The Crazy One

by Rebecca Markus

  At the back of the bus was a narrow hallway with two sleeping bunks on either side. Beyond that was a bathroom which was much nicer than what she'd expected to find. There was even a full-sized shower.

  But there was no private room for Beau. He was an international rock sensation. She knew there was no way he would be sleeping in one of these little bunks. So this couldn't be his bus. She needed to find a way to get into the other ones.

  As she made her way to the front of the oversized vehicle she heard voices outside the door. The driver had returned. She looked around for the emergency exit. That wouldn't do her any good. She couldn't bust out the window of a tour bus even if she had the strength to do it. She would surely be caught then.

  When the driver's boot hit the first step she knew she was trapped. She spotted a narrow closet behind the driver's seat and ducked inside, pulling the door closed behind her. It was a cramped space filled with hanging jackets and a few pair of shoes on the floor. She stood in the dark with her head between hangers and prayed silently that the driver would soon go away.

  Eventually, she heard another ruckus outside the bus. Her legs were tired by then and she squatted down with her knees pressing painfully into the side of the closet. When the riders boarded the bus, she let out a quiet sob. There seemed to be no way out of her situation that didn't involve the police.

  "Beau," she imagined one of them saying while dragging her by the back of her shirt. "We found this woman hiding in the closet on our bus."

  "Call the cops," said another one.

  "Wait." Beau held his hand up. That hand was on the end of a muscled and tattooed arm that she yearned to feel around her. And she did. Beau approached her and put that arm around her waist.

  "I feel like I know you," he said, looking down into her eyes. Of course, he did. She'd been watching him for months. She'd seen every recorded image of him she could get her hands on. She'd thought about him so obsessively that there was no way he hadn't been affected by it in some cosmic way.

  "You want me to call?" the man said again.

  "No," Beau replied. "It's fine. She's supposed to be here." Then he kissed her.

  She snapped out of her daydream when a person stumbled and fell against the closet door. Another laughed. She could hear female voices. They could have been the backup singers, but the conversation that ensued made it clear they weren't. They were fans who were getting a tour of the bus. Most likely all parties involved were hoping for much more, although their goals probably weren't in sync.

  All she could do was wait them out. The pressure on her feet was uneven. The ball of one foot was stinging from her position, but the other wasn’t. She needed to make them even, so she shifted her weight as best she could. Now it was too much. She shifted back. There didn’t seem to be a way to make it right without falling over and out of her hiding spot. But she tried.

  An hour or so later the female visitors finally left. She hoped everyone on the bus would find a reason to disembark, but they didn't. To her horror, the bus lurched forward and was on the move.

  She began to cry silently again. She was stuck on a tour bus. It wasn't even the right bus. Her knees throbbed and her back ached. She desperately needed to use the bathroom. Would it be possible to hold it until she got out of here?

  Every bump of the ride made her bladder ache a little more. Her compact position didn't help. Soon her tears were more for her struggling bladder than her impossible situation. Another bump did her in. Her bladder released and a warm stream trailed down her jeans, where it soaked into her sock and trickled onto the floor. She heard a tap-tap dripping onto a shoe over which she crouched. Holy crap. Her dream meeting with Beau had become a nightmare.

  Hours seemed to pass. Lucy had no idea how long she'd been in that tiny space. She thought she might lose consciousness in the unvented closet which now reeked of her own piss. She knew it was late. The guys inside the bus had quieted down. Was she going to have to ride like this all night? What hell.

  Then she felt the bus make a curve to the right. The driver announced over the loudspeaker that Beau wanted to pull over at a truck stop. This was her chance. She somehow worked her way up to a standing position, although her knees protested the whole way.

  The bus rumbled to a stop and the doors hissed open. She listened to the voices retreat. How long should she wait before she made her escape? Taking shallow breathes, she listened for any other signs of life on the bus. The only sound she heard was the pulsing of her blood in her ears.

