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Why does it take so long for my brain to start working? Yeah, I know, it's working fine and dandy right now but come on. I'm waiting at a dark bus stop shelter, wondering about what to do next. I can't breathe in here. It's too dark. I wish it was earlier in the day. Well, I could "visualize", which is a type of meditation. Here goes. I am at the beach. It's summer, and nobody is around except for me and a giant seagull. The sand is dry and hot. I am bare-feeted. It's low tide, so the water is way far away. Breathing in the fresh cool salty breeze and feeling the sunshine slowly stain my skin, I walk. With each step my foot sinks a little into the sand. It gets annoying after a while. So I wave my hand at the giant seagull and she flies over, snatches me up with her beak and swallows me whole. I hope I didn't tickle her throat too much. I don't know if seagulls hiccup, but it would be weird if she hiccupped. I would sort of bounce in her stomach, maybe. Well, she didn't hiccup but judging by the feeling in my own stomach, she had started flying. I wonder which way she's going. It's pretty dark in here. Yeah. It's dark in here. Of course there's no sunshine, no beach, no warm sand. Who knows?maybe the whole world is inside a giant seagull stomach. Maybe that's why it's so dark. Gosh. I hate the dark. I can't see anything. I can't even see the street lights. Where did they go? ...oh. I see. No, I don't see. The only thing I can see is the problem. I'm still in the bus stop shelter, duh, but the front-open part is covered by a new plywood wall nailed into place. Where did the plywood come from? How did this happen? I should have heard the hammer and nails, the noise would have shaken my bones apart. What the heck??? I swear, what is going on. Okay, I don't care. Not for now. For now, I'm going to sleep. I have shelter, it's closed up and safe, it'll be my little trashy motel room for tonight. My shopping bag will be my pillow, and my coat will be my quilt. I guess the ground is my bed. Forget the bench, it's too narrow. Teeny thing. Yeah. Wow, this is ridiculous, I'm sleeping in a bus stop shelter. I'm not even dreaming yet. Christ. When I woke up, I immediately felt better. Of course, I'm still trapped in here. But the air is lighter and brighter and I can breathe enough oxygen. My head feels clear enough. The only thing is, I'm cold and my throat hurts like hell. It feels like a huge swollen gash inside my throat. I don't swallow anything because it hurts, so all I do is breathe, breathe, breathe. Calm. Yeah, I think I'm starting to like this cozy bus stop. If I could improve a few things in here, I'd add a toilet, sink, mirror, and a little cafe. And a gas heater, electric blanket, radio, wardrobe, computer with internet, little shower stall, heck, maybe even an indoor pool. Oh yes. No. I don't have that. I'm in a ratty little motel room. It doesn't even have a bathroom or a bed, but hey, you get what you pay for, and I paid no money for this. Ugh, okay. I'm done in here. Thanks for giving me shelter, Bus Stop, now I'm going to go. I pushed on the plywood wall, and it didn't come out, so I kicked and pounded and leaned on it until it started creaking. Like some sort of angry wrestler, I took a running start and crashed into the wall, and that partly took it down. I crashed into it a few more times, then I was out. It was a bright, cloudy, early spring morning. I stepped over the plywood and onto the sidewalk. There was someone waiting for a bus standing a few feet from me. I walked over and stood beside him. There was no one else. "Good morning," he said, looking at his watch. "Good morning," I replied. "What bus are you waiting for?" "The nine-fifteen." "Where's it going to?" "Tacoma." I thought. Tacoma? I didn't know where that was, but it sounded pretty cool. Okay then. Tacoma, here I come. The guy nodded at the bus stop shelter and the plywood laying defeated in front of it. "You just came out of there?" "Yeah. I had to spend the night there." "That's rough. You're lucky no one broke in while you were asleep. That plywood's as flimsy as a sheet of paper." He looked at it. "How'd you nail it on, anyway? Did you do it from the inside?" "No, I didn't put it up." "Who put it up then?" "I don't know." The guy looked at me strangely. He looked me up and down, a little teenage girl in ratty clothes, holding a shopping bag and a purse, with an oversized coat. "What are you doing at the bus stop anyway, all alone? Where are you headed?" I glared at him. "Tacoma." "Why?" he asked curiously. Almost amusedly. "None of your beeswax." "Okay." He