Harriet Myers didn’t expect to see someone lying against the far wall of the Greycoach station beneath the laminated bus schedule. He was dressed in a green army jacket that ended below his belt and was covered in a number of overstuffed pockets, giving him the lumpy appearance of an old rolled farmer’s rug. The man was young and unshaven, his blond hair forming a faint halo around his indistinct chin. Beneath his head was a matching khaki pack he used as a pillow, and he made the faintest wheezing sound as he breathed. Harriet wasn’t sure, but she thought he might be living there.
It was hard to tell sometimes. She’d grown up on the outside edge of Beeton, and though she was the first to admit it was a small town whose population tended to dress for comfort and convenience rather than fashion, her parents had instilled in her the notion that the way one looks reflects the way they’re perceived. Thus, she always kept her poplin skirts pressed, and hung her silk blouses immediately after washing. She wasn’t the smartest girl in her classes, nor the prettiest—not with the noticeable scar that ran from the edge of her temple to the bottom of her chin, only barely hidden beneath her bundle of wild auburn hair—but in some ways her averageness was her greatest strength. It kept people close enough to be friendly, but at enough of a distance that she didn’t have to worry that they might ask what had happened. She’d gone away to school for the anonymity if nothing else, anxious to find a place where she could live her life without the specter of Martin Baxter constantly looming over her. The quiet also helped her think, and allowed her to focus herself on earning her music degree.
The young man lying on the bus station’s floor appeared to be her polar opposite, and yet little different from the scores of boys on the University of Guelph campus. They all cared so little about their appearance, and about the classes they were ostensibly there to take. Drinking and midnight tumblings were all that interested them, and she’d already witnessed the fallout from that attitude. It was only halfway through her first semester and the third floor of gothic Johnston Hall was running at half-capacity. Her own roommate, Kimmy, a bubbly psychology student from Trenton, had dropped out the week before, disappearing while Harriet was at home over the weekend visiting her parents. Kimmy’s bed had been stripped bare by the time Harriet returned that Monday, and the sight awoke something in her she thought might be elation.
Harriet hadn’t intended to return home again so soon, but it was clear from the whispers through Johnston Hall that there was to be an impromptu floor party that evening, and she knew there would be no escaping it. She might be able to hide in the library or in the MacKinnon Hall practice rooms for a few hours, but eventually both places would close and she’d be left stranded, unable to return to her residence without braving the gauntlet of her drunken peers’ solicitations and prodding. And, even then, once past the threshold, she’d be unable to fall asleep amid their braying laughter outside her door. It was better she leave—go home where she could relax in her childhood bed and wake to the smell of her father’s Saturday morning blueberry-granola pancakes—than suffer such terrorism. With oboe in hand and a few study books in her neat blue backpack she took the Guelph City Bus down Gordon Street and into town, exiting twenty minutes later at the doors of the Greycoach station.
She’d never taken a Greycoach bus home before but was determined to do so. It seemed simple enough: check the map, buy a ticket, ride to her destination. But she hadn’t counted on the station being empty of employees, nor on the presence of the long lean vagrant (if that’s what he was) who had camped beneath the framed schedule. She knew the bus she needed went through Orangeville, but couldn’t get close enough to the posting to make out the tiny print of the departure times. The drab fluorescent lights didn’t help; was the bus expected at six o’clock? Maybe eight? Did it say on the hour or twenty past? It was as though the schedule itself hadn’t yet decided, the letters twisting with indecision. She blinked hard a few times and took a tentative step closer, all the while careful not to rouse the young man at her feet. If only the ticket booth were open, or anyone else were working at the station, but there was no one. The place was as empty as it was run down, and the only proof someone else had ever been there were the two small signs printed on copier paper and taped to the wall. The first commanded she buy her ticket directly from the driver; the second implored her to have exact change ready. Her scar puckered and tightened as she furrowed her brow and resolved to sit and wait. Surely it couldn’t be that much longer, and from the middle of the station she ought to be able to see in all directions simultaneously. Should her bus arrive, she was certain she would know. And if not, she could always ask the driver of any bus that came through. He or she would have the answer, providing Harriet had exact change, of course.
