by Robin Reul
I can see he’s worried that he’s said the wrong thing. He quickly clarifies, “I don’t mean that in a bad way or anything. Your hair was longer. Browner. Sorry—is browner even a word? I’m Jack Freeman by the way. I’m not usually this much of a babbling idiot.”
Jack! He offers his hand and I shake it. “Hallie Baskin.”
“Well, what are the odds of that? Love it!” Oscar looks back at us in the rearview mirror and shakes his head incredulously. We make small talk about meaningless stuff, and before we know it, we’re turning into the bus station parking lot.
Oscar fishes his hand in his cup holder of fortune cookies and extends two back to us in his palm. “A token of thanks for choosing GoodCarma. Please recommend us to your friends.”
I pluck mine from his hand, then extract the cookie from the wrapper to read my fortune aloud. “‘Accept the next proposition you hear.’ Well, that could be dicey, couldn’t it?”
Jack tears at his plastic wrapper with his teeth, bites the cookie in half, and pulls out his fortune. “Mine says, ‘A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why ships are built.’”
“Deep. I like it.” I nod and pop a piece of cookie in my mouth.
As we get out of the car, Oscar jumps around to the trunk and hands me my Hello Kitty bag. Jack eyes my luggage choice and smiles as he hooks his backpack over his shoulder.
Oscar slams the trunk and then hands us each a business card. “Well, take care, mates. On behalf of GoodCarma, it was a pleasure meeting you both and driving you to your destination this evening. I hope you’ll leave me a great review, and if you call me directly the next time you need a ride, I give a ten-percent discount.” He winks, gets back in his car, and drives away.
As I turn to walk toward the terminal, it strikes me that perhaps this is the sign I’ve asked for: Jack showing up twice in a day and he just happens to be going to the bus station. It’s a double coincidence and feels like a call to attention that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading a million books and streaming countless hours of Netflix over the past two years, it’s that feeling scared almost always signals a chance to dig deep and find out what we’re capable of.
Time to rise up.
Chapter 6
Jack
Friday, June 4, 9:36 p.m.
By the time I turn around, Hallie’s walking away. She doesn’t even look back to see if I’m there.
Not that she should. It’s just—the little bit of convo we had in the car seems enough to at least warrant a goodbye. We now exist to each other in a different way. Not exactly friends, but no longer total strangers.
I can’t believe it’s her.
Hallie Baskin. Two years ago, she had super-long, straight brown hair, and her features seemed fuller, less severe and angular than she appears now. Still really pretty though.
I have two random memories of Hallie even though we’ve never spoken before this evening. The first is her reading a poem she’d written aloud to the class. It was a dark and depressing piece about betrayal and grief, and no one had known quite how to critique it when she’d finished because it was so obviously personal.
The other time was about a week later. She was yelling at some guy in the parking lot of 7-Eleven. His bangs were streaked platinum blond, and he was wearing a red-and-black buffalo plaid jacket with a brown Sherpa collar that reminded me of Paul Bunyan. If he even went to our school, he definitely wasn’t in AP classes. Hallie was going ballistic, fists clenched, screaming gutturally at him, “Why are you even here, Ryan? You’re not real to me!” The guy stood there expressionless, unfazed by her meltdown.
I remember thinking whatever it was must have been pretty awful. I didn’t want to get involved because I had no idea what I’d be getting in the middle of. Instead, I’d grabbed my Blue Raspberry ICEE and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and bailed. I thought about it all night long though. I’d decided that the next day in class, I’d check in with her, but I never got the chance.
It was the last time I ever saw her. It was as if she disappeared into thin air.
Until this morning.
I’d always wondered what happened to her in the same way you wonder about a canceled TV series that abruptly ends without resolution. Eventually you make peace with the fact that just because you want answers it doesn’t mean you’re gonna get them, and after a while you forget about it and move on. Hallie’s reappearance is a bit like said series just got re-upped for production two years later by Netflix.
I run and catch up to her, keeping stride. “So, where did you say you’re headed again?” I ask, even though I remember.
She turns to me, and her eyebrows shoot up slightly as if she’s surprised to find me there. “Oregon. Medford specifically. And you’re going to San Francisco, right?”
“Yeah.” I hold open the glass doors to the bus terminal for her.
“You should go see the Wave Organ.”
“The what?”
“It’s a real organ made out of PVC pipes and stone salvaged from a demolished cemetery that plays music when it’s high tide. You have to catch it at the exact right time, or you won’t hear anything.”
“Sounds cool. You’ve heard it in person?” I ask as we enter the lobby.
She starts walking toward the arrival and departure screens. “No, I saw it on YouTube. I’ve never been to San Francisco. Always wanted to go though. I’ve never really been anywhere. My family doesn’t travel much.”
“Maybe I’ll check it out.”
“You totally should. I like rando obscure stuff like that.”
“Me too. I’ve only been to San Francisco once when I was little, and it wasn’t the best experience.”
She looks at me, waiting for the rest of the story. “Well, don’t leave me hanging like that.”
