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Wouldn’t you like to forget every bad thing that ever happened to you?
Forget that dog that died when you were six, the one who stole your heart; Forget the girl who rejected you, the father who abandoned you, the mother who beat you, the boy who dumped you on prom night.
Forget everything that no longer serves you.
Be a virgin again; An innocent who has not known tragedy or betrayal by others or more importantly betrayal perpetrated by the self; Be who you were meant to be: whole, untainted, and mostly and best of all, Be pain-free.
—DR. VARGAS, FOUNDER OF TABULA RASA, INC.
THE RALLY TO SAVE THE YOUTH, ANGEL WING BRIDGE (2031)
Memories of the last time I saw my mother slip through my mind like water over river rocks.
I ask myself:
Did I kiss her goodbye that morning as she and Dad hurried out the door to go skiing? I feel her lips against my cheek, smell toothpaste and her orange blossom lotion. Then just as fast as that memory comes in I can see her rushing for the keys calling out a quick goodbye as I stared at my phone, not coming over to me at all, never even approaching.
Did I imagine she gave me a last, longing look or that she took an extra beat to blow me a kiss, or that the instant the door clicked shut behind her I wanted to run to her and tell her not to go? Am I adding in my sense of foreboding—some premonitory lurch as the car started up outside—so I can feel a little better about what came after?
I give myself a little slap on the cheek.
I’m not imagining all the strange things that have happened this morning.
After all, someone has left me a secret message and I have the piece of paper in my hand to prove it.
I have not made it up.
I’m sitting on my dad’s old Chevy truck at my faux adobe apartment complex next to the sign that reads 838 TIERRA POINTE VILLAS. I’m pretty sure it was a nice place when Gran and Pop-pop moved into it right after 9/11, but thirty years later it’s a slowly crumbling clump of dirt.
I have the keys to Dad’s Chevy in my bag, tied onto a piece of leather, but I’m here waiting for Turtle because I don’t drive it.
I know that. I just don’t know why.
I’m holding the piece of paper between my fingers. I raise it up to the light and check for invisible ink or pen imprints, evidence of another page in the notebook it was ripped from, but the space around the words is smooth and white.
MEET ME ON THE LITTLE BLUE BUS
7:45 5/19/32
It’s now 7:45 on May the eighteenth of the year 2032.
The sun is a gold Frisbee bobbing on a clear lake, and my block is serene and uncomplicated with its rows of two-story structures. It’s too early in the day for parties or fights or for couples kissing against streetlights, and Turtle is late as usual. Everything is normal and yet it is not.
I don’t know of a little blue bus so I type LITTLE BLUE BUS, OWL NOOK, NM into my phone and when the search turns up a whole bunch of things including over six thousand customer review ratings, my breath freezes in my throat.
Apparently the bus runs from this part of Old Town up to the ski valley thirty minutes away. It’s free and makes four stops hourly when the valley is open and twice a day off-season, once at 7:45 a.m. and once at 5:15 p.m. There’s a map and a picture of a friendly looking Chicano man with his hand up in a wave and a sentence in bold about how tips are appreciated. There’s also a picture of the bus, which is bigger than a minivan and smaller than a city bus and has a bright yellow Zia on it. LITTLE BLUE BUS, it reads across the side, in colors that match the symbol.
It’s real. It exists. And yet it can’t.
I slide my phone into my jacket pocket, but it’s not smooth. My hands shake. I have lived in Owl Nook, New Mexico, my entire life. It is impossible there should be this bus driving through town and I do not know about it. I used to live in a subdivision like Turtle and now I live in an apartment complex ten blocks away, which could account for me not knowing about it back then, but still. Still. I’ve lived here with Gran for almost a year and I pride myself on knowing everything there is to know about this place. I should definitely know that there’s a bus that shuttles to Owl Nook Ski Valley and back every hour.
I must know it. And yet I don’t.
It doesn’t make sense.
Nothing is making much sense.