She took a seat in the middle bank of orange plastic chairs, two bolted-down rows back-to-back along the length of the small station. It provided a vantage point of the entire north side and allowed her to easily swivel to monitor the south. Something as large as a bus would be difficult to miss. The floor appeared to have a patina of grime, so she kept her blue backpack close, placing it on the seat next to her, and across it laid her carefully-folded dark wool coat. Above her loosely crossed arms she surveyed the room, trying to absorb the essence of a place that she knew existed but never thought she’d have occasion to visit. In some ways what she was waiting for wasn’t merely a ride back to Beeton, but the sort of new experience she’d left home to find. It was simultaneously nerve-wracking, illuminating, and exhilarating. And that was before the disheveled young man sleeping on the floor woke with a spastic jerk, knocking the bundle he used as a pillow across the floor.
He sat, blinking, and fiercely shook his head. Then he stretched both arms into the air until they quivered, and proceeded to unfurl a yawn that transformed his mouth into a hypnotizing chasm. Harriet saw past the teeth to the pink ridges that trailed down into his dark gullet, and when that wide abyss closed, she found herself unable to break the spell—not until she noticed his bleary scrutinizing eyes. His lips moved before she heard the sound.
“Hey, what time is it?”
Her wrist raised automatously as she stammered. “It’s close to six.”
“Already?” he asked, then yawned again, smaller, and she avoided another peek down his throat by focusing on the window. The blonde man stood and ran his hands over his face and through his nest of greasy hair, leaving the latter standing in odd directions. He scratched himself with fingernails both torn and dirty before clearing his throat and finally turning his attention to her. She shifted and focused on her lap.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Home.” She continued to not look at him.
“Obviously, home. Like, who isn’t? No one comes through here unless they’re on their way home, or on their way from home. You look more like you’re going than coming. So where’s home?”
“Barrie,” she lied.
“Cool. Never been to Barrie. Is it nice?”
“Yes,” she said, unfolding and refolding her arms as she glanced out the window. “Very nice.”
He continued to study her, pinning her with his gaze, and she prayed he’d lose interest. If not, she worried what he might be thinking, what he might do. Her brain shouted at her to disengage, to refuse to participate. If she did, maybe he’d leave her alone. Maybe.
It appeared to work for a few minutes. He didn’t say anything, long enough for her focus to wander to when the bus might arrive.
“It’ll be here soon,” he said. “Your bus. Like, I can tell you’re looking for it.”
“I wasn’t—I mean . . . ”
“Don’t worry. I don’t blame you. I probably look like shit right now. Probably haven’t looked that great in, like, a while. You know how it is.”
“Not really,” she snipped. But he wasn’t dissuaded by her tone. If anything, he was amused.
“I guess you wouldn’t. You don’t really seem the type.”
“No offense,” Harriet said, “but I just want to wait quietly for my bus.”
“Hey, I can do quiet. No need to tell me twice. I was just trying to make conversation.”
With a polite smile and a perfunctory nod, she stood and moved to another seat, putting as much space as she could between her and the stranger without losing sight of the multiple bus stops. He didn’t follow her. Instead, he put his hands behind his head and stretched his legs out across the floor. There were holes in his dingy sneakers, one big enough for his toe.
“So,” he said. “Why do you seem so lonely?”
“What?” Her mouth went dry.
He pulled his feet back, put his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Harriet shook her head. This couldn’t be real. She stood, walked to the glass entrance of the station. The place was still empty, and there was no indication that might change.
“Don’t worry. Like, lots of people are lonely. Especially around here. Especially new students. I don’t know what it is. Some people just never find their tribe, I guess.”
“I’m not . . . I have friends.”
