I grab my backpack and leave my dad’s truck on a warehouse street away from the bus station. I wipe down the steering wheel and the driver’s door. It looks easy on TV, but I don’t know if I did it right. I’m not a criminal.
Before I leave the truck, I find the key for the toolbox in the back and rescue my old pod and screen. It’s not useful for anything but music, but that’s what I need right now.
I wish I’d brought my guitar.
“Bye, Dad,” I whisper before I turn around. It doesn’t feel like enough to say, but I can’t think of anything else. All I can see is the look on his face this afternoon when I was running away from him. I always thought my dad was strong, but he looked so weak and sad.
And then he was dead before I could say I’m sorry.
My eyes blur and I have to cough against the lump in my throat.
I’m about to toss the fob onto the driver’s seat when the picture on the chain catches my eye. It’s a little photo encased in plastic from a photo booth at the Santa Monica Pier. We hadn’t gone for any particular reason. Maybe Dad just wanted us all having fun as a family one last time before Pete grew up. I was nine, so Pete must’ve just turned eighteen. There was a special photo booth there where they’d take the picture for free and then you could buy it, so we went in and took a bunch. The one Mom got for us was the one where Pete and Dad were holding me between them like a hammock and my mom was standing behind us. We were all laughing.
She got three: one for me, one for Pete, and one for Dad. I lost mine somewhere and Pete was buried with his.
I pull the picture off the key chain and drop the fob in the cupholder between the seats. I roll the window down, hoping somebody will steal the truck before the cops find it.
I walk away quickly, fingering the picture in my pocket, then catch my reflection in a window. My denim is streaked with blood. There are spots on my pants, too.
The pants I can’t do anything about, but I take off my jacket, examine the patches, the small rips, the soft spots on the sleeves, looking for some way I can tell myself it’s okay to keep it, but I know it’s not.
“Fuck.” I twist it up in my hands, curl it around my fist, and start walking again, feet moving to the rhythm of guitars. At the next bus stop, I drop my denim in the trash can.
“Plugzer’s losing everything, today,” my voice whispers. “Not done losing. Not yet.” She’s not playful now, not mean. She sounds so sad for me that it’s hard not to cry.
There’s a payphone on Alameda. I’ve never used one before, so I don’t know how they work, but when I pick up the handset and dial 911, it connects.
An operator answers and asks me to state my emergency.
“I heard noises like a fight . . . at a house . . . It was an Incursion.” My mind is racing. I can’t even think about how to say what I need to tell her.
“Sir, where is the house?”
“Uh . . .” I try and think of my address, but even that’s disappearing under the pressure. “On Laveta Terrace . . . It was a bug!”
“Can you describe what you heard?”
I can’t.
Instead of trying to describe it, I hang up and bang my head against the top of the booth to try and clear it. The pain cuts through the noise so I do it again hard. And again. And again.
There’s something wet on my cheeks. I’m sure it’s blood, but when I wipe it away, it’s clear.
Tears.
When I can breathe again, I use one sleeve to wipe my eyes, my nose, my chin. I use the other to wipe down the phone.
Tía Juana. I want to call her, too, but I can’t. Not now.
The clock on the wall of the bus station says 4:53 in the morning. Even at this hour the station is full. Kids are asleep on parents in the chairs, homeless guys mill around, and angry-looking dudes stare at each other and at me from their places against the walls.
Everybody looks tired.
The ticket is still in the envelope with the small stack of twenties. I pull it out to look at it more closely. It’s for a single passenger going to Seattle from Los Angeles. It’s a “standard fare” ticket, whatever that means, and it’s for today.
For a bus that leaves in less than an hour.
I try to come up with ways to explain how the bus ticket was prepurchased, mailed with a letter from me, for exactly one hour after I randomly ended up in the bus station. My mind is fuzzy with sleep so instead of explanations, all I end up with is a panicky feeling that makes my chest hurt.
Tell my auntie I didn’t do it. I don’t know if my Live-Tech will send the message—I have no way of checking because the screen is still on the table by the door. Tell Juana I didn’t do it. I think it again. Then: I didn’t do it.
Nothing happens.
Images of my mom and dad cut through my thoughts like razor blades. Every time they flash I feel sick.
Every time I close my eyes, I see black holes that look like the bug.
The look on my dad’s face through the door at the student union. Him and Mom dead on the floor.
I make myself sit still in a chair until they call the bus. My seatmate opens her eyes when I sit down. She smiles, but doesn’t say anything. I smile back and she shuts her eyes again. I put in my pod and turn up Metallica as loud as it goes before I put my head back and close my own eyes. I’m asleep before the bus pulls from the station.