Death's Temporary Home For Lost Souls

Chapter Two: Scared to Death

As I stand there waiting for the bus to arrive, I try to make sense of it. My dad, with another woman inside of our restaurant, when some of Mom's things are still sitting in the apartment that's literally a staircase away. He never, ever mentioned wanting to meet someone else. He'd hardly been able to talk about Mom, and now I'm supposed to make room for a total stranger? I'm supposed to take this as anything other than careless infidelity?

When passengers finally start loading onto the bus bound for Massachusetts, I grip my duffel bag and squeeze into the tiny aisle, positively fuming. It smells like sweat and stale french fries, and suddenly all I can imagine are thousands of unknown pathogens floating through the air that probably can't even be replicated in a lab. I walk as far as I can to the back of the bus and choose a seat against the window, trying to make my expression so inhospitable that no one dares sit next to me. For a while, it seems to be working. But just as the final passenger boards, a middle-aged woman with shockingly red lipstick and a tiny dog clutched under her arm, she makes a beeline for the seat beside me. Of course. I groan internally, and it probably spills out of my lips a little too.

"You don't mind if I sit here, do you? Fluffers gets nervous if he's not next to the aisle." She seems so damn sweet and flustered that I have no choice but to scoot over. I force myself to smile and shake my head.

"No problem at all."

The woman fusses with her dog, Fluffers, and I draw my duffel bag closer to my chest like it's one of those comfort pillows for lonely people. As the bus starts to move, I find myself waiting for my phone to buzz with another call from Dad. Even after thirty minutes of jostling silence, it still doesn't come. The psychotic part of me wonders, Is that all I'm good for? Nine calls? I'd have thought at least twenty...

I sigh and pull out my phone. I have a million unanswered texts from Analia, a message that I'm pretending I never received from Eric, and nine missed calls from my father: each punctuated with a voicemail. I sigh again, and the dog lady snoops over my shoulder.

"That's a lot of messages, dear. It seems that many people are trying to get a hold of you."

"I've been very busy lately. Everything's fine," I grumble, and I feel like that meme of the dog whose house is going up in flames. Why do I have to justify myself to this stranger? Who brings their pet on a public bus, anyway? A crazy person, that's who.

"You should probably answer some of those messages," she continues sagely, as if I'd gotten on my knees and begged her to tell me something obvious. "Those people might be worried about you if you don't respond."

"Thanks for the input."

"You know, I have a daughter slightly younger than you. Every time her texts and calls go unanswered, it scares me to death. Behind every daughter is a mother that's scared to death, you know."

"Well, my mother's already dead, so I highly doubt she's worrying about my cell phone usage," I snap.

The woman's mouth freezes in a perfect "O" shape before her chin dips to fiddle with something that she can't seem to find in her purse.

She gets off at the very next stop.

***

My stare-off with Dreamy McPerfectface is not going very well.

About three hours into the bus ride, I noticed him staring at me, taunting, from the "Visit the Bahamas" ad haphazardly plastered over one of the overhead luggage holds. He sits with a lovely-looking woman at a table covered in white linen, enjoying a candlelit dinner at some swanky beach resort. He wears a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves that expose his devastating forearms and a smile that could stop traffic. The woman cradles his cheek with her hand, her fingers tangled in his dark, wind-blown hair. Rockstar hair.