He leaned back, put his hands back on his head, and stretched out his legs. A satisfied smile crawled across his face.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me right now.” She remained by the glass doors, looking out at the empty stops. Every inch of her was irritated, tensed from the comical way she was being tormented. She had no idea who he was, and yet he was pushing her. If it were a game, it was a poor one. She caught her reflection in the glass and barely recognized it. Eyes cast in shadow, muscles around her mouth drawn down, she looked like some funhouse version of herself. The only feature she recognized was her scar, highlighted by the station’s fluorescents. Was her reflection bleeding, or were those tears running down her face? She lifted her hand to check but it came away dry.
A bus that’s twenty minutes overdue is a bus that’s not coming. That’s the sort of thing her mother might have said, but for Harriet it had become a matter of pride. To leave would be to admit defeat, and even if she weren’t out of places to go, she couldn’t bear the stranger thinking he’d driven her away. Harriet could see his reflection in the glass, with his cocksure smile and how at ease he was with himself. He rubbed his thumb across his bottom lip and she felt a shiver on the back of her neck. There was something about him, something she couldn’t place. Something that worried her. But that worry was warm and its edges fuzzy.
“Where are you going?” she asked, pivoting her body at the apex of her inflection, as though it might catch him off-guard. He seemed as amused by her theatrics as she was embarrassed by them.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the duration. It’s warm, after all. Safe.”
“What? You live here?”
“Would it be so bad if I did?” He scratched his nascent beard. “You know, you should probably sit. I promise you won’t miss your bus. I’ll help you watch for it.”
“No, thanks. I’ll stand.”
He moved his hands from the back of the seats beside him and brought them together in mock prayer.
“Please? For me? Your pacing is driving me nuts.”
She accidentally gave him half a smile, then with reluctance sat down with her bags. He turned to face her.
“What’s that?” he asked. “What?”
“That black case. Is it, like, some weird purse?”
“This?” she said, holding up her leather case. “It’s an oboe.”
His eyes lit.
“Oh, play me something.”
She shook her head. “That’s absolutely the last thing I’m going to do.”
“Come on, I want to hear you.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Just do it.”
There was a moment’s hesitation as she briefly considered it. If she played, he might stop asking and maybe leave her alone. It wouldn’t be that hard, would it? Play to buy herself some respite? But, no, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. If she played, she’d only be giving in to his demands and encouraging his rude behavior.
“I’m not going to play,” she said, and unzipped her blue backpack. The oboe case slid easily inside. He was disappointed, but she couldn’t tell if it was because she wouldn’t play, or because he’d failed to coerce her.
“What’s the point of having an instrument if you don’t use it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What’s the point of anything?” A smile curled across his face as he pointed at her.
“Now you’re getting it.”
Harriet couldn’t believe how frustrating he was.
“Look, I don’t know what you want, but I’m not interested in any company. I just want to be on my way home. I don’t even know your name and—”
“It’s Sear.”
“I don’t really care, Sear. Please leave me alone. Can you do that?”
“No,” he said. “My name isn’t ‘Sear.’ I said ‘it’s here.’ Your bus. It’s here.”
“My—?” Harriet spun around. There, outside the windows of the station, was the silver paneling of an idling Greycoach Bus. The driver sat behind multiple panes of glass, impatiently checking his watch.
“I—I’m sorry, that’s my bus. I—” She scrambled to pull her luggage together, and as she stood her purse dropped to the floor with a muted thump. Before she could move, her tormentor gathered it up.
“So I guess this is good-bye, then,” he said, holding the purse lazily in his hands, just out of her reach. Harriet glanced back to ensure the Greycoach hadn’t left.
“I guess so. My purse, please.” She extended her free hand.
The fear of being late, of missing her bus, spiraled inside her. Harriet needed to escape Guelph—the school, the town, the bus station—and maintaining her veneer of politeness when that flight was being obstructed was becoming impossible.
“It’s Hand. Charlie Hand.”
“Who is?”
“Me. That’s my name. Charlie Hand.”
“That’s good to know, Charlie Hand. Now, my purse?”
He smiled as he offered it to her, and that smile remained as she snatched it from his hands. The edges of regret replaced her anxiety instantly. She shouldn’t have—
“You’d better go. You’re going to miss it.”
