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.”
“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?”
“Suicide is someone who wants to die. Assisted suicide is about compassion—not subjecting a terminally ill person and their loved ones to unnecessary pain and suffering in a battle they can’t win.”
“But it’s still taking your own life, right? That’s super intense. I guess if the person is suffering and they know there’s no cure. But even then—that’s a tricky one. What if they make a mistake and say you have six weeks to live and you could have lived another twenty years? How can they know exactly how long?”
“But that’s just it; it’s up to the individual, not doctors or anything else,” she explains. “He’s decided to take back the only total control over his life he’s got—his death. He gets to pick everything out—the music, his clothes, the day and time, who he wants there when it happens. It’s all on his terms. Seems to me like the way to go.”
“I guess.” I think about how my dad went. On an operating table, splayed open—all the technology and modern medicine couldn’t save him. Definitely not on his terms.
“Owen said he’d keep going until it got too intense. He doesn’t want to put himself or his family and friends through that, which I respect. His family is super supportive.” Her brow furrows, and she sighs deeply. “You probably think it’s weird if I tell you that the one person who completely gets me is someone I’ve never actually met.”
“Not at all.”
“And it’s looking like it’s going to stay that way.” She looks so disappointed. “I really wanted to meet him.”
“Sure.” I know what that is to be denied closure with someone—not only with my dad but Alex too—and how it messes you up a little bit every single day of your life, like some app perpetually running in the background. I sincerely hope she gets to Medford in time to see him.
“Well, anyway, fingers crossed there’s no issues with your bus too.” She adds and smiles, but her sadness seeps through like water in a paper bag. It’s a look I recognize because I see it on my face in the mirror every day.
For a second, I allow myself to imagine that I am on my way to go see Alex. It unearths a roller coaster of emotions. I’ve loved him and hated him at the same time for so long now. What would that be like? When we were younger, we used to be close, but then things started to change when he went to high school. He started acting out, getting into trouble, partying hard. I was scared he would die, furious that he wouldn’t stop. It was hard for me to understand addiction when I was younger, how it lives under the skin, waiting for the opportunity to once again hijack your brain. Things seemed to spiral out of control whenever he was around, but now that I’m older, I realize it wasn’t entirely his fault.
I didn’t get to have closure with my dad, but it’s still achievable to have it with Alex. Maybe the timing of my discovering that letter is because Dad is trying to give that to us both. I’m supposed to leave tomorrow, but Alex deserves to know how Dad felt. And it could be my chance to talk with him about everything that’s happened, to finally uncover the truth and move forward feeling a sense of resolution one way or another.
My car key digs into my thigh. I reach into my front pocket to adjust it, and as I extract my hand, my fortune from earlier spirals to the floor, settling faceup next to my shoe.
A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why ships are built.
I lean down and pick it up, turning the paper over and over between my fingers.
Honestly—I would give anything to get lost for a while, to burn the map. Sad but true: in eighteen years, my ship has yet to leave the freaking harbor unless you count the literal cruise I went on to Mexico with my family when I was nine. In fact, the most spontaneous and outrageous thing I’ve done in years was this one time I tried sushi from a gas station.
That exact moment, an older woman walks by wearing a sweatshirt with a glittery, red dragonfly on the front. It feels like an unmistakable sign from Dad, as if he’s somehow weighing in and validating what I’m thinking.
I glance at the clock on the wall. I have less than twenty-four hours until my flight. Technically, I don’t need to be in New York until Monday morning when I start my internship and meet my mother for dinner. Nothing is stopping me from actually going.
Alex, who always forged his own path, might be the one person able to help me make sense of the chatter and static in my brain. The more I think on it, the more I realize how much I need to see him before I leave for good.
I might also be able to help Hallie get a little farther down the road safely, upping the chance she gets to see her friend. It’s an opportunity to clear my past karma and help change her story.
Mine too, maybe.
I covertly pull up the Greyhound website on my phone and with a few keystrokes discover there’s a bus leaving from San Francisco to Medford, Oregon tomorrow morning at eleven thirty.
Perfect.
One minor glitch: my car is currently completely blocked in at a party that won’t end for at least another four hours, and there’s a ticking clock here. There’s no time to waste waiting for my car to be freed, and Hallie is apparently scared of every other form of transportation except buses. So how do we get there?
Then a light bulb goes on over my head. Karma.
“Wait here,” I say to her even as I’m on my feet moving toward the exit. Halfway out the door, I realize I’ve left my backpack inside with Hallie. Having entrusted me with her bag, I have equal faith that she won’t bolt with mine. Right now, every second counts.
Normally, I’m not a big risk taker. If playing it safe were an Olympic sport, I’d be a gold medalist. My therapist, Carole, says I need to do what scares me so I can prove to myself that things rarely go as badly as I spin them in my brain. I’m about to test-drive that theory.
Outside the terminal, I walk briskly down the line of cars parked in the taxi zone on the off chance Oscar’s miraculously still here.
He’s not.
But he gave me his business card. I dig in my back pocket for it, then whip out my phone and punch in his number. My heart is racing. It’s a long shot he’d even go for the idea, but I’m thinking on my feet here.