“I was super scared of bridges when I was small, and apparently the entire time we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, I screamed at the top of my lungs, certain it was going to collapse from the weight of all the cars. The Golden Gate Bridge is one point seven miles long, so you can imagine my family was pretty pissed off by the time we reached the other side.”
She laughs. “That’s pretty great.”
“I’m sure my parents would disagree.”
Three small children dart in front of us, chasing each other between the rows of seats. A heavily tattooed twentysomething couple is making out in the corner. Right next to them, a guy wearing a tuxedo is sprawled across a whole bench, fast asleep. A frowning elderly couple sits in silence, eyeing him over the tops of their bifocals.
I stand side by side with Hallie, pretending to check the info screen. Next to nearly every bus it reads DELAYED.
“What the—” Hallie’s jaw drops as her eyes scroll.
“That’s a lot of delayed buses.” I remind myself that, despite my ongoing story, I’m not scheduled to ride on any of them. It would seriously suck to be any of these other people right now.
Some guy with a major comb-over and a T-shirt that says “World’s Okayest Golfer” passes us and says, “The fire jumped the highway, and there’s some big chemical accident affecting traffic coming in from the south, causing all sorts of delays. They said those times are an estimate. No one knows how long this will take.” He delivers the news with all the dire emotion of a newscaster sharing the latest update on an asteroid set to hit Earth.
This might impact my flight tomorrow. If it’s too smoky, can planes safely take off? Wouldn’t it affect visibility?
A long line of harried passengers waiting to talk to the lone customer service agent snakes through the terminal. Hallie’s expression darkens.
“Great. Well, I guess we might as well get comfortable,” she says and moves toward an unoccupied bench by the vending machine and sits down, scooting to the right-hand side to make
room for me. It feels like we’re in this together—whatever this is.
Until we aren’t and she boards her bus and I get a lift back to my car and we never see each other again.
She hoists her suitcase onto the seat between us, resting her elbow against it and sinking her chin into her palm. I rest my feet on my backpack like it’s an ottoman.
“Their lack of stellar, on-time performance is disappointing,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood. I scan the surroundings and automatically take note of the location of the bathrooms, fire extinguisher, and fastest trajectory to the nearest exit.
“This is so typical of my life right now, you have no idea.” Hallie puffs out her cheeks and shakes her head, looking visibly distraught. “This could seriously mess everything up. If I don’t get to Medford by tomorrow, it could be too late.”
Too late for what? “Maybe you could get a flight.”
She shakes her head. “Too expensive. I don’t have enough cash.”
“I could lend you some money.”
“You don’t even know me. Why would you do that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. You seem like an honest person.”
The compliment oddly seems to distress her more. “I couldn’t, but thank you. Also, I’m scared of flying. The idea that some big hunk of metal can stay up in the sky will never cease to baffle me. Kind of like you with bridges.”
“Fair. You could rent a car,” I suggest.
“You have to be twenty-five. Plus, I don’t know how to drive.”
Who lives in Southern California and doesn’t know how to drive? It’s nearly impossible to get around without your license.
“Train?”
She shakes her head again. “Nope. Not happening. Seems like there’s always some big crash in the news. That Amtrak in Tacoma that came down on the freeway overpass, the Metro-North train in New York…”
“Segway?”
“So far that’s looking like my most promising option.” She sighs deeply and turns her head to look at the clock on the wall.
My eyes snag on the half-dozen earrings arcing from her lobe all the way up to the helix. “Must have hurt like hell getting all those piercings.”
She reaches her hand to her ear self-consciously. “Trust me, that’s nothing. The cartilage ones hurt the most. Worse than a bee sting but not as intense as say…a stomach resectioning.”
“Noted.”
I point to a small, indented scar on my left cheek. “See this? To date the most painful thing I ever felt. When I was a kid, I once ran with a lollipop in my mouth, tripped over a sprinkler, and face-planted. The stick went through my cheek.” Apparently, I am chock-full of heartwarming stories about my youth today. Maybe next I’ll tell her about the time I got diarrhea at Jacob Weitzman’s bar mitzvah.
She points to the cut on my head. I’d nearly forgotten it was there. “What happened there?”
“I had a minor altercation with a car window.”
“Ouch. You are very accident-prone.”
“It would seem so.”
She notices my tee. “What’s Subliminal Sunrise?”
“A band I was in briefly.”
Her face lights up. “You’re a musician?”
“Yeah.” It’s not entirely a lie if you count four years of high school jazz band.
“What do you guys play? Would I have heard of you?”
The very idea makes me emit a short burst of laughter. “Not likely. We broke up a while ago. It was my friend Ajay on drums, I played guitar, and this girl Natasha did vocals and keyboard.” Saying her name, I realize it’s the first time I’ve thought about her in nearly an hour. “She’s the only one who has any actual talent. She tried out for The Voice. She has perfect pitch. That’s actually pretty rare. The rest of us totally sucked.”
She smiles at the plethora of unnecessary information. “Cool.”
