H O L L A N D
Cheesehead, who sits three seats up and one over, pulls on the string of the bus. He stops at the same spot as every morning before. He's a balding man, carrying a beer belly and is always wearing a pair of old faded jeans and a Green Bay Packers jacket. Curly Q Sue is sitting across the aisle from him. She is dressed in a black pant suit. Her hair falls in tight curls down to her shoulders and her eyes that are sporting a bright blue eye shadow. Another regular to our early morning bus ride is Business Man Mick. He seems to be in his mid-twenties and is always wearing a black suit. His larger nose is crooked, seemingly been broken by a fight at some frat party during his sophomore year in college. Nancy is a nurse, always clad in her scrubs and suitable shoes. She gets on the bus one stop after mine and always takes the exit two blocks before the hospital where her daily coffee awaits. There aren't too many people on the bus at this time, when the sun is barely peeping around the horizon. It's too early for people who don't have some place to be, but to me it's just really late.
I'm sat at the back of the bus as it empties out and I have three more stops until I'm due to exit. I have my camera resting in my lap, my fingers messing with the lens cap. The bus driver casts me a glance in the mirror as I hug my knees to my chest and he brings the bus to a stop. The doors open and Jamming John casually strolls onto the bus at six thirty in the morning. He's wearing a zip-up blank jacket with the hood up. I can see his headphones that connect to his phone in his back pocket as he takes his seat two rows in front of me. He sits sideways in his seat with his back resting against the wall and his feet stretched out onto the seat next to him. He's tall enough to where his feet hang in the aisle.
Jamming John's hood falls back on his head just a bit when he leans back, revealing his buzzed brown hair and unshaven face. He's bobbing his head to an unknown beat that I can never here. He doesn't get on the bus every morning but when he does he doesn't say anything and tunes out the world. He gets off the stop before mine and every day before I debate whether to get off with him, to see where he goes every day.
The other members of our bus adventures are talkers. They talk on the phone and I gather information by their conversations but with him I've got nothing. He never says a word. So when the bus tires squeal and the bus comes to a stop, I get off one stop early. Bus Driver Bert shows little confusion at my early exit but doesn't say anything, he never does. The doors shut quickly once I'm on the sidewalk. Jamming John doesn't look up much from the sidewalk as he continues forward with his headphones still in his ears. His towering figure intimidates those around him who move out of his way, which he doesn't seem to notice.
I stop when he stops, pulling out his headphones from his ears and saying something to a boy, no older than himself, who steps up next to him. Jamming John and his friend step in sync down the street. I lose them for a minute as they step into a store and come out minutes later holding Gatorades and waters. I'm leaning against a wall and hide behind my hair when they pass by, neither of them seeming to notice me. My feet shuffle against the concrete, maintaining a few people in-between us.
Summer time is beginning, with school just letting out a few weeks ago, although the early morning sun was doing nothing to the cool chill in the air. The wind coming off the water always makes for a cool morning. I pull my jacket closer to my body and slip my hands into my pockets. Summer isn't my favorite time of the year. Most of my friends leave for their vacations in tropical places and I'm stuck spending my nights working at my family's restaurant. It's not a terrible job, just unwanted.
We're a simple northern restaurant with Chicago styled pizza and Italian beef. We have many things on the menu but no one seems to get anything besides those two. They are what we're famous for, at least to those around our part of the city. Mom and Dad like keep the employment in the family but with some convincing a few months ago they had decided to hire my two best friends Elliott and Shannon.
I'm roughly pushed against a wall of an alleyway. The bricks dig into my back and an arm at my throat forces the breath out of me. The boy glares down at me, his eyes hard. I claw at his arm, desperate for even a swallow of air. My eyes are wide, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I'm standing on the tips of my toes as I try to gulp down any air I can get. "Are you stalking me?"
I try to answer him but nothing leaves my mouth. I shake my head wildly and Jamming John takes a step back. I gasp in a gulp of air, a slight sting in the back of my throat. I blink away a few tears in my ear and place a hand onto the brick wall to keep myself standing. The two boys stare down at me, neither of them saying a word. I cough and my throat burns. I look up at the two boys and flinch from their intense glares.
"I'm not a stalker." My voice comes out shaky and unconvincing. Jamming John raises his eyebrows and his friend chuckles. They look towards each other, clearly not believing me and take a threatening step forward. I press myself further up against the wall.
"Then why have you been following me?" His voice is deep and now that I can properly see his face, there's a scar running from the tip of his eyebrow and comes to a stop a few centimeters from his eye. It's old and just a thin white line. I wouldn't have noticed it had he not been as close as he is. "I saw you on the bus, you followed me all the way here."
"Just a coincidence." At this his friend laughs even harder. His laugh is a deep, belly laugh, like I had just told the funniest joke. He wipes away a fake tear and holds onto his stomach.
"Try again." My fingers play with my camera that still hangs from around my neck. The cap is off and dangling from the black beauty and I itch to capture this moment. The light of the early morning bounces off the bricks, creating the perfect light. I push down the feeling and miss all of what he just said. "The least you could, little stalker, is listen to what I'm saying."