  Suddenly, she heard the clomp of a shoe on the step. She let out a sharp yelp and covered her mouth with her hand.

  "It's too cold out there," said a man's southern accent. "I need my jacket."

  Jacket? Lucy was surrounded by jackets.

  The man yanked the closet door open and blue light flooded in. His head jerked back when he saw her. She stared at him wide-eyed and wordless.

  "Who the fuck are you?" It was Beau's bass player James. "You guys," he shouted over his shoulder. "There's a chick hiding in the fucking closet."

  She panicked and lunged toward James, her shoulder making contact with his stomach. He actually laughed as she pushed past him and stumbled down the steps of the bus. The others had already come back to check out the commotion.

  When her feet hit concrete she thought she was free. But she was caught by the driver himself who had her wrist in a vice-like hold.

  "Where'd you come from?" She couldn't tell if he was more angry or amused. He held onto her anyway as he reached into his pocket and tugged at his phone. She tried to wriggle from his grasp, but he was freakishly strong.

  The occupants of the other buses joined the small crowd of onlookers. She scanned their faces but didn't see Beau. He was probably waiting on his bus for the crazy one to be taken care of. Why didn’t he come out and help her? Why wasn’t their cosmic connection working?

  The driver had managed to get his phone out of his pocket and tried using one hand to call someone. It might have been the cops. She couldn't tell. She wasn't going to stay to find out. She tried twisting her arm around to release his grip, but he held strong. She leaned over, grabbed his thumb with her teeth, and pulled. The driver's phone flew from his hand and he yelled the F-word at the top of his lungs. Everyone else watched in shock and amusement as she was freed and fell to the ground.

  "Oh, my god," said a feminine voice of unknown origin. "She pissed herself."

  The other voices in the crowd laughed and murmured. Lucy didn’t dare look up at their faces. She got up quickly and ran as fast as she could into the dark and away from the lights of the truck stop.

  The day had been sunny and slightly above seventy degrees. Now that the sun was down the wind had picked up and Lucy felt frigid. She crouched in the weeds of an open field next to the trucker haven. The wet denim clung to her left leg like a vile icicle. How insane that she was hiding in the dark, watching the buses she'd run from.

  One of those busses contained the man she’d pined after for months. She could do nothing more than wait for his caravan to leave so she could go back and figure out a way to get home. They were taking their sweet time. She might freeze to death in that field before they were gone.

  As she watched from far away, she imagined she'd been invited onto that bus instead of being a castaway. She saw herself taking Beau's hand as he helped her down the stairs of his bus and into the cool night air. The music from the speakers overhead was just loud enough to be heard over the hum of the bus engines. A country song came on.

  "Oh, my god," she squealed. "This is my song."

  Beau grinned, lifted their hands to the sky, and twirled her around. They danced close under the florescent lights of the truck stop. She lay her head on his strong chest where his t-shirt stretched tight against his firm pecs. His hands rested on her hips. They forgot about the others in their group, about the concert, about the fans. It was just the two of them; wrapped up in each other.

  She continued this scenario
in her head until the buses eventually pulled out of the lot. Whoever was in charge had apparently decided not to call the police on her and make a thing out of it. Thank goodness. She figured it was something they were used to dealing with. It would be another crazy story they would tell about the road.

  She trekked against the wind, back to the contrasting brightness of the truck stop. She was basically stranded. She refused to hitch a ride because she knew what happened to women who did. She had only one option. She had to call her dad. She had to ask him to drive all the way from Omaha to somewhere outside Kansas City and pick her up. Then she would have to explain why. At least she had a couple hours to think of a good excuse.

