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“Blend in? Easy for you to say!”
The line presses forward toward the bus. The driver opens up the metal jaw on the side and passengers hand over their suitcases for storage. Why do people have to travel with so much stuff? The cops are out here now, scouring the buses for two teens—one a dwarf—who escaped from a hospital in Texas. I position Gonz in front of me so I can block his body with mine. Trouble is, he’s wider than I am, and it makes it look like we’re one of those Indian goddesses with lots of limbs. After what seems like forever, the driver opens the doors, and Gonzo and I nearly kill each other in our rush to reach the back of the bus, where we pile into our seats and slink down.
“Cover your face with your jacket. Pretend you’re asleep,” I say.
We bury ourselves under Windbreakers and backpacks so that only the tops of our heads show. People lumber on now, looking for seats. I peek over the top of my jacket to see the cop stepping into the aisle. He cranes his neck, looking for us, but there are too many people moving around to really see.
The driver climbs on. “Excuse me, Officer. If you’re done, I got a schedule to get to.”
The cop gives a last hard look, and I duck under the safety of my jacket. After a few seconds, I hear him thank the driver. The doors close with a hiss, sealing us in. The bus rolls out of the station, but my heartbeat doesn’t get back to normal till we’re far from the city limits of New Orleans.
When he’s ready to take a nap, the guy next to us lets us borrow his deck of cards. We eat RealFruit Lassos and play Texas Hold ’Em and Jacks Are Wild. The bus bumps along the coast. Oil refineries send up plumes of toxic smoke. The smell, like rotten eggs mixed with cleaning fluid, makes me want to gag. A couple of shrimp boats bob on the water, the fishermen pulling up the soul of the sea in their heavy nets. I like watching the country roll by my window. I wish we’d taken more vacations. I try to remember why we stopped. Dad got busy with work and Mom got busy looking busy and Jen and I started hating each other and next thing you know, we’re a bunch of strangers totally uncomfortable being around each other. And who wants to go on vacation with a bunch of strangers?
Gonzo deals out a new hand. The sky’s getting darker. The lights in the bus kick on. Little cones of yellow-white shine down on our cards, making our hands look bleached out.
“You get a phone number from that German girl back in the graveyard?” I ask. “I think she was hot for you.”
Gonzo shakes his head. “Not my type.”
“What? German? Tourist? Girl?”
Gonzo flashes me a Don’t Go There look.
“So what is your type?”
He thinks for a minute. “Sweet, but dangerous-looking. I like Southern accents. And tattoos.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Tattoos? Whoa! Who’da thunk it? The Gonzman likes ’em a little tough.”
He grins. “You don’t know everything about me, pendejo. I’m a pretty complicated dude.”
“You’re, like, a totally open book, Gonz,” I say, laughing. “I’ve never met anybody more transparent in my life.”
“You don’t know me, dude,” he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. “People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel f**ked up and sad for no reason at all.”
I’ve got an image of Gonzo sitting in his room alone feeling f**ked up and sad and I hate it, because now I feel responsible for him in a way I didn’t want to.
“You’re not going to say something cheesy like ‘people are like onions; they have lots of layers,’ are you?”
“Just trying to have a conversation. Forget it, dude. Whatever. Just play.”
He discards a two and I pick it up. I’ve got a pair of twos and that’s it. My cards suck.
“So, what’s your type?” Gonzo asks a few minutes later.
“Wow, let me think. Um, anyone who would have me.” I put another card on the pile. What is my type? A brief image of Dulcie with her armor and pink hair comes unbidden to mind. I push it away. “You know Staci Johnson?”
“Staci Johnson!” Gonzo snarls. “Say it ain’t so, dude! Staci Johnson is the devil’s spawn!”
“I know, I know. She has no working brain cells, a subpar personality, and nothing interesting to say ever, unless you’re into what happened last night on YA! TV. But once you make it past that, she’s seriously fine. Yo, I discarded.”
He ignores my card and draws from the stack. “Staci Johnson. Dude. I feel like I need to shave my insides when you say that.” Gonzo organizes his cards, moving one from the end to the center of his hand. “Well, maybe when you get back from Florida, you know? You’ll have that whole road-trip mystique working for you. Plus you will have saved the world. That’s gotta count.”
“And a tan,” I add, glancing at my flounder-belly-white arms.
“Tan works.”
“Also, I won’t be dying. Hopefully.”