First I woke up with a headache so bad I felt compelled to make sure there wasn’t an ax lodged in my skull. I took some ibuprofen, brushed my teeth, and got dressed, I guess. I don’t remember that part but I’m in a pair of suit pants, a button-down shirt, and my spring jacket, not currently naked so I must have put on clothes at some point.
Things were already considerably odd, and then when I was getting my jewelry on, reaching for my second earring, I found this piece of paper in my closet.
A note.
A clue tucked carefully under my jewelry box, sticking out from the bottom just enough that I could see it. My feet felt fuzzy as kittens and spots spattered across my field of vision. I woke up a little while later staring at the ceiling with the back of my head throbbing like a sore tooth. At least the location of my headache had changed from front to back. Silver linings. When I was little I always thought fainting was super romantic, but this felt awful. I let myself lie there a minute, then Gran called me into the kitchen for breakfast, pausing her diatribe at the radio long enough to yell my name, then went back to swearing. I got up, went in, had some toast with strawberry jam, and now here we are.
I’m not certain how my backpack wound up slung over my shoulder, or even how I got out to this curb where I usually meet my friends in the mornings. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Gran or putting on a jacket or walking down the second-floor stairs. I’m just … here.
MEET ME ON THE LITTLE BLUE BUS
7:45 5/19/32
No matter how many times I look at the note, I don’t magically recognize the handwriting. It’s not Turtle’s curvy cursive or Jack’s blockish scrawl and yet it fills me with dread and excitement, my whole body jittering like my eyes recognize something my brain can’t. It’s a maddening itch just out of reach.
I hear the music and rumble of Turtle’s old Jeep before she even turns the corner.
I hop off the truck and pull on my backpack.
It’s heavy. Unusually heavy.
I unzip it and find four bottles of orange juice standing next to each other, all full and cold. I must have been really out of it this morning because I don’t remember putting those in there and why would I? I pull out three of the bottles and put them in the truck as Turtle slides up to the curb. She lets her sunglasses slip down her nose so she’s looking at me over the white rims.
“Morning, earthling!” she says, turning down her stereo just enough that she can carry on a conversation. She’s in a semi-boho dress with little purple flowers on it and some chunky necklace hanging over her bosom that probably belonged to her great-great-grandmother or something. Turtle never wears anything new. She’s a chronic recycler, upcycler, and repurposer. As soon as I see her I start to feel a little less separate from everything. The world comes into focus and I don’t feel so much like I’m underwater.
Jack, Turtle’s partner, gets out and pulls the lever on the seat so it folds forward, then lets me climb in the back. They have a tweed jacket on with a pink handkerchief tucked into the front pocket and they give me a little bow before clicking the seat back into place. There’s not a person on this earth who wouldn’t think Jack was beautiful. There’s something about them that’s so completely self-assured people drop to their knees and worship them wherever they go. They’re made even more attractive by their absolute devotion to Turtle. The world watches Jack and Jack watches Turtle. That’s just the way it is.
“Why so sullen, friend?” Jack asks.
“I’m not sullen,” I say, mustering a smile. “Just quiet. I can be quiet, can’t I?”
“Rarely,” Jack says. “And your fake smile sucks.”
“It’s either that or RBF.”
“RBF,” Jack says. “Always.”
“It’s been a weird morning.” I reach into my pocket and feel the paper between my fingers. “That’s all.”
Jack and Turtle look at each other. Jack arches their eyebrows meaningfully. I don’t catch the meaning, except to know the dynamics between us have shifted. When we were younger, it was Turtle and me, then as of two years ago it was Turtle and me and Jack, and now it’s Turtle and Jack and sometimes me. Plus, all of Jack’s friends took over and gave Turtle a whole other community I’m only partially involved with. I’m not super bitter about it. They’re in love and Turtle is finding herself. It’s fair.
I’ve never had a boyfriend so I don’t know what that kind of love is like, what it would be to want to fall into someone else’s face.
Wait.
I’ve never had a boyfriend.
Is that right?
It doesn’t feel right.
It doesn’t feel true.