He answers on the third ring. I can hear the strains of the late George Michael’s song “Freedom” at full volume, and then quickly he turns it down and says, “Hello, this is Oscar. What’s the word, bird?”
His voice catches me off guard because suddenly there’s not a trace of the outback in it. He sounds more like he’s a mobster from New Jersey.
“Oscar the GoodCarma driver, right?”
“The very same.”
“I didn’t recognize your voice. You had a thick Australian accent. This is Jack Freeman. You drove me to the bus station about a half hour ago?”
He laughs. This time when he speaks his voice is void of any regional dialects whatsoever, just straight-up California. “Yeah…I’m not really from Australia. I’m originally from the Valley. North Hollywood born and raised. I was working on my accent earlier. I’m an actor. I’m up for a small part in this commercial and thought it might kick it up a notch if I played it Australian, you know? They’ll see my range. You completely bought it, right?”
“A hundred percent.” A little flattery can’t hurt, and he had me fooled.
“Excellent. I watched every Hugh Jackman movie in existence twice until I nailed it. You forget something, my friend?”
“Wow, that is commitment to craft. Actually—I’m calling because I have a business proposition for you.”
“You have my full attention,” he says. I silently cross my fingers and hold them up.
“You mentioned that you’re headed to San Francisco to stop your ex’s wedding and you have to give up a weekend of pay, which sucks. Here’s the thing, Oscar: all the buses are delayed coming into and out of LA from the south right now, and I need to get to San Francisco too. I know a win-win solution to our misfortune.”
He shuts off his stereo entirely. “Go on.”
I quickly pull out my wallet and inventory the contents. “I am offering a high-denomination Target gift card, eighty-six dollars cash, a coupon for a delicious high-quality burger from In-N-Out, plus all your gas and caffeine in exchange for your services if you’ll consider leaving slightly ahead of schedule and driving me to San Francisco tonight instead. It’s like getting money to do something you were going to do anyhow. And also, I’m going to ask the girl from earlier if she’ll come with me.”
After a long pause, he says, “Give me ten minutes to stop by my apartment on the way to get my stuff and we’re good to go.”
“Seriously?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, sure, why not?”
I exhale, relieved. “You, Oscar, are a fantastic human. We’ll meet you in front of the bus station as soon as you can get here.” I turn on my heel, fist pumping the air as I hurry back to the terminal.
I’m hopeful I can convince Hallie to come with me, but even if I can’t, I am now fully committed to making this journey. If she doesn’t want to join me, I won’t need Oscar’s help to get to San Francisco. He can just take me back to Carly’s house instead. I can wait until my car is freed, and then I’ll drive myself.
I’ve been moving through my life on autopilot, trying to please everyone else. But everything is different now. Dad isn’t here anymore, Natasha and I are done, and Mom is three thousand miles away, literally and figuratively. I can’t lose Alex too, not when there’s still any chance to make things right.
I make a beeline for the bench by the vending machine where we’d been sitting. Hallie’s not there. And neither is my backpack. Instead, there’s an older Latina woman in her spot. A little girl with pigtails is resting her head on her lap. The woman looks up at me.
“Excuse me, did you happen to see a girl who was here just a minute ago? Purple hair, lots of ear piercings, shoes with cats on them?” I ask her, trying not to sound too panicked since I’ve literally been gone less than five minutes. If even. What the actual hell?
The woman nods and speaks low so as not to wake the little girl. “Yes, she was here. She gave me her seat so my granddaughter could sleep. I think she left.”
“She left?” My stomach lurches with panic. Where could she possibly have gone in that short an amount of time? I frantically scan the room for purple hair and a Hello Kitty suitcase.
Nothing.
It’s possible she was put on another bus after all.
Or she could be in the bathroom.
On the chance it’s the latter, I sit down on a bench facing the bathrooms and decide to wait it out for a few minutes just in case. After four people come and go, it sinks in that she’s not in there either, and people are starting to look at me funny like I’m some perv.
I must have read her completely wrong. Perhaps she saw my leaving as an opportunity to shake me off and she snuck out, taking my backpack with her. The backpack and clothes I can replace, but my heart lurches thinking about losing Dad’s letter to Alex.
Sadly, this was the most excited I’ve felt about anything in a long time, which I suppose only underscores my need to take more risks.
I stand up, defeated, ready to leave and put all thoughts of Hallie Baskin back on the shelf when I spy a pair of shoes with embroidered cat faces poking out from a bench toward the back corner of the waiting area, partially obscured by a large, fake potted palm.
My adrenaline surges as I cross the room toward her, and she comes into full view. She’s leaning against her suitcase reading. My backpack is propped carefully on the other side of her. She looks up at my hasty approach and quickly snaps the book shut.
“Where the heck did you go?” she asks, her tone part annoyance, part worry.
“Where the heck did you go?” I shoot back.
She bobs her head in the direction of this scary-looking guy who looks like he jumped out of an America’s Most Wanted poster. “That dude was freaking me out. I didn’t want him staring at me all night. And then this other lady needed a place where her kid could lie down, so—”
I cut her off and smile. “What if I told you I might have a solution to the current lack of transportation situation?”
“Have you commandeered a bus?”
“Better. I’m driving with Oscar to San Francisco, and I think you should come with us.”