looked at his watch, and sighed, and looked away, down the street. I opened my purse and got my cell phone. It said nine-fourteen. One minute until the bus comes. I looked down the street, too, but no cars or trucks or buses were in sight. I looked at the clock on my cell phone. I watched the : between the 9 and the 14 blink. It blinked slowly. I looked up, no bus. I looked at the colon. It was never going to turn 15. I looked at the guy, standing patiently, staring into space, bored. I looked at the colon. It blinked. I walked over to the bus stop shelter to make sure I didn't forget anything in there, even though I was sure I didn't. I looked under the bench, and ran my eyes over the floor. Nothing of mine. Okay. Is it 9:15 now? I looked at my cell phone, and it said 9:15. Great. I turned to look down the street, and I saw that the guy, the guy was gone. He wasn't there. I looked down both ways of the street, but I saw no trace of the bus. I missed the Tacoma bus. How could I? I would have noticed a bus going down the street, since there were no other vehicles on the street. There were no vehicles on the street. No people walking on the sidewalks. It was so quiet and bright, the sky was so white. I felt lonely. I'm lonely. I'm alone. So I'm out here all alone, and I realize what a bad taste there is in my mouth. I need food to get rid of Morning Breath. Where do I get food? I get food at the grocery store. I look in my purse and fish out my wallet. Inside is a few crumpled dollar bills and a penny. "Score!" I said and folded them back in. Good. I had money. Sometimes there was money in my wallet and sometimes there wasn't. Money comes and goes, like the tide. I'm lucky today is high tide. The world seems so quiet as I walk down the sidewalk. Maybe there is no one in the world but me. Maybe everyone vanished like the Tacoma-headed guy. Maybe the world exists only in my imagination, and today I had run out of ideas for people. Maybe, maybe. I turned a corner and my maybes scattered from my mind, because the parking lot of the grocery store was half full and an old lady was pushing a cart to her car. Human beings! I hurried to the other side of the street and through the parking lot where I passed several noisy carts of kids and moms. Then I entered the grocery store through the automatic doors. Once in, the darkness of the inside and the stark white lights pressed on my eyes and skin. I had a sudden need to look around and make sure I was in the grocery store. I was, I was. It smelled like groceries, like apples and linoleum. But the colors were all wrong. The lighting was all wrong. It was too dark. I was Katie looking at lettuce and mushrooms. She was in her red apron, because she worked there. She didn't notice me until I was a few feet away. "Oh hi, Mandy!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? What's... what's with the coat? And your outfit?" I picked up a dirty mushroom and dropped it back where it had been. I shrugged. "I'm getting breakfast. I have... four dollars. And more." Katie gave me a complicated look. "Mandy," she said. "Yes?" "Where have you been?" I looked down at my clothes. They were wrinkled and filthy. I noticed that on my bare arms, I had bruises. "Oh," I said apologetically. "I slept on the ground at the bus stop." "Why were you there? You slept there?" "Yeah, I was trapped in." "By who?" "I don't know." "Wow, that's crazy! Good thing you got out." I picked up another mushroom. "Why did you go there, anyways?" Why did I go there anyways. Why did I go there, why did I go. I look into her face. What? "Go where...?" Katie looks at me like I'm an idiot. Well, what do I care if you think I'm stupid, you little brat. Katie says, "Why did you go to the bus stop?" Why did I go to the bus st... huh? I gaze into Katie's face. I don't see anything there. There is no meaning in Katie. Katie? Wait, I'm holding something. I have my purse, and I have a sick little mushroom. I put the mushroom into my purse, because there's no place else to put the thing. I look into the girl's nothing face again, then I turn around and walk out. I walk for a long time. I'm going to where I should be. I pass a bus stop where a Hispanic woman and her toddler daughter are waiting on the bench. I wonder what they're waiting for. The bus. Hmm. I am going home. I need to do my homework. Today's Sunday, I think, and the worksheet for history class is due tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll go to school. I'll see Kate, my best friend... actually I'm only friends with her because she has no other friends. I hate her. I hate school, too. I hate my life. Wait, where am I? |