1
Where are you?
I finish the last of my sandwich as I stare down at the text. My hands are so numb I can barely move my thumb across the screen.
Where am I? Where am I, Tyler?
Right back where I started from.
Or close to it anyway. And not to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to die here. Here on this freezing cold bench in this almost empty parking lot. I’m going to die wearing yesterday’s clothing with six percent battery left and one bar of signal.
I swipe the message away, my stiff fingers protesting the movement, and try calling Louise again. The time on my phone tells me it’s ten p.m. local time, which means I was supposed to be back hours ago, which means my sister is going to kill me.
I listen to it ring as I watch the remaining stragglers board the bus to Galway. I landed in Dublin this afternoon, naively thinking once I did it would be relatively easy to get to where I needed to be. But what should have been two to three hours on the road has turned into half a day trying to navigate the Irish public transport system. Or rather the lack of it. And now after managing to make it all the way across the country, I have a feeling that if I’m not careful, I’m going to have to walk the rest of the night.
I get to my feet, brushing away crumbs as I look around. In the tourist brochures, the west of Ireland is usually portrayed as a lush, windswept vista. Full of rugged cliffs and green fields. They do not show places like this. And for good reason. When I arrived, the small crossroads town had been full of people making their way home for the weekend. Now it’s quiet, the surrounding businesses closed, leaving the streets eerily empty, and I’m left staring enviously as the final bus pulls away, leaving just me and a girl in a bright orange vest talking to another customer.
Louise doesn’t answer, so I hang up and drag my suitcase over to her, trying to make eye contact. I’m not used to being ignored, but she does a pretty good job of it, oblivious to my existence as she peers up at the man in front of her.
“Katie says we might finally win this year,” she tells him as I do a “please pay attention to me”smile.
“Without you?” he replies.
She giggles. She actually giggles.
I drop my luggage at my feet. I don’t have the energy for this.
“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “Could you—”
“Just a second.” She barely spares me a glance. “I’ll have to come back and support,” she says to him.
“You’ll probably just make them nervous.”
“Me?”
I roll my eyes at the delight in her voice and step between them, forcing the man to move back. “Sorry to butt in,” I say, making sure I don’t sound sorry at all. “Could you tell me when the bus to Clonard is coming?”
She looks as if I just pushed her. “Where?”
“Clonard. There was one due forty minutes ago but it didn’t show. I’ve been waiting for an hour.”
It takes so long for her to answer that I wonder if I’ve simply vanished into thin air.
“I think you might have missed it,” she says finally.
“Missed it?”
“By about eight years. It only runs on Wednesdays now.”
“OnWednesdays?”
“Didn’t you check the website?”
“Yes!”
“The new website?”
She can’t be serious.