“Yeah.” The conversation grinds to a halt.
There is a garbled announcement over the loudspeaker. It awakens the sleeping guy in the tux, who then seriously looks like he’s going to lose his shit right there and starts yelling, “No! No! No!” And then he strings a bunch more denials together at double the volume. “Nonononono—are you effing kidding me? Seriously, that’s effed up, man! Don’t you people have extra buses somewhere?”
“What did that announcement say?” Hallie asks and squints at the speaker as if that might improve the sound quality.
“I’m guessing—and this is purely speculation based on Tuxedo Guy’s nuclear meltdown—that there’s another issue with a bus.”
The announcement comes again, still garbled. Hallie asks, “Did they say 1446?”
“I’m not sure.”
She eyes the small angry mob of travelers forming at the ticket window. “Do you think you could watch my stuff for a sec?” She doesn’t even wait for my answer, just walks away and leaves me with her suitcase.
“Uh…sure?”
I watch as she makes her way across the lobby. The change in her appearance is so dramatic from two years ago, and hair color is the least of it. It’s hard to know where to focus first when looking at her. Her clothes hang on her body like they’re a size too big. From her purple hair down to her cat shoes, it’s as if every part of her is demanding to be noticed.
When she returns a few minutes later, she looks like she could stab someone.
“Is everything all right?” I ask her.
“Fine.” It doesn’t seem fine. Two seconds later she bursts into tears.
I do not know what to do.
The tears lead to coughing, and it escalates quickly. She places one hand to her chest and the other over her mouth. People turn to stare, but no one is concerned enough to get out of their seats.
I run over to the vending machine and feed it bills for a bottle of water. I furiously twist the cap off and hand it to her. She brings it to her lips and takes a big sip, then clears her throat.
“Thank you. Sorry. This annoying cough.”
Hallie dabs the corners of her eyes with her fist again and bites at her lip, bobbing her knee up and down, looking around the room absently.
“It’s none of my business or anything but—you seem a little upset.”
She smiles, but the slight wobble in her chin tells me it’s the kind of smile someone manages when they are barely holding it together right before they lose it and start crying again. “My bus is still delayed, and they have no idea when it might arrive. I’m now priority status on the wait list for the five a.m. as a backup, but there’s no guarantee that will be on time either. The fires have messed everything up. So, I guess that’s it then.”
She shakes her head in frustration.
It’s not my place to ask for details if she’s not volunteering them. “Listen, I don’t know your situation, but I’m sure if you call your friend in Medford and let her know you’ll be delayed, she’ll understand. Shit happens, right?”
She sniffles. “It’s a guy actually. Owen.”
“Oh. I don’t know why I assumed it would be a girl. I guess when you said you were visiting a friend…”
She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t have friends that are a different gender?”
My mind cycles back to Natasha.
“Of course I do. I think it’s a slippery slope though. I mean—once you get close, it’s inevitable that one of you will probably develop feelings for the other at some point, even if it’s a terrible idea that probably wouldn’t work out anyway and could potentially mess up a great friendship.”
“Sounds like you’ve done your research.”
“Yes, it’s very scientific.”
“Still, I don’t think that’s accurate. I believe you can absolutely be friends with a gender you’re attracted to. Otherwise bisexual and pansexual people would never have friends.”
<
br /> “That’s a fair point.”
“Well, this is the first time Owen and I will meet in real life. We met online in a chat room.”
My internal alarm bells go off, but she appears unconcerned.
“Have you never seen an episode of Law and Order? Or Dateline? It’s a classic story—young girl meets guy online who claims to be seventeen but is actually a forty-six-year-old dude with a chronic rash who lives in his parents’ basement and collects human hair.”
She smirks. “A classic story? Like Oliver Twist?”
“More like Oliver Twisted. I’m just trying to look out for you.” But it dawns on me that I didn’t look out for her that night at the 7-Eleven or after hearing her poem that day in class, and I instantly feel guilty. I didn’t know her then, and I barely know her now, but I’d like to think that these days, I’d do things differently. I wonder if she even remembers that I was there.
Some guy, reeking of weed, approaches and starts feeding quarters into the vending machine right next to us. He reads every option out loud before sharing his delight with the entire terminal that the machine has Raisinets. Clearly, he’s won stoner vending-machine lotto. He can’t even wait until he’s back to his seat to tear open the sunshine-yellow box, throwing his head back and gleefully pouring half the contents of the box down the hatch at once, effectively ruining Raisinets for me forever.
“Owen is real. He’s definitely not forty-six, although I’m uncertain if he has a basement. To my knowledge the only thing he collects are Pokémon. And there is zero chance of us being more than friends because A, I’m not his type—wrong gender—and B, he could be dead by the time I get there.”
At first, I think she’s joking. But then she goes on to explain, “He’s gay. And he has terminal cancer, and he’s ending his life this weekend. Oregon is a right-to-die state, so he has the meds right there for when he’s ready.”
“I figured out the first part. Didn’t see the second part coming though. Wow. Isn’t that basically suicide?”