UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(101)

“I hate what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it!” Miracolina yells, after running from a particularly aggressive trucker who chased them with a tire iron for all of ten yards. “I feel dirty! I feel subhuman.”

“Good,” Lev tells her. “Now you know how a real AWOL feels.”

He has to admit that being back on the fringe is exhilarating. That first time it was all about betrayal, alienation, and survival. He hated it, and still has nightmares about it—but now giving in to instincts, impulses, and the rush of adrenaline feels far more like home than being a caged bird in the Cavenaugh mansion. Some of that survival excitement seems to be rubbing off on Miracolina—for every time they get away with something, she loosens up. She even smiles.

The longest leg of their journey is in the baggage compartment of a Greyhound bus—having climbed in behind luggage when no one was looking. The bus, out of Tulsa, is bound for Albuquerque, just one state away from their destination.

“Are you ever going to tell me where this journey ends?”

“We’re going to Tucson,” he finally tells her, but nothing more specific than that.

The bus leaves at five in the evening and will travel through the night. They create a reasonably comfortable place for themselves among the luggage. Then, about two hours into the trip, Lev realizes he’s in trouble. Even in the pitch dark of the cramped compartment, Miracolina can tell something’s wrong, because she asks, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Lev says. Then he confesses. “I gotta pee.”

“Well,” says Miracolina in a superior voice that must have taken years to cultivate, “I thought ahead and went at the bus station.”

Within ten minutes Lev realizes this is not going to end well.

“Are you going to wet your pants?” Miracolina asks.

“No!” says Lev. “I’d rather blow up.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Very funny.”

But as the bus hits a patch of rough road, it becomes painfully clear that holding it in is not an option. He will not foul the compartment . . . then he realizes that absorbency is only a luggage zipper away. He moves away from Miracolina and begins to unzip a suitcase.

“You’re going to pee in someone’s suitcase?”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

And suddenly Miracolina begins to snicker, then giggle, then cackle uncontrollably. “He’s going to pee in someone’s suitcase!”

“Quiet! Do you want the people in the bus to hear you?”

But Miracolina is beyond help. She’s entered into a full-fledged laughter fit—the kind that leaves your stomach hurting. “They’re gonna open their suitcase,” she blurts between bursts of glee, “and their clothes’ll be full of pee!

For Lev this is no laughing matter. He opens the suitcase and feels around to make sure it’s just clothes and nothing electronic, because that would be really bad—and Miracolina can’t catch her breath. “And I thought it was bad when shampoo spilled in mine!”

“Shampoo!” says Lev. “You’re a genius.”

Lev rifles blindly through one suitcase, then a second, until he comes up with a nice-size shampoo bottle. Then he frantically dumps the shampoo out in the corner of the luggage compartment and, without a second to lose, refills it with sweet relief. When he’s done, he caps the bottle tightly. He considers putting it back in the suitcase, but decides it’s best to just leave it rolling around at the far corner of the luggage compartment.

Lev releases a shivering sigh, then returns to his space next to Miracolina.

“Did you wash your hands?” she asks.

“Wash them?” Lev tells her. “They’re covered with shampoo!”

Now they’re both laughing, and when they breathe in, the cloying smell of cherry blossom shampoo fills the air around them, which just makes them laugh harder, until they’re all laughed out.

And in the silence that falls afterward, something changes. The tension that has been strung taut between them since the moment they met now goes slack. Soon the motion of the bus begins lulling them to sleep. Lev feels Miracolina lean into his shoulder. He doesn’t move for fear of waking her. He just enjoys the feeling of her there—certain that she would never do such a thing if she were awake.

And then she says, with no hint of sleep in her voice, “I forgive you.”

Lev feels it begin deep inside him, just as it did on the day he realized his parents would never take him back. It’s an emotional swell that can’t be contained, and there’s no bottle in the world big enough to hold it. And although he fights to keep his sobs silent, his chest begins to heave with them, and he knows he won’t be able to stop any more than Miracolina was able to stop laughing. Although she must know he’s racked with tears, she says nothing, just keeps her head on his shoulder as his tears fall into her hair.

All this time, Lev never realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all-forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world. By someone who once despised him. Someone like Miracolina.

Only once his silent sobs have stopped does she speak to him. “You’re so weird,” she says. He wonders if she has any idea of the gift she has just given him. He’s pretty sure she does.