantel in the living room, and I loved to look through it, turning it so I could see the patterns change. Walking through the rows of colored glass felt like I was looking out of the kaleidoscope instead of into it.
“We’ve added a new exhibit.”
I turned to see an older woman standing by the gift shop. “Paperweights. They’re part of the Elizabeth Dengenhart Collection. We don’t get to show them very often, so you came on a good day.” She pointed down the center aisle. “Row seven.”
“Thank you,” I said, and went where directed more out of courtesy than interest. What could be so amazing about paperweights?
But they were beautiful. Hundreds of glass spheres containing butterflies and flowers and swirls of color like little galaxies. Others were shaped like crystal hammers, owls, cats, purses, tiny glass shoes, and figurines. I smiled as I walked down the row of glass cabinets, taking in their beauty. Not just beauty, trivial beauty. A paperweight was designed to do one thing: keep pieces of paper from blowing away. Literally a thing to put on top of a thing. You could use a rock to do that, or your keys, or a pen, or a million other mundane everyday items. Instead, someone decided to create little moments of beauty to do the simplest, smallest job in the world, because why shouldn’t that be beautiful?
For some reason, that thought made me ridiculously happy.
By the time I got back to the bus, everyone else was already on board, waiting for me. “We were starting to get worried,” Dylan said, and grinned at me. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” I said.
And I was.
* * *
AdminMark
D says we’re about an hour out from our next pickup in Alexandria. I had a bunch of responses from Ohio (not su
rprising because Ohio), but I picked Alexandria because a) it’s a village—population 531—and I’ve never been to an actual village before, b) during the Civil War, it was a stopover on the Underground Railroad, which seems appropriate given what we’re doing, and c) it’s in Licking County, and seriously, how many times in life do you get to park your ass in the middle of a place called Licking County? Okay, yeah, it’s the logic of a sixteen-year-old, but you’d do the same thing just so you could say you’d done it.
The village is so small that the only landmark I could use for the pickup is the Alexandria Public Library, which should be closed by the time we get there. The downside is that the bus is really going to stick out in a place like that, and there aren’t a lot of places to duck-and-dodge if anything goes wrong—just houses, churches, and a couple of parks—but I haven’t heard any more from Dad since we jumped off the main highway, so we’re probably okay. Besides, the emails from Vaughn Richmond were the smartest, the best-written, and for sure the longest I’ve gotten from anybody, and it’ll be nice to have someone who can really make use of the server.
We parked on College Street (no college in sight, just an elementary school), one block up from Church Street, where there are two churches, Baptist and Methodist. So at least one person on the village planning council understood what a church was, but they were apparently a little confused when it came to higher education.
Dylan volunteered to go out again and make contact, explaining that he used to live in a small town like this back in Wyoming (which was kind of a surprise and the first time he’s mentioned it), so he’ll know what to do if anybody starts asking questions. I said okay because it made sense, but honestly, I think he just enjoys playing spy.
* * *
Update: Dylan’s been gone almost half an hour. I don’t like it. How long does it take to walk three blocks, say “Hi, are you coming?” and then walk back?
Forty minutes. Tried to text him, but I can’t get a signal. Lisa keeps saying we should go, but we can’t. Not without D.
I relaxed a little when I saw him come around the corner and wave. We’re good.
Then I saw who was with him.
* * *
Updating the Update: After the pickup we stopped at the Rusty Bucket Tavern in New Albany for burgers, pizza, and complaints.
“This is bullshit,” Lisa said when I walked past her on my way to the bathroom. “I came for a party, so I say we dump his sorry ass right here.” She’s pretty pissed, but it’s hard to take her seriously knowing that she’d throw any of us under the bus—or out of it—if the mood hit her.
So I’m going to let him stay, at least for now. Karen thinks he’s cute, and Dylan’s totally cool with it. I have no idea what Tyler thinks, but then I don’t know what he thinks about anything because he’s got one of those faces you can’t read. Also, frankly, the blue keeps throwing me off.
Lisa said I should’ve figured it out from the name alone. How was I supposed to know? Vaughn sounded hipster to me.
All I do know is that from now on, before we pick up anybody, I’m going to ask more about their age than “Are you over 21?”
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
VOICE 6: My name is Vaughn Richmond. Age sixty-five. Born March third, nineteen fifty-four. Hang on, just a—
EDIT VOICE? Y/N Y
ENTER VOICE 6 NAME: VEUGHN
VEUGHN: Goddamn it—
EDIT VOICE 6 NAME: VAUGHN
VAUGHN: Okay, that’s better. Vaughn Richmond. Sixty-five years old. Born in Davenport, Iowa. Five foot eight, a hundred seventy-five pounds. Gray hair, but I guess that’s not much of a surprise. Most days my health is fair to middlin’ as my mother used to say. Other days not so much. Right-handed. Don’t know if that matters, but Mark said I should talk about anything that came to mind. Brown eyes. Probably should have put that higher on the list, up by hair color, but I don’t know how to edit this and I’m not gonna mess with it now.