Harriet jumped. “Thank you,” she offered reluctantly, then shuffled her bags and coat quickly through the door. A momentary glance back through the glass found Charlie Hand bending to retrieve the pack he’d launched earlier across the station floor. Such a strange man, she thought, then rushed to the bus’s open door.
The driver waited at the bottom of the small set of steps, a mustachioed man in his late sixties with tired beleaguered eyes. He spoke with a travelled rasp, and only to confirm the bus’s destination was Orangeville. He took her payment without smiling, and once their transaction was complete he made no effort to help her as she boarded.
The Greycoach was nearly as empty as the station. There were a few occupied seats—mostly students travelling from other schools, or exhausted men in rumpled business suits. Harriet squeezed her way into a cramped seat near the middle of the bus and planted herself by the window, blue backpack resting on her lap. Finally, she’d escaped and was going home. Pressure and anxiety slid from her as she exhaled, leaving only weariness and fatigue. It was no mystery why Kimmy and all the rest had left Guelph, but that wasn’t Harriet. She was not the sort to be defeated. If not in the aftermath of Martin Baxter, then certainly not due to the pressures of school. But even she needed time to reset herself. Reset, and restart.
With eyes closed she tried to let the hum of the idling bus soothe her. Vibrations travelled through the floor and her body toward the rivets and sliding frames of the widows. There they produced a rattle that needled its way into her tranquility. Passengers argued somewhere near the front of the bus, but Harriet refused to open her eyes and let their negativity infect her. She heard the rush of compressed air as the doors closed, felt the brakes release, and as the bus moved, Harriet couldn’t help but smile.
“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?”
Her lids fluttered open. The bus’s interior lights had been extinguished, but in the gloom she saw Charlie Hand seated across the aisle. Harriet recoiled, clutching her blue backpack to her chest, and prepared to scream. He raised his empty hands to calm her.
“It’s okay, you’re okay. See? I’m all the way over here. Nothing to worry about.”
“I thought—” She relaxed her grip slightly. “You said you weren’t going anywhere. That you lived in the station.”
He shrugged. “Like, I don’t even know you. Do you blame me for being cautious? You never know who you’re going to meet waiting for the bus.”
His grin was meant as an olive branch, but Harriet found none of what was happening amusing.
“Are you following me?”
“What? To Barrie? No, no way. I have no plans to set foot there. Once we get to Orangeville I’ll be getting off. That I can promise.”
“Oh, I see,” she replied, swallowing her dread. They were going to the same station, though thankfully he didn’t realize it. But how would she exit the bus without his knowledge? She considered staying on and riding the bus to its next stop then doubling back, but quickly came to her senses. No, she would have to find another way. Maybe if she let him go first, she could ask the driver to wait a few minutes until it was safe for her to disembark. He would do that, wouldn’t he? Didn’t they have to take extra steps to ensure their passengers’ safety? Especially women? Especially at night? She was certain that was the case. Maybe as the bus got closer to Orangeville she’d call her father to pick her up from the station.
They rode in silence, Harriet and Charlie Hand, the tires of the Greycoach bus jostling them down Woolrich Road and through Fergus on their way to County Road 3. Harriet tried to look out the window at the passing trees and farms in the distance, but the dusk light was draining too fast from the sky, and what was once dimly lit became a series of silhouettes. Lights from the rows of small houses ignited one at a time in the coming gloom, and before the bus reached the turn onto the narrow side road the world had fully donned its endless cloak of night, smothering everything outside the windows in absolute nothingness. Fully submerged, there was no more to see in the ink black.
“These windows might as well be painted over for all the good they’re doing us,” Charlie Hand said. Harriet glanced over as he rapped on the glass. “Did you ever see that movie, ’Salem’s Lot? I saw it on TV when I was a kid. Scared the hell out of me. That kid in his pajamas floating outside the window, knocking to be let in? Like, that’s pretty twisted.”
