“The pilot completely lost his shit. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? The doctors kept him under observation for two weeks, trying to decide if he should be returned to the front line or moved back. He kept saying he was fine. Worked his ass off to pass every test they threw at him. Finally they checked the little box that says Fit for duty and he was sent back to the field. But the second they gave him back his weapon, he blew his brains out, which had apparently been his plan the whole time. He couldn’t live with what happened, so he busted his butt until he could get his weapon back and end it.”
Dylan took a long drag on the blunt. “Was he right to do it? Shit, I don’t know. Not my call to make. For me, the most important thing I could do was to come home alive. He felt otherwise.”
“That was his choice, and he made it.”
“But that’s the point. Blowing his brains out wasn’t inevitable. He didn’t kill himself suddenly, out of nowhere, because he was upset. He had two whole weeks to think about it and change his mind. It didn’t have to happen. He chose that way. I chose another way. So when you ask me what I think about all this… I guess my answer is that sometimes when I hear you all talking, it feels like nobody’s choosing anymore. It’s just a given that you’re going to do this, and that’s that.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, the only reason we’re all here is because we think this is the right thing to do. Anybody who believes suicide is wrong wouldn’t be on the bus in the first place, so you’re only hearing one side.”
“I’m just saying that it doesn’t have to happen. You can still choose another way, right up until the last second.”
“All those choices have already been made, Dylan. The choices you’re talking about are the ones that got us here. Just because you didn’t see them happen in front of you doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”
“I get that, I do. I just wish there was another way.”
“Even for me?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.
He laughed. “I suppose.”
“But Karen for sure?”
The laugh faded away. “Yeah. Karen for sure.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
He stubbed out the blunt. “Not sure if I should.”
“Never hurts to ask.”
“You don’t think she’d get upset?”
“I’ve seen how she is with you, Dylan. She won’t be upset. I don’t think any of us would object to talking about our choices. Shit, why do you think people like us leave suicide notes? We’re dead and we’re still not done explaining. It’s our way of saying, And furthermore…”
That got another smile out of him. “So do you believe in God, or an afterlife?” he asked.
That settled it. We were definitely at the stoned part of the conversation.
“No on both counts. I think the whole afterlife thing is just the bullshit we grab on to when we get old because we’re afraid of dying.”
“Not sure that’s true.”
“Come on, even you have to concede that one.”
“Not really,” he said. “See, everybody I ever knew who was old and dying—my grandparents, a couple of teachers I had when I was a kid, the drill instructor who trained me and came down with brain cancer—were okay with it at the end. They never talked about being afraid to die. They talked about how great it would be to see their old friends again, about how they were looking forward to being reunited with their parents, husbands, and wives on the other side of this life. When somebody dies, we miss them, and that feeling never really goes away. We just keep on missing them. The longer you live, the more of people you miss, until the idea of dying is less about Oh, shit, I’m afraid and more about I’ll finally be able to see all my friends again… everyone I’ve missed so much.
“So no, I don’t think it’s the fear of death that makes us believe in an afterlife. It’s our love for everybody we ever lost.”
I’d heard Mark say there was more to Dylan than what he showed on the surface, but I never quite bought it because he was just the bus driver, you know? Turn right, turn left, drive straight, green means go, red means stop. Not a lot of thought involved, right? But I was wrong; the well went pretty deep.
“You’re smarter than you look,” was how I decided to say it.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, laughing.
“No, seriously, I’m not saying you look like a knuckle-dragger, but you could definitely be like that guy’s best friend.”
“Lisa?”
“Yeah?”
“Please stop talking.”
And for once, I did.
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
PETER ROUTH: As the new kid on the block I’m still learning the group dynamics of my fellow passengers, but full props to Vaughn for suggesting the Sheraton and to Theo for volunteering to sleep on the bus and keep an eye on things while everybody else crashes.
So why am I still wide awake at, hang on, what’s the time, two a.m.?
At first I thought it was the sound of Karen and Dylan fucking in the next room, but I put up with that kind of thing all the time back at the dorm and it never bothered me. I’d listen to the moans, rub out a quick one, roll over, and go to sleep. Besides, they stopped fucking over an hour ago. Since then they’ve just been talking nonstop. Not even loud, really, except for a couple of points where Dylan sounded really pissed off about something before she shushed him, but not nearly enough to keep me awake.
But here I am. Staring at the ceiling and talking to my phone because something’s been bothering me.
Whenever you tell someone you’re getting a degree in psychology, they always weird out at you, like they’re worried you’re analyzing them the whole time. So you say hey, no, I’m definitely not doing that, so relax, but of course that’s not true. You’re constantly sizing people up because you just spent the last five or six years of your life learning how to do that and you want to get your money’s worth.
