Breadcrumb #606
HANNAH J. SHAW
In line at the ticket counter, an old woman prods my back with the tip of her umbrella. “Aren’t you going?”
I blink. There’s still a faint ringing in my ear, like all the sounds gone out of the room.
Though that’s not even a little bit true. Because suddenly then, it’s like I can hear all the sounds in the room at once. A car horn in the lot outside, a bitter low grumbling of someone in the line behind me, and a hazy voice talking on the loud speakers overhead.
The old woman prods me again, this time with more force. The worn plastic tip of the umbrella pushes into a tender spot between my shoulder blades. It hurts enough to make me yelp. But before I can even think to snap back at her, a man from the ticket booth pokes his head out and calls with a booming voice, “Come on! Next please.”
I’m sweating a little. It’s only May but there’s a heat wave. It might be 95 degrees out for all I can tell. I fumble for my wallet as I glance back. Though not at the old woman, beyond her.
There’s a girl I thought I recognized earlier. She stands with her arms raised in ridiculous exaltation beneath the vent of the air conditioning unit.
It’s not Gwen, I tell myself. Because it can’t be. I don’t know this girl.
“So, where to?” the ticket man asks. He can tell I’m only half listening to him, but he manages to punch out a pass that will get me from here to Minneapolis.
He only pauses just before handing me the ticket. “You going to be alright, miss?”
I look the ticket man in the eye. I hadn’t noticed him until then. He has sweat beading on his brow and sports a mustache that looks wet with humidity. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I just haven’t slept much.”
“Remember to drink water. Dehydration can be a real problem on a day like this,” he says as his eyes drift up over my shoulder towards the old woman, still wielding her umbrella. “Next customer, please.”
My bus wasn’t leaving for another half hour, so I found a seat in the waiting area amidst a family of tourists all in matching white polo shirts and a lone woman stroking at some kind of animal in a carrier on her lap. The girl under the air vent is still there. She really does look a lot like Gwen. She’s shifted out from directly beneath it to make room for two small girls playing on an iPad. The steady blast sends ripples through their hair.
After the accident, I’d seen Gwen’s face everywhere. That wasn’t a surprise. A barrage of grief counselors had told me comforting things about how it was only natural she’d be on my mind, even after the shock of the initial crash was over. They talked about survivor’s guilt, possible post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares - the list goes on.
“After the accident, I’d seen Gwen’s face everywhere. That wasn’t a surprise.”
The first time it happened, for a fleeting moment I’d forgotten about the accident while walking to a Psych lecture. A skateboarder with long golden brown locks had gone skidding past me and brushed against my shoulder in a way that felt so familiar, that I called out, “Gwen!” Though then the skater turned her head and the memory of it all rushed back. She looked nothing like Gwen really. It was just a moment, her posture on the skateboard, the way her hair caught the light as she sped by.
It would happen again and again like this. With a girl blowing bubbles in gum in line at the pharmacy, with a woman in big, hand-knit scarf once winter came, with a street musician whose mascara had started to run. Though on second glance, none of these people ever actually looked all that much like Gwen.
Though, the girl under the vent could be her twin.
She has her eyes shut tight, breathing deeply as though in some kind of meditative state to fight off the heat. And lucky for me, it means she’s completely oblivious to the fact that I’d been staring for now what is probably getting to be kind of a long time.
She wears a denim jacket decorated with pins and patches, a hole at the shoulder reveals a ribbon of bare skin beneath. A purple canvas backpack is slung over her other shoulder. I don’t recognize any of these things as Gwen’s but all of them seem to possess an essence of her. I try and try to place them.
But it’s not her.
It’s a trick of the mind, of dehydration, lack of sleep – something. The last time I saw Gwen’s face was over a year ago. It was in the moments while the paramedics worked to cut the seat belt off me that I watched the color begin to drain from her lips.
But another part of me knows I’d never forget her face. And not just for the crash. She’d been my college roommate, my nightly drinking buddy, the girl who’d dyed my hair and stole my socks. I’d stayed up hundreds of nights in a row with her trying out makeup tutorials on the internet and watching TV shows we’d never admit to anyone else we’d watched. I knew about the scar on her arm from a time she’d tripped at a flea market sent her arm flying through an old window and the little raised mole beneath her right eye she was forever hiding with foundation.
A bus for St. Louis is announced over the loud speaker, and at that, the girl’s eyes flutter open. She glances in my direction and embarrassed, I look away. I turn my attention to the boy and girl in matching white polo shirts picking through a bag of Doritos and then too at the creature in the carrier on the chair next to me. I still can’t tell what it is.
The girl follows the flow of passengers heading towards the bus for St. Louis, pulling the torn jean jacket from her back. My eyes follow her arm. The white slash of a scar stands out on her tanned forearm.
I rise from my seat. I can’t help it. “Gwen.”
The words don’t come out as loud as I would hope, but the girl turns her head anyway. There’s a small dark mole beneath her right eye and the look she gives me is unmistakable.
It’s her. Somehow it’s her. She sees me and freezes.
A look of panic washes over her. “You’re not supposed to see me,” she says so quietly I nearly miss it. Then, she pivots on her heel and walks quickly toward the bus.
I don’t follow right away. Gwen is here. Gwen is alive. It’s a lot all at once. But then I see the back of her head disappearing into the bus, and follow after, but to do what?
I don’t have a ticket for the bus so I walk along its side and search for her face in the dark windows. Maybe she sees me - no, I’m sure that she does. I call her name again and again until the bus pulls away from the station and disappears down the street.