She smiled politely and dismissively before turning back to the window where there were no floating children; just her own blurry reflection staring back, scarred face repeated in both panes of the insulated glass, one off-set in the other. She squinted, looking for anything in the night outside to distract her, and found a tiny light barely visible, its exact location impossible to pin down. It might have been a few feet away or a few miles for all she knew. It followed the Greycoach for some time, flickering in and out behind trees and houses, and it was only when it finally vanished for good that Charlie Hand decided to speak again.
“It’s so strange how gray everything gets at night. You look around and it’s like you’re in a black and white movie. Nothing seems real.”
“It’s the rods,” Harriet said, unable to stop herself.
“What rods?”
She cursed herself for speaking, and for her inability to leave the question unanswered.
“Your eyes have these rods and cones. That’s how you see. The cones are newer. More evolved. They work best in bright light and register colors. But when there’s low light they don’t work well, so you have rods. They only register black and white. That makes them better for seeing in the dark.”
“Huh. Bizarre. I guess my rods are working overtime, then.”
Harriet shrugged but didn’t say anything, hoping it was the end of their conversation. But Charlie Hand wasn’t done. “So, like, how do you know all this stuff about rods and cones? I thought you preferred to not-play your oboe.”
“I can play the oboe and still be interested in things. It’s not one or the other.”
“In other words, you contain multitudes.”
He grinned wide at her and suddenly she wondered if he already knew all about rods and cones. Was he being polite by hiding it, or laughing at her? And was he still laughing? She had her suspicions.
“It’s actually pretty impressive you know so much about how we see in the dark,” he added. “Kind of weird, but impressive. Darkness is so fascinating, but like no one else ever notices. I mean, everyone sees the dark as this horrible thing, you know? I’ve never seen it like that. Sometimes, I feel like the only one who gets the truth. You ever feel like that? Like everyone else is blind to something but you?”
“No, never,” Harriet said. Then, after a moment, with reluctance: “Maybe sometimes.”
“Really? When?”
It was a long time before she spoke. In the silence, she wrestled with how much she wanted to divulge—and whether she was afraid Charlie Hand would become more interested in her or less.
“Sometimes at school. When I’m practicing, or I’m studying. Or just sitting in the University Centre, watching everybody. They don’t care about anything. But they should. They should care about being the best they can be, and not give up on themselves. They shouldn’t settle for being average. But that’s all everybody I see wants, and I know deep in me that they’ll regret it one day when it’s already too late. I won’t make that mistake. I can see the truth. I mean, I think I can.”
Something in her gut twisted as she realized she’d said too much. The dark of the bus made it too easy, made her too confessional. Ashamed, she refused to look up, too afraid to see the expression on Charlie Hand’s face.
“I understand,” he said, and his voice was quiet and even and not at all like the voice he’d used before. It wasn’t arrogant or judgmental or sympathetic. It was plain and human, and Harriet wondered if anyone had ever spoken to her like that before. Then she wondered if she’d ever given them reason to. When she finally dared to face him, Charlie Hand wasn’t watching her. His head was tilted back and he was staring at the ceiling of the bus. Outside his window was the starless sky.
“How about you?” she asked, eager to alleviate the suffocating awkwardness. “What’s the truth about the dark you think only you get?”
He didn’t move, didn’t blink; she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. Then, Charlie Hand took a deep breath and maybe closed his eyes—it was too dark to be sure. But they were open and bright when he looked at her.
“I bet you’re like everybody else; you only see the dark one way. You see it as a negative. Like it’s subtraction, the end of something. The light dies and fades to darkness. And it doesn’t matter if it’s light, or if it’s life. The dark equals decay. A transition from something that is to something that isn’t. Like a corruption of an ideal toward chaos and absence.
“I get it. Life teaches you to think that way. Everything you’ve seen in your textbooks and from your parents and teachers and institutions tells you to run away from the dark, from the void. The dark is nothingness, and nothingness means the end.