And one of the things I’m really good at is being able to tell when someone’s lying, and Mark was definitely lying when he talked about us meeting up tomorrow to decide what to do about the rest of this trip. He’s already decided to give up. It was all over his face, the way he kept looking at everyone. And I can understand why he’d feel that way. If we keep going, we not only have to make it across Utah but also Nevada, and according to a quick Google search the laws there are also anti-suicide, which is funny given how many people probably kill themselves after losing everything at the casinos. The slot machines and the tables are allowed to destroy your life, but you’re not allowed to take your life. If there’s a better metaphor for capitalism, I don’t know what it is.
Driving into Utah means we’ll be out in the open and exposed. It’s dangerous, so yeah, the smart move is to quit while we still can. So why not just tell us that and be done with it? Why lie about our having a say in the decision? Shit, it’s his bus, he can do whatever he wants. Maybe he wants to make us feel like it’s a group decision so he doesn’t have to deal with an insurrection. Or maybe he’s letting everyone get used to the idea of breaking up so that when he does say he’s unilaterally decided to pull the plug, everyone’s emotionally prepared. It’s like the old cat-on-the-roof joke. A guy leaves his cat with his brother and— Shit. Who the fuck is knocking? Yeah, I hear you, just a second let me put my pants on, I don’t want anybody going blind.
Hey, what’s up?
DYLAN: You alone? We heard you talking.
PETER ROUTH: I’m doing a journal entry, why?
KAREN: We need to show you something.
PETER ROUTH: Okay, just let me turn this—
* * *
AdminMark
The worst thing in the world is waking up fifteen minutes before the alarm goes off. The window is too short to go back to sleep, and too long to want to get up yet. But I didn’t dare risk closing my eyes. I need to be clearheaded for the breakfast conversation, so I dragged my as
s out of bed to go over my notes one last time. Given how tired everyone is right now, I don’t think it’ll be hard to convince them that discretion is the better part of valor. We made a statement, we saw two of our own through to the end, escaped the police, and made it to sanctuary, so let’s declare victory and split.
Once everyone’s gone their separate ways, I can stash the bus at Denver Airport long-term parking, then fly back to Florida. After things calm down, I’ll come back long enough to yank out the server and sell the bus, then I’m done.
The hardest part of going home will be facing my old man. We’re talking about weeks of I tried to stop you for your own good. I knew you’d get into trouble and fuck this up and come back with your tail between your legs asking for help.
Once I’m on the other side of that particular slice of hell, the trick will be figuring out how to turn the material collected so far into something usable. The safest approach would be to alter any details that are too specific so nobody can come back at me later and say Hey that’s my life he’s writing about! and sue me. I have everyone’s signed release forms, so I’m probably okay, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an attorney vet the manuscript to make sure I’m clear of liability. Then I just have to come up with a satisfying ending. Until now, the book has literally been writing itself, but now I’ll have to step in and create something, and maybe that’s a good thing, make it my own book and not just something I inherited.
But there’s plenty of time to figure that out later. First I have to get past the “it’s done” conversation.
Here we go.
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
PETER ROUTH: Okay, here he comes.
KAREN: You getting this, Peter?
PETER ROUTH: Yeah, just started recording.
LISA: You hold him and I’ll hit him. Little fucker.
VAUGHN: No need for that.
LISA: Says you.
MARK ANTONELLI: Hey, guys, what’s up? I thought we were going to meet for breakfast. Is there a problem?
LISA: Yeah, the problem is that you’re a fucking liar.
MARK ANTONELLI: Whoa, where’s this coming from?
PETER ROUTH: From your own words.
DYLAN: They’re right, Mark.
MARK ANTONELLI: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
KAREN: I printed this up at the hotel business center and gave everyone copies. Tell me again you don’t know what we’re talking about.
MARK ANTONELLI: Fuck.
SHANELLE: Yeah, fuck.
MARK ANTONELLI: I can explain this.
THEO: I don’t think there’s much to explain, Mark. It’s all right here.
MARK ANTONELLI: How did you get this?
KAREN: Tyler found the files accidentally. But that doesn’t matter.
PETER ROUTH: She’s right. All that matters is that you’ve been using us this whole time.
MARK ANTONELLI: That’s not true.
KAREN: No? Paragraph two of your proposal for Charter Publishing. Quote. None of the passengers will know that they’re engaged in manifesting this book with me. Like the characters in A Chorus Line, who were based on the words and thoughts of real people, their diary entries and texts will form the foundation of a story that I can turn into a more conventional narrative.
SHANELLE: That’s why you had us sign the release forms, so you’d own everything we said and—
MARK ANTONELLI: Wait, are you recording this?
LISA: Goddamn right we are.
KAREN: Paragraph one, page three. Obviously I have no intention of driving us off a cliff, but the passengers will not know that until we reach San Francisco. At that point, they will be debriefed about the project and given the opportunity to have their names removed, but it will still be made clear to them that I own the underlying material.
LISA: Wait, I want to read this part. For legal reasons, your publishing company cannot be a party to this while it is in process, but once the material has been gathered, edited, and framed into a novel, it can be submitted to you for publication clear of encumbrance. So please contact me if you would like to pursue the chance to combine the novel format with true stories that I believe will make this a very saleable and publicity-worthy—blah blah blah blah.