"I am not a stalker, my names Holland." I say to him. My voice now coming out steadier and stronger, a sense of faux confidence. I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. Both of the boys tower over me. the two boys are about the same height. They both have a full head on me. Jamming John's friend has longer brown hair that stops at his ears.
"So what are you doing on this side of Chicago anyway?" We haven't ventured too far from the main road, but I had no excuse for following them down into this empty alley. I had been too caught up in my own thoughts to realize they were heading this way for a reason. And I was caught red handed.
"I don't live too far from here." Which wasn't a lie. The bus route doesn't go too far from my house, just down a couple miles and then makes its way back. Jamming John looks towards his friend who gives him a small nod. I look between the friends who are both too intimidating for their own goods and inch myself back towards the wall. They are both muscular, obviously athletic. Their muscles in their arms can be seen from underneath their jackets.
"Well, little stalker, this is Jaxon." Jamming John pats Jaxon's shoulder twice. Jaxon doesn't seem take notice of the brotherly action. Instead he smiles a full-teeth smile at me, and suddenly all the bad boy vibes coming from him vanish. It lasts as long as he smiles, as soon as he puts away his dimpled smile, he's as scary as before. "I'm Rhys."
"If you think I'm your little stalker than why are you telling me your names?"
"Well you're way too small to do any real damage besides catch some probably incriminating photos." Jaxon says, "And in case that does happen, I will crush that camera faster than you could press the button." His brown eyes narrow into slits with the warning and my hands automatically go to my camera, as if protecting it. My camera was given to me as a sixteenth birthday present, and it rarely leaves my side these days.
"He's messing with you." Rhys says to me, the corner of his lip raising. His hands are in his jacket pockets and I can see the headphones slipping out. I can hear a faint beat from the music still playing. "You're a cute little thing." He says patting the top of my head twice as if I'm a dog. My cheeks heat up and I duck my head behind my hair as both the boys laugh.
"And that's even cuter." Jaxon says to me. He leans on the brick wall next to me and I peek up at him. They're both staring down at me and I don't know where to look. To stare back or to continue hiding behind my hair. I choose the latter.
"Well as much fun as this has been, we need to be somewhere." Rhys says, motioning with his head for Jaxon to follow him out. They say nothing more to me before leaving the alleyway. Neither of them glance back at me and I let out a loud sigh. When I'm finally alone I slump back onto the wall and take a deep breath. I push off the brick, my camera firmly in my hands and I feel a slight smile playing on my lips. I exit after them, taking one glance at their backs, and go in the opposite direction.
My mother was waiting for me when I woke up a few hours later. It was well into the afternoon and she was in the typical mother stance with her hands on her hips and her thin lips in a straight line. She held a bottle in her left hand but her hand was covering the label. I glance at the clock seeing it was only one in the afternoon.
"I was going to wake you up earlier but I heard you come in this morning at eight. It's been a while since you've slept this long at one time." My mother's look was soft and kind, but then she uncovers the bottle in her hand. I don't try to hold in the groan. I fall back onto the bed and cover my head with the blankets. "I thought we agreed that you would start taking these again. It's not exactly safe for you to be outside all night long."
"You know what those things do to me." I swing my legs over the side of my bed and slip my feet into a pair of fuzzy slippers. The bottle of pills she was holding always gave me a splitting headache and made my head spin when I took them. They did help me sleep through the night, but it wasn't worth the constant dizziness that made me want to throw up and often did.
It started at the beginning of last year. At first I wouldn't be able to sleep through the night mostly due to the nightmares. I would wake up after a couple of hours and rarely be able to fall back asleep. The hours of sleep I was getting was slowly slipping backwards. My mother blamed it on the television and computer in my room so she took both out and forced me to sleep in the complete dark. Safe to say it didn't help much, quite the opposite actually. I would spend the night staring up at the ceiling, maybe getting an hour of sleep if I was lucky.
So when the doctor gave me drug after drug to help me sleep through the night, I was ready to get back all of those hours of sleep I missed. And it did help, I slept through the night a few times before the headaches set in and the dizziness started to affect me.
"I know, but isn't that just something to deal with if it means you're not out roaming the streets of Chicago all night?" My mother sets the bottle of pills on the dresser and takes a seat on the edge of my bed right next to me. She places her hand on my knee and gives me a motherly squeeze.
"I'm perfectly safe at night mom, I have my pepper spray, my pocket knife, my rape whistle, and my phone. Plus I took those self-defense classes last year with Shannon. I can protect myself."
My mother sighs knowing that she isn't going to get anything else out of me. I wasn't going to take the pills and I wasn't going to stop wandering around Chicago at night. I know where not to go at night. Some parts of Chicago aren't safe, especially for teenage girls. It's all about knowing the city and being smart. I can't stand sitting in my dark room all night with nothing to keep me company. I have my books, sure, but I've read them all multiple times and would rather spend my money on things besides books, like my precious camera resting on my desk.
I stand from the bed and slip into my closet. I come out in different clothes and slip my camera around my neck. "I'll see you at the diner tonight. I've got something I have to do." And with those words I slip out of my room, grabbing my purse that's equipped with everything I need to stay safe in the windy city. I grab my keys before leaving the apartment and heading down towards the park. I wasn't lying when I said I have something to do.
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A u t h o r s N o t e :
Edited. Rewritten.
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8/02/2015