“But they’ve got it all wrong. Like, it’s actually the opposite. In nothing is everything. Darkness is actually perfection, the most perfect state there is. It’s not the decay of light or life. It’s when there is so much light, too much life, all the life, that it transcends what we know and understand and becomes something more than we can sense. It becomes nothing because we can’t possibly grasp it all. So much is summed up that it travels past the understandable and becomes darkness, becomes nothing. When you grasp the truth of the dark, it’s like grasping at an understanding you can’t really have—of what exists beyond everything. But it doesn’t just go beyond it; it kind of makes it irrelevant at the same time.
“Like, okay,” he continued, holding his hands before his beaming face, fingers spread apart, speaking faster. “Let me put this another way. Imagine the most beautiful song you’ve ever heard, yeah? Now imagine it’s even more beautiful than that. Imagine it’s like this perfect song, so perfect it actually transcends sound. It’s so perfect you can’t even hear it because it’s beyond what you can experience. In that silence is the sum of every note.
“But it’s not just every note. Now it’s also every painting, it’s every word. It’s every tree. Every person. It’s everything. Think of the Big Bang. First, there was nothing. Then there was everything. Or the Bible. First, there was nothing, then God created everything.”
He stopped abruptly and looked at Harriet.
“Sorry,” he added, slower. “I get a bit carried away by all this.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s . . . it’s sort of a beautiful idea, I guess.”
He snorted.
“I recognize that tone. You’re humoring me.”
“No, I—”
“I don’t blame you. You’ve been programmed, and programming is really hard to break. But just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. It just means you’re not looking hard enough.”
Was she really having such a bizarre conversation? It all seemed so strange. Maybe it was the dark of the bus, or the monotony of the road beneath them. Or the way he spoke, which was quiet, but not too quiet to hear—the edges she’d heard earlier in the station worn off. Or maybe it was everything, together, crowding her thoughts. She didn’t know what to do but nod along as he spoke.
“But I think you get what I’m talking about, even if you don’t know it. It’s there, it’s part of you, and you just have to learn to see it. Sort of like those rods and cones—maybe there’s one more piece of your eye that you need to turn on.”
“What makes you think I have any idea what you’re talking about?”
“Do you remember what I asked you earlier while we were still in the bus station?”
Harriet thought for a moment. “I have no idea.”
“I asked why you seem so lonely. You didn’t tell me, but I want you to now. Think for a second, then honestly, tell me.”
“But I’m not—” He raised his hand.
“Think about it. Then tell me.”
Harriet folded her arms. She wasn’t going to tell him anything, let alone something so personal. But as he stared at her, waiting, memories of Martin Baxter floated unbidden to the surface. Memories she couldn’t dispel.
“I don’t really—”
“I know,” Charlie Hand said. “But tell me anyway.”
“I don’t think of myself as lonely,” she started slowly, reluctantly, unsure she wanted to tell this story to anyone, especially a stranger like Charlie Hand, but unable to stop. “But I guess it’s been harder to make friends than I expected. When I was fifteen, I snuck out of the house with my friend, Janice Rinder, to go to a field party in Tottenham, just outside of Beeton. We met these two guys there who promised to drive us home. They were both nineteen, and just starting school, so they seemed older and more mature than anyone we knew. One of them, Glen something—why can’t I remember his last name?—rode in the back with Janice. I rode in the front with Martin Baxter. I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never done anything like that before—my parents always taught me to be responsible, but I was just a kid, and I was tired of being responsible. I was tired of doing my chores and going home after school to study and practice. I wanted more and didn’t know how to get it.
“So, the four of us were driving down Baedeker Road, just alongside Finnegan Lake, and Martin pointed up and said ‘Look at all the stars you can see when there aren’t any streetlights.’ And I thought, if there’s that many now, what would happen if there were no lights at all? So, I reached over him and I think he thought I was going to touch him because he didn’t stop me, but instead of touching him I flipped the car’s headlights off. I just meant to do it for a second. There was some yelling, but I was too busy trying to look out the window before Martin turned them back on.
