Mosquitoland(14)

A surreal panorama: fire engines, ambulances, state troopers, and curious bystanders are gathered, rain or no rain, right in the middle of the highway. Behind us, the headlights of a thousand cars go on for miles in complete deadlock. Amazon Blonde is being loaded into an ambulance. Jabba the Gut is going with her, probably for about three hundred pounds’ worth of reasons.

“Here,” says an EMT, draping her arm around my shoulder. “Lemme help.”

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing her off.

She points to my knee, where a crimson stain has soaked through my jeans. “So that was there before then, was it?” She leads me into the back of an ambulance, out of the pouring rain, and treats my wound. Once done, she drapes a blanket across my shoulders, then jumps back into the wet wreckage without a word. People are rushing on and off the bus, some crying, some bleeding, some hugging, and I can’t help but think that before all this happened, I probably would have gotten off in Cleveland in a day or so, and, other than Arlene, not given one thought to these people. But now they’re really part of things, part of my life, written in the History of Me.

Arlene.

Choking back a flood of tears, I pull her box out from under my blanket. What in the world am I going to do with you?

“You okay, missy?” Carl is towering over me like I-don’t-know-what . . . a Tower of Carl, I suppose.

“Yeah. Just a cut.” I shiver and pull the blanket a little tighter, concealing Arlene’s box. “What happened?”

“Tire blew,” he mumbles. “I reported a recall back in Jackson, recommended we either change tires or take a different bus, but no one listened. No one ever listens.”

A-freakin’-men.

“You were traveling alone, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Already called my dad, let him know what was going on. He said as long as I’m not hurt, I may as well go on to Cleveland. How’s that work, by the way?”

Carl lights a cigarette, takes a long draw. God, he looks like a badass smoking in the rain. “I’ll make arrangements. Whoever wants to can stay in a motel tonight, then we’ll take a new bus in the mornin’. Everything’ll be paid for, of course . . .” He trails off and seems to be considering something. “Listen—”

“You the driver?” interrupts the redheaded EMT. He’s shivering in the rain, holding a cell toward Carl. Before taking the call, Carl—like some muscly action hero—rips off a bottom section of his sopping wet T-shirt and hands it to me.

“You got something on your face, missy.”

Oh my God.

My war paint.

Somehow, it seems beyond appropriate that I stumbled through the ravaged bus with my face painted red. Mim the Warrior Princess. Battle survivor with a bloody wound to prove it.

As Carl limps off to take his call, I wipe my face with his rainy T-shirt and study Arlene’s box. Surprisingly heavy, it has one of those old-fashioned skeleton keyholes. The contents don’t shake or rattle or anything, but they do shift as I move the box side to side. On the bottom, I find four letters carved deep in the wood: AHAB.





9


A Metamorphosis Completed September 1—late, yo


Dear Isabel,



MY GREYHOUND BUS

(After Tipping on the Side of the Highway and Causing an All-Around Shitstorm from Which I May Never Fully Recover) Okay.

So I suck at drawing. But that? Just happened. To me.



Ahem.

SON OF A BITCH, IT WAS TOTALLY CATASTROPHIC.

Sorry.

Had to get that off my chest.

Now. It would be easy for me to wallow in self-defeat or self-pity or self-doubt or a hundred other selves, but I won’t. I’m just going to write.

I’m going to write, and that way I’ll be okay.

Let’s start with a name. I’ll write down this name, and it won’t mean anything to you, but when you read it, know that it means something to me. The owner of the name died on that bus, and while I didn’t know her all that well, she was a friend, and those don’t come easy. Not for me, anyway. She smelled like cookies and wore funny shoes and used words like pizzazz. Here’s the name.

Arlene.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Okay.

I’m okay.

I’m headed to a motel right now, in a van with about twelve other people. Our bus was full, but most of the passengers seemed uninterested in continuing their relationship with Greyhound.

Relationship. That’s exactly what it is. Hey, gurl, I know I almost crushed you to death, but it was a one-time thing, and I swear it’ll never happen again.

Greyhounds are pigs.

Unfortunately, I don’t have many options. Anyway, it takes more than a life-before-your-eyes-kill-your-elderly-best-friend type of bus accident to keep me from Cleveland.

My Objective is a bulwark never failing.

Moving on.

My war paint is Reason #5.

Mom’s favorite lipstick: the only article of makeup I’ve ever been interested in. Call it a cosmetic deficiency.

The idea that this was abnormal hit early, around third or fourth grade. (A girl knows when she’s being talked about, am I right?) But I didn’t care. I rolled with it. Abnormalities abound! That was my motto. Until it wasn’t.