Feels like I’m filling out a job application. Is that really the only way I can think of myself? Age, weight, height, special skills?
Special skills. None to speak of, really. Except I can talk people’s ears off. Spent fifteen minutes before I got here telling Dylan about Alexandria, which is a ten-minute town on the best of days.
Widowed. Going on a year now. Her name was Carolyn. Most people would shorten that to Carol or Car, but she preferred the way it sounded at full length, so everyone including me called her Carolyn. She was a good woman who kept me out of a lot of trouble I might otherwise have gotten into. Kept me grounded. Kept me safe.
What else?
This would be one hell of a job application, wouldn’t it? What’s your preferred salary range? What can you do for our company? Do you have referrals from former employers? What brings you here today?
Why do you want to kill yourself?
Truth is, I don’t really have much choice. But that’s a long story, too long to tell here. Maybe later, if I can tell it at all. Guess we’ll have to see.
It’s a pretty night, though. Cool wind coming in from the west. This far out in the middle of nowhere there aren’t many decent hotels, and Dylan was pretty tuckered, so rather than keep searching we pulled over for the night. Dylan, Mark, and the girls took to the bunks, leaving the seats to Tyler and me. Came outside to record this because I’m still pretty wide awake. On my best days I don’t sleep as much as I used to, and to be honest I’m kind of excited about all this. When I was a kid I loved reading books about folks going off on big adventures and what they ran into along the way. Now for the first time I’m on one of those myself, and my heart’s going a mile a minute. Feels like the road might just grab me and take me off somewhere if I step too far from the bus.
Still, morning comes early, so I should probably go on back inside and try to get some rest. Hope this recorded okay. More when I can.
END RECORDING
* * *
LIsa
Two in the morning. Crazy Lisa’s finally gone to sleep and now it’s just me. God, she makes me—what, crazy? So we’re both nuts?
No. At least not literally. I mean, I’m not schizoid or whatever they call it, it’s not like there are a bunch of different personalities in here, it’s not Crazy Lisa and Quiet Lisa and the Sandman and Randy the Meat Puppet. There’s just the two of us, the same person but with different minds, I guess. That’s what being bipolar/manic depressive is all about.
I got that diagnosis when I was fourteen and my hormones were all over the place, which is also when the hypersexuality kicked in and Crazy Lisa started fucking everyone in sight. Quiet Lisa kept hoping that some of the older boys (or the men) would say no, that they’d see I was too young and out of control, and try to help me instead of screwing me. But none of them ever did. Chick comes onto a dude, he gets all excited, like he’s some fucking sex god, so he has to slam it in because he’s too full of himself to take the ten seconds to figure out it’s got nothing to do with him and everything to do with me being completely out of my head. Except for the guys I scare off, like Mark. I don’t blame him. I’m scared too. Been scared ever since the world flipped upside down and everything stopped making sense.
And that’s why I’m here, Mark (if you’re reading this, you said you wouldn’t but I don’t trust promises). I’m tired of being scared and out of control. Tired of being zoomed from Lithium to Epitol to Depakene, Loxapine, Haldol… one drug cocktail after another and they don’t work and my hands are constantly shaking and I sleep all the time or I can’t sleep at all. Tired of the endless crying and yelling. Tired of hurting people when I don’t mean to or they don’t deserve it or shit even when they do deserve it like My Stepmother the Bitch because I still hate myself afterward. Tired of feeling useless and stupid and not being able to hold down a job, which means I’m constantly borrowing from people or selling my clothes just to get by, then I end up blowing it all on new cloth
es when I’m manic because Crazy Lisa thinks that will solve everything and she’s brilliant and somehow she’ll figure out a way to make a million dollars by Thursday but it never happens because she’s Crazy Lisa. Tired of fucking total strangers and each time it’s never enough and an hour later I need to fuck again and if he’s not up to it I find somebody who is and I think it’s something like a hundred guys in the last couple of years and the only lucky thing about any of it is I didn’t get any STDs that couldn’t be fixed. Even managed to avoid the herp, and given some of the dudes who didn’t tell me they weren’t strapped until after they came because I was too blurred out to care, that is about as close to a miracle as I will ever get.
When I’m not all hypered, I spend most of my time sleeping or lying in bed for days, feeling useless and stupid and judged, drowning in credit card bills for things I didn’t want and don’t need and can’t return and all my friends keep saying why can’t you just control yourself like I actually have a choice, and thinking all the time about hurting myself or killing myself.
But you can only think about that stuff for so long before you finally go, okay, that’s enough, fuck it, let’s do this thing. But when I told my friends I was gonna do it, they just laughed. They figured it was just Crazy Lisa being Crazy Lisa, all dramatic and over-the-top, so they just said whateverrrrr and oookay and waved it away. They didn’t want to get into it and they for sure didn’t want to call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 (and yes I memorized the number) because they were afraid of being embarrassed if it turned out I was just bluffing, which of course I was because as everybody knows and everybody always tells you, people who are really going to kill themselves just do it, they don’t talk about it, so the ones who do talk about it are just looking for attention.
Together We Will Go Page 5