“I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital a week later, my face bandaged and my insides feeling like sandpaper when I moved. It was a few more days before I found out what happened. A moose had walked into the road when the lights were off, and Martin had driven straight into it. It was like driving into a brick wall. He was killed instantly—so was that moose—and though Janice and Glen were alive, they were still in the hospital and didn’t want to see me. I never spoke to either again. I thought when I got to Guelph it would be easier because here I’m not the girl that killed Martin Baxter. Here, I’m no one, so no one stares at me when I walk by. No one judges me. Except, it still feels like they are. All the time. And it hasn’t got any better.
“And it’s all because I wanted to see some stars.”
Harriet sniffled. Charlie took a few tissues from his lumpy pockets and sorted one out for her.
“How was that?” she spit, anger floating beneath her barely maintained composure. “Was it everything you hoped for?”
“I don’t know about hope,” he said. “But it proves to me I was right, that you’re capable of seeing more than you think. More than people have let you see until now. I just have one more question: what did it feel like? Right then when you first put the lights out and it was just you alone in the dark? For that one second, where were you?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“A serious one. Just think about it. Just for a second.
Where were you?”
“I was . . . I . . . ” It was the last thing she wanted to think about, desperate to keep her distance from the pain, but she couldn’t help but be dragged back.
“I . . . ” She started to remember that night, the smell of the wind, the sea of tiny starlights. “I was someplace happy, I guess. From what I can remember, just for that second, I was happy.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. You do understand it, because that’s a moment—a fleeting moment—that you transcended. You found everything inside that nothing.”
Harriet was quiet, confused. He sounded like those first-year philosophy students who tried to impress each other during midnight ramblings at the Brass Keg, but there was also something in what he said that rang of another truth, one that filled her stomach with ice. The skin of her face tightened around the length of her scar, and she ran her finger along it to soothe the sensation before realizing Charlie Hand was watching her. She dropped her hand to her lap, but he continued to stare for a few seconds too long, then nodded as though reaching a conclusion.
But before he could reveal it, the driver slowed the bus and announced “Orangeville” over the Greycoach’s crackling speakers.
“This is my stop,” Charlie Hand said, removing his pack from the seat and slinging it onto his shoulder. “Listen, I’m sorry about your accident. That sucks. But, like, you experienced something most people never will, and even those that do won’t ever really understand it. That’s something special, regardless of whatever shit you had to deal with afterward.”
He stood in the aisle, holding on to the back of the seats on either side of him as the bus made its turns toward the approaching station.
“How much further are you going, anyway? I’m not even sure I know exactly where Barrie is, to be honest.”
“It’s further up. Just off the lake.”
He grimaced as the bus pulled into its spot at the station. “That’s pretty far,” he said. “It’s going to be a long ride.” At the front of the bus, the other passengers had stood as well, all preparing to disembark. “So, I guess this time it really is good-bye.”
“I guess,” she said, but Charlie Hand didn’t wait for her answer. He had already turned around and was stepping off the bus. He did so without a glance back at Harriet, who was still sitting in her cramped seat, hugging her blue backpack to her chest. Through the window she saw the station, saw the small number of future passengers milling and waiting. Within the sparse crowd Charlie Hand appeared, lumpy green jacket and khaki pack standing out among them. All Harriet needed to do was wait. Just long enough for him to leave the station so she might slip out behind him. Just wait long enough for—
The sour-faced driver was nearly knocked over by her blue backpack as she dashed from the bus. “Sorry,” she called back, but was too frazzled to worry whether he’d heard her. It was imperative she catch up with Charlie Hand. She didn’t know why, she just—she had to understand better what he had told her. What it meant. There was something, some truth she wasn’t quite grasping.
The passengers in the station did their best to block her as though sensing her approach, but she pushed past their interference and searched for that army jacket, that khaki pack. What caught her attention first, however, was his halo of golden hair bobbing over the shoulders of the people that separated them. Harriet forced herself through as she struggled to catch up. When she finally reached him, she lay her fingers on his back and he turned around. Only then in her breathlessness did she realize she had nothing to say.
“Hey,” Charlie Hand said, though his warmth quickly turned to confusion. “Wait, shouldn’t you still be on the bus?”
