Two in the morning. Rachel stands thin as a shadow in the yellow glow of a Waffle House sign watching moths wheel and spin as if drunk in the light. She wears a black patch over her scarred left eye. She touches the switchblade in her hip pocket. Long thin sharp enough to shave with. The Greyhound ticket stiff inside her jacket booked under her stage name from the last shit hole. Tuesday Hollow. The fat sleepy bored to death ticket clerk didn’t blink or bother about ID. Rachel wiggles her toes against the lump of folded bills in her left shoe. Ninety-seven dollars after the ticket to Waco. Her mother was there last she heard. The air is hot damp and tastes like the gel they smear on the ECT nodes before they shock you. She taps the plastic tic tac container tucked in her jeans pocket. Three orange tic tacs and five days’ meds. Lithium and seroquel. She can make those last ten days if she’s creative. She crosses the lot along far edge of yellow light as the bus heaves to rest. She keeps her distance from the handful of fellow travelers. The only one without a suitcase she doesn’t even have a handbag. Red and orange lights glowing dim. Dozen passengers get off to smoke. She hasn’t spoken to her mother in six years. The driver climbs down from the bus huffing at his own weight then drags himself toward the station as if his legs ache. An elderly black man in pale blue drags a skeletal cart past her, one wheel broken. A mass of humped bags. He stops alongside the bus, wrenches open the baggage compartment with one fist. His other arm cradled to his chest, injured or deformed. He loads the bags and cases slow, muttering get in there motherfucker. He says this to each bag.
Get in there. Motherfucker.
The driver returns, a white styrofoam cup steaming in one hand and cigarette glowing orange in the other. He tears the tickets with his teeth.
She must dead by now, mother.
Shut up don’t you think that.
The bus is crowded, dark with bodies. Rachel takes a seat next to a sleeping woman. She reaches for the reading light but it doesn’t work. The woman is thin and her smell is bitter, as if her clothes are dirty and sprayed with perfume. She wears a ratty fake rabbit hair coat. Rachel closes her eyes. The bus pulls out with the low groan of metal touching itself. The woman beside her jerks awake.
That’s fine, she says. If it’s pink. If it’s blue fuck you.
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