VAUGHN: Material. We’re just material. That’s what you said.
THEO: Or an encumbrance. I’ve always wanted to be an encumbrance.
DYLAN: Me too. I’m not even sure what an encumbrance is, but I’m on board.
PETER ROUTH: It’s like baggage.
SHANELLE: Baggage? Fuck you twice, Mark. Is that all we are to you?
MARK ANTONELLI: No, obviously not.
VAUGHN: Nothing obvious about this, except your decision to not tell us the truth about why you were really doing this—
MARK ANTONELLI: I didn’t want to influence the experiment.
LISA: The experiment? Oh, fuck me.
PETER ROUTH: And you really had no idea what he had in mind?
DYLAN: No. I assumed this was going to end with all of you doing just what Mark said you were going to do. That’s why I emailed him asking for a letter saying I had nothing to do with that part of it.
KAREN: He’s telling the truth. You should’ve seen his reaction last night when I told him. His email’s still in the archive if you want to—
MARK ANTONELLI: Okay, look, can I say something?
LISA: No.
VAUGHN: It’s all right, let him talk.
MARK ANTONELLI: You’re right. This was never going to end in us driving off a cliff in San Francisco. You guys have to understand, I’ve been writing since I was a teenager. I wrote short stories, poetry, a couple of novels, and none of it ever sold. None of it. The rejection letters always said the same thing, that it was interesting but not compelling or important. And the part that killed me is that they weren’t wrong. I was just an average kid from an average family in an average neighborhood with an average education. I didn’t have anything to say that mattered.
I’ve been on-and-off suicidal since I was a kid. That part’s also in the archive, and it’s true. I used to wonder what to write as my suicide note. What could I say that would be worth somebody reading it? I couldn’t think of anything. Do you have any idea how depressing it is to realize that even your suicide note is going to be interesting but not compelling? A document like that is only as important as whoever’s writing it and why.
That’s where I got the idea for this. Alone, by ourselves, maybe our stories don’t mean much. But put a bunch of us in a room together and maybe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So I took a chance, and yeah, I lied to you, because I didn’t think I had anything important to say about my life. But together, maybe we do.
LISA: Keep piling up the bullshit, I can still see the top of your head.
THEO: Look, Mark, I can almost understand where you’re coming from. That doesn’t mean I agree or endorse it, just that I sort of get it. Where you went wrong, where you went stupid, was by lying to us about where this was going to end. You could’ve done pretty much the same thing and just said hey, we’re going to have this big Death Party, and what you do at the end of the trip is your own business.
MARK ANTONELLI: Would you still have shown up?
THEO: I don’t know, and the thing is, we’ll never know for sure because you went the other way.
SHANELLE: I’ll bet Zeke would’ve shown up.
VAUGHN: I had no particular plans.
PETER ROUTH: I said I’d only get on board if this was really going where you said it was going. So would I have come on? No, not a chance.
THEO: Either way, you started this wrong. Only question now is, can we take that lie and turn it into something good?
KAREN: This whole thing may have started under false pretenses, but the moments we’ve shared since getting on the bus were real. What happened with Zeke, what Tyler did for us, the craziness at the mall, all those
moments were about us and who we are. They were real, they mattered, and that’s something to hold on to, so at least some good has come out of this.
MARK ANTONELLI: I agree. So tell me what I have to do to regain your trust. I mean, I’m guessing you’ve been talking about this for a while, so you must have some idea of how to keep this together or you would’ve just split.
VAUGHN: Regaining our trust is going to take a while, Mark. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure it’s possible. But there is a path forward, at least for the time being.
PETER ROUTH: When you said you wanted to hear our thoughts about whether or not to stay together, you’d already decided to pull the plug, right?
MARK ANTONELLI: Yes. It seemed like the safe, sensible solution.
PETER ROUTH: Yeah, well, we’re not doing that. We’re taking over the bus. Also the server. We’ve locked you out of the admin account, so you can still add to your own file, but you can’t change or delete anything or email the document to anyone without our permission. The only people with the new passwords and admin authority are me, Karen, and Theo.
MARK ANTONELLI: Okay, I’m kind of confused about what we’re—
KAREN: We’ve talked it over, and since Dylan’s lawyer friend says we should be safe while we’re in Colorado provided we don’t get into trouble with the law—
LISA: Why do you look at me every time you say that?
KAREN: —we’ve decided to stay together and keep going at least as far as the Utah border. At that point we’ll assess the situation, see what our options are, and take a final vote on whether to give up or make a run for California, try to find that cliff you talked about and finish this properly.
THEO: That’s the only way to redeem the lie, Mark. By making it true.
VAUGHN: If we can make it to San Francisco and do what we came here to do, I don’t think any of us cares what happens to what we wrote. It’s yours. Do whatever you want with it.
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