“It’s—” she grasped for words at the same time as breath. “It’s my stop. Too. It’s my stop.”
“You’re not going to Barrie?”
She shrugged, her panting slowing. “I don’t even . . . know you. Can you blame me? You . . . never know who you’re going to meet.”
He laughed, put his hand lightly on her shoulder. Then lifted it to cup her face. Startled, she lifted her own hands to pry his away, but stopped. He ran his thumb over her scar. She closed her eyes.
“The accident?”
She nodded.
“Let me show you something.”
He glanced around to ensure no one was paying them attention. Satisfied, he rolled the sleeve of his army jacket and then the sleeve of the old wool sweater he wore beneath before stretching his forearm out like an offering, rotating it under the halogen lights. What she saw could not be real. The flesh on his arm looked as though it had once been torn to pieces and then imperfectly reassembled, a web of shiny scar tissue woven over the length of his forearm. “Once I finally understood about the darkness and what it truly was, that understanding—like, I don’t know how to say this in a way that will make sense—it was so powerful it literally ripped my flesh off. I was in the rear stacks of the McLaughlin Library, inside one of the study rooms, piecing the truth together, when suddenly it was me on the floor in pieces. It wasn’t a dream; it wasn’t a hallucination; it wasn’t a vision. I was torn apart, experiencing an agony beyond anything I could have imagined, and that agony lasted until it didn’t. Until I opened my eyes and found myself reassembled. But I’m not the same, and I’ll never be the same, but I understand. This scar?” He ran his thumb over her wound again. “It’s the same for you, whether you want to admit it or not.”
Harriet’s fingers tightened their clutch on her purse, on the strap of her blue backpack. Charlie Hand rolled down his sleeve without looking at her, though she couldn’t help but look at him.
“I think you’re right,” she said finally.
He glanced up. Smiled. And his round blond face was a sun inside the worn Orangeville bus station.
“We’ve come all this way,” he said. “Now will you play me something?”
“What? Right here?”
“Yeah. Right here in the station. Right now. Don’t overthink it. Just . . . ” He held his hands in front of him and spread them apart in an arc. “Just, like, play.”
Harriet glanced at the few people still loitering at the edges of the station or sitting in the hard green plastic chairs. She set her purse on a seat and lay her dark wool coat beside it. From her blue backpack she removed her oboe case and opened it. The reed was dry, as was her mouth, but she found enough saliva to moisten them into working. She touched the reed with the tip of her tongue, then stopped.
“I don’t know what to play.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ll never see any of these people again. Just dig inside of you and play something. Whatever is right. You’ll know what it is.”
She nodded and put the reed back to her lips.
The notes came easily from the oboe—first slowly, then in a steadily increasing stream. As she played she saw them, little dark spots spilling from the bell, tiny motes circling her arms and shoulders in trailing wisps. The others in the station turned to look at her, some beaming as her notes carried. Charlie Hand sat cross-legged on the floor by her feet, hands on his knees as he swayed in rhythm, and as her fingers brushed the keys the station grew dimmer, the dark notes the oboe brought forth accumulating above, forming dense clouds that crowded out the lights. But the way the notes felt . . . it was as though they were desperate to be free, dancing as they cascaded from the instrument—from her—in fantastic waves, each one burning through her like a spark, each burning more than the one it followed.
The lights grew dimmer still, and in this twilight the past and future Greycoach passengers surrounding her were absorbed into the new darkness, became a part of it. But still she played. Even when the crowding night swallowed the headlights of the buses outside, she played; even when it swallowed the chatter of voices and the hum of the vending machines, she played. She played while the smell of stale floor cleaner and worn rubber soles and old plastic chairs slipped away. Played while the sunshine face of the smiling and elated Charlie Hand sank, too, into the darkness that encroached upon her. Harriet played for as long as she could, played until the sound of her music was gone; played until she could no longer hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and all that remained was dark; until there was nothing and that nothing was everything and it went on and on and on and on and on.
And when she finally opened her eyes, all she saw was light.