“Yeah,” I say. “Already called my dad, let him know what was going on. He said as long as I’m not hurt, I may as well go on to Cleveland. How’s that work, by the way?”
Carl lights a cigarette, takes a long draw. God, he looks like a badass smoking in the rain. “I’ll make arrangements. Whoever wants to can stay in a motel tonight, then we’ll take a new bus in the mornin’. Everything’ll be paid for, of course . . .” He trails off and seems to be considering something. “Listen—”
“You the driver?” interrupts the redheaded EMT. He’s shivering in the rain, holding a cell toward Carl. Before taking the call, Carl—like some muscly action hero—rips off a bottom section of his sopping wet T-shirt and hands it to me.
“You got something on your face, missy.”
Oh my God.
My war paint.
Somehow, it seems beyond appropriate that I stumbled through the ravaged bus with my face painted red. Mim the Warrior Princess. Battle survivor with a bloody wound to prove it.
As Carl limps off to take his call, I wipe my face with his rainy T-shirt and study Arlene’s box. Surprisingly heavy, it has one of those old-fashioned skeleton keyholes. The contents don’t shake or rattle or anything, but they do shift as I move the box side to side. On the bottom, I find four letters carved deep in the wood: AHAB.
9
A Metamorphosis Completed September 1—late, yo
Dear Isabel,
MY GREYHOUND BUS
(After Tipping on the Side of the Highway and Causing an All-Around Shitstorm from Which I May Never Fully Recover) Okay.
So I suck at drawing. But that? Just happened. To me.
Ahem.
SON OF A BITCH, IT WAS TOTALLY CATASTROPHIC.
Sorry.
Had to get that off my chest.
Now. It would be easy for me to wallow in self-defeat or self-pity or self-doubt or a hundred other selves, but I won’t. I’m just going to write.
I’m going to write, and that way I’ll be okay.
Let’s start with a name. I’ll write down this name, and it won’t mean anything to you, but when you read it, know that it means something to me. The owner of the name died on that bus, and while I didn’t know her all that well, she was a friend, and those don’t come easy. Not for me, anyway. She smelled like cookies and wore funny shoes and used words like pizzazz. Here’s the name.
Arlene.
. . .
. . .
. . .
Okay.
I’m okay.
I’m headed to a motel right now, in a van with about twelve other people. Our bus was full, but most of the passengers seemed uninterested in continuing their relationship with Greyhound.
Relationship. That’s exactly what it is. Hey, gurl, I know I almost crushed you to death, but it was a one-time thing, and I swear it’ll never happen again.
Greyhounds are pigs.
Unfortunately, I don’t have many options. Anyway, it takes more than a life-before-your-eyes-kill-your-elderly-best-friend type of bus accident to keep me from Cleveland.
My Objective is a bulwark never failing.
Moving on.
My war paint is Reason #5.
Mom’s favorite lipstick: the only article of makeup I’ve ever been interested in. Call it a cosmetic deficiency.
The idea that this was abnormal hit early, around third or fourth grade. (A girl knows when she’s being talked about, am I right?) But I didn’t care. I rolled with it. Abnormalities abound! That was my motto. Until it wasn’t.
In eighth grade, I joined the Ashland Blackhawks street hockey team. The league was a fledgling operation run by a throng of kids, meatheads mostly, looking for an excuse to punch someone. I was the only girl (’twas always thus), so they only rarely punched me.
The team captain, who doubled as league referee, was this punk kid of about fifteen named Bubba Shapiro. While other teams were called for high-sticking, clipping, cross-checking, and all manner of unsportsmanlike conduct, our team got off scot-free. Bubba looked exactly as you’d expect. Big, beefy—he even had a full-fledged beard, which at his age commanded enormous respect. (Not from me so much, but, you know, the meatheads ate it up.) One day, a kid named Chris York didn’t show up for practice, and Bubba made an announcement. “Okay, guys, Chris came out at school today, so we’re gonna have to push on without him.”
I raised my hand and asked where Chris had come out of.
The meatheads laughed.
Bubba asked if I was an idiot, then said, “He’s a fudge-packer, Mim. Queer bait. Brokeback Mountaineer. He’s gay.”
Again, everyone laughed.
Again, I raised my hand.
“Sorry, but . . . what does that have to do with hockey?”
Bubba rolled his eyes and explained that gays didn’t like sports.
Well, here’s the thing: I never really liked sports, either. The only reason I joined the team was that Dad said I would need some extracurriculars on my college applications. (Malone males are notorious overachievers.) This association between sports and sexual identity continued to nag at me, until one night, while Mom was doing her makeup, I asked how I would know if I were gay.