  Humiliation filled her mind while she waited. She’d come close to meeting Beau. She’d been right there. Instead, she’d pissed inside a camper and scuffled with one of his guys. A cold, spiked ball of regret grew in her belly. A thousand shards of ice ripped at her insides. The more she replayed her actions in her head, the more she convinced herself Beau had seen her and that he’d been laughing at her. It was almost as if he’d thrown her off of that bus with his own hands. She was sure she could never face him again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Omaha – 2015

  After the concert fiasco, Lucy returned home to her drab life. The days went back to the same routine as every other day leading up to that moment. What was the point of trying to make it different? She had missed her opportunity to better herself and become the actual girlfriend of a touring musician as opposed to play-acting alone in her room.

  In the car on her way home from work one day, a Beau Castle song came on the radio. It was a sad ballad about a lost love. Her stomach twisted in knots as she imagined telling Beau she couldn't handle their long-distance relationship anymore. This time she wouldn’t be swayed. He pleaded with her to reconsider. He begged her to move to Nashville. But as she had told him time and time again, she wasn't cut out for the life of a rock star's girl. She wiped the tears from her cheeks as she pulled into a parking spot in front of her apartment building.

  Once inside, she escaped to her private island. The sound of the waves. The call of the gulls. She closed her eyes and let the song of the ocean transport her to paradise. She could be everything she wanted to be. When loneliness clawed at her, she crept inside her mind and thrived in her fantasy. She could feel the joy and heartache of love she would never know. She faded into a life she had always wanted, absorbed into her make-believe.

  Lying on a beach towel on her apartment floor, she imagined the tropical sun sizzling on her skin and turning it brown. An app on her phone looped the sound effects. The bikini she wore had never seen the light of day.

  This ritual had begun when she was ten years old. She’d lamented to her babysitter with a broken heart that she wished she could visit the ocean. Her parents were there, in the Bahamas, and it was New Year’s Eve.

  It was normal for them to be gone somewhere exciting without her. They took a two-week vacation every year "to get away from the stress of every day." She assumed she was part of that stress they were always escaping.

  It wasn’t normal for them to be gone over a holiday. They’d left two days after Christmas. As always, she was dropped off at her Grandma Edna’s townhouse in a gated community of seniors. And, as always, her Grandma Edna had plans of her own.

  That’s how she’d come to be in the company of a college freshman named Ginny on the most important night of the year. They’d watched three romantic comedies in a row. The clock was ticking closer to midnight.

  The loneliness had come on before school dismissed for winter break. She was used to waving goodbye as her parents went off without her. She figured that was the way all families did things. When she grew up she could go on trips, too.

  Then she started to hear stories from her private school classmates. Stories about exotic places. France. Mexico. New York City. One girl’s family spent every Christmas at Disneyland. They called these "family vacations." Family. As in, all of them.

  That was the first time Lucy recognized that she was lonely. Her life was boring. She never went anywhere. Her parents bought her anything she wanted. They never expected anything of her. But they never took her with them.

  When Lucy began to cry, Ginny rushed to her side. She squeezed her shoulders and stroked her hair.

  "Shh. We can go to the ocean," Ginny said with cheer in her voice.

  Lucy looked up at her like she was crazy. Why would she say that? There’s no ocean in Nebraska.

  Ginny laughed. She went through the kitchen to the patio door and slid it open. What was she doing? There was a scraping sound and then she emerged dragging a plastic lawn lounger onto the tiled floor. Lucy hugged her arms around herself to shield her from the cold December air that blew in. She watched as the babysitter pulled the chair into the living room and positioned it to face the TV. Grandma would be mortified.

  "Welcome to the Bahamas." She waved her arms in the air, then sprinted up the narrow staircase. Moments later she appeared again with her arms full. She spread a colorful beach towel over the chair and patted the seat.

  Lucy approached, giving Ginny a suspicious side-eye. When she sat, the chill of the plastic seeped through the towel, through her Christmas pajamas, and into her skin. She pressed her legs down so both sides felt the same, then bent her knees quickly to relieve the sting. She lay back and let Ginny continue with her tropical charade.

  Grandma Edna’s sunglasses were placed over her eyes. A margarita glass of soda was brought to her hand. Ginny fanned her with a magazine and spoke in a terrible accent Lucy guessed to be possibly Bahaman, if there were such a thing.

  "Now, Miss. Is there anything else I can get you while you watch the ball drop?"

  "No." Lucy giggled. The pantomime was working. It didn’t make her forget her parents were gone, but she did miss them a tiny bit less. They couldn’t stop her from enjoying her own vacation. It wasn’t even close to what the ocean would really be like. But if she closed her eyes and dreamed really hard, she could almost hear the waves crashing.

  From that day on, whenever Lucy needed to escape the stresses of the world, she spread herself out on a lawn chair or beach towel and teleported. She became skilled in the art of pretending.

  Tonight, the artificial oasis didn’t satisfy her for long. Her mind drifted back to Joel. Soon she gave up the beach towel and moved to the couch. She replayed Joel's interview from the Late Show. She knew Beau was there in that same studio, waiting in the green room, unsuspecting that the man talking was about to steal his girlfriend. Her heart beat faster. What a shameful thing she was going to do.

  She checked Joel's Twitter account on her phone. He had posted a photo twelve minutes ago. It was a picture of a lamp on a table in front of a framed painting on a brick wall. The caption read, "Bought a lamp for my living room. In case anyone cares." Then there were twenty-one responses from female fans who assured him they cared about his lamp purchase. To her, they sounded like lame and desperate attention-seekers.

  She saved the photo to her memory card and made a mental note of his living room wall. She scrolled down through his previous posts.

  "Coffee shop across the street is out of Ethiopian blend. Going back to bed."

  There was another photo. This one showed a view of a park. The caption read, "Out for my mid-morning jog in Central Park. Not an early riser."

  She saved the picture. He lived close to Central Park. This was good information, although she knew little about the city. Still, she had a bit of information about where Joel lived: a New York apartment, probably an old building, with a coffee shop across the street. She could imagine herself inside his apartment, admiring that new lamp and telling him she thought it was a great accent for his décor. She was dying to see the rest of his place.

  She did a search for "Joel Ruskin home." An old article came up with the headline, "Joel Ruskin sells Los Angeles home after Fiona Sterling breakup." This sent her down a rabbit hole
of pictures of the actress. She was blonde and incredibly beautiful. Her cheeks burned with envy at the pictures of the two of them arm-in-arm on the red carpet. Fiona's smile never faltered. She seemed to have no flaws. Joel looked happy beside her in every shot. But that was in the past. How happy could they have been? Joel was single now.

  It was almost nine and she had neglected to eat dinner. Her stomach rumbled. She retrieved a bag of chips from the kitchenette and continued her search. This time she stumbled onto a Map of the Stars which showed names of celebrities living in New York and pointed to the approximate locations of their homes. She spotted Joel's name just blocks from Central Park. Her heart skipped. She was getting closer to him.

  She pulled up a satellite map of the area and zoomed in to get a better view. The Map of the Stars only gave an approximate location. She'd have to guess which building was his. She didn't even know what street he lived on, so she zoomed into the map until she was virtually standing on the streets of New York. She maneuvered around. Except for the frozen people with blurred faces, she had the sensation of actually being there. Her pulse quickened at the thought of being on the street where Joel lived. Her hands trembled when she realized how close she could be to standing right in front of his home. If he looked out his window right now, would he see a ghost of her standing there?

  Finally, after an hour of wandering the streets of New York, she gave up her search. She would need more information to pin down his exact address. It was nearly midnight. She had to sleep.

  When her head touched her pillow, she had the very real sensation that she had been walking in New York City. It had been a satisfying trip. Her heart still beat wildly from her imaginary time with Joel.

  There was an ache in her heart when she thought of how perfect they were for each other and how he might never know it. If only she could have a few minutes alone with him for real. He was a nice guy. Surely he would see past her dowdy exterior and recognize the value of the person inside. She only needed to get near him.