Whatever Turtle and Jack are communicating via eyebrows starts out being about me, but then both their expressions soften. This is when soul music should come on the radio. Everything slows down and they gaze at each other while the Jeep rattles crankily and I sit in the back trying to look anywhere except at them. Turtle strokes the side of Jack’s cheek. It’s so intimate, but I think we’ve all had enough of me telling them to get a room. As annoyed as I used to get, I’ve learned to deal.
When they’re done mooning at each other, Jack turns around while Turtle adjusts her lip gloss in the rearview mirror.
“You get any perkier, I’m going to get you some pom-poms and force you into cheerleader servitude until you turn that frown upside down,” Jack says to me. “Why so glum?”
“Excuse you.” Turtle turns her attention back to the road as she throws the Jeep into drive. “I’ll thank you not to disrespect the cheerleaders. They work hard. You clearly have no idea the amount of discipline required.” Turtle flicks her hair over her shoulder. “The only reason I am not one is that I don’t have an adequate level of school spirit or interest in sports and I don’t like to show my legs. Cheerleading is just not my frequency.”
Jack and I grin at each other. Turtle got ahold of some “live your best life” type class on the AHA MOMENT NETWORK™, and now she’s always talking about frequencies and whether or not people and/or things are in hers. Saying something is not in your frequency seems to me like a way of saying you hate it.
“You have nice legs,” Jack offers, tapping on the side door. Jack is a killer drummer and can’t keep their hands from drumming all the time, even when there’s no music. It’s fun to watch.
“Thanks, honey,” Turtle says. “But I didn’t say I don’t have nice legs. I’m fully aware that I got my maternal great-great grandmother Ethel’s legs, which are clearly superior. I said I don’t like to show them. Plus, I like a flowy silhouette, which is why I’ve chosen the red twirly thing for the ceremony.”
Only another week until graduation and then we’ll never be the three of us going to school in this car again. They’re leaving in August. Turtle got into Columbia and Jack is going to Sarah Lawrence so it’s to New York for both of them, which feels like it might as well be Mars from here.
I’m going to stay to finish high school and then I don’t know what. I used to travel with my parents so they could ski all over the place: Japan, British Columbia, all different states, Switzerland. I never found anywhere I like as much as Owl Nook. Nowhere else feels like it could be home. I’m here, forever probably, and Turtle and Jack will move on and I’ll have to make it through my senior year alone. This is the suck of having your only real friends one year ahead of you in school. Damn Turtle and her grade-skipping.
Turtle reaches into the bag she has resting between her legs and pops a Taki in her mouth. “I don’t prefer jumping. Or actually, my tits don’t prefer jumping.”
Jack snorts.
“You be a 36E and talk to me about it.” Turtle adjusts herself. “I wasn’t made for flips and jaunty optimistic leaping.”
“Acknowledged. Anyway, that’s not the point,” Jack says, handing me a coffee. Reusable container of course. “The point is Blue’s in a mood.”
“Indeed she is,” Turtle says, raising one eyebrow. “I have the perfect solution, for no mood can withstand the power of this song, no human is strong enough to resist its pull, least of all our little girl Blue.”
She turns up the soundtrack from the classic movie Moulin Rouge, which is admittedly my Achilles’ heel. No amount of headachy weirdness can keep me from absolutely crowing the “Elephant Love Medley” at the top of my lungs. Everything drifts off into the wind along with our voices.
“Maybe if Blue was in show choir she’d have to make out with Kevin instead of you.” Jack knows good and well I’m not joining show choir. I can only imagine what it would be like to dance and sing at the same time. Not good or fun, at least not when executed by me. I am always tripping over my own feet, falling down, bumping into walls. I can totally waggle my limbs and lose myself in a dance, but choreography is a hard no.
Anyway, Kevin Orozco, one of Jack’s friends, has been tasked with laying a fat kiss on Turtle at the end of the performance they’re doing as the opener for the graduation ceremony next week and is so far doing a very poor job. He told Turtle his penis inverts when he thinks about kissing girls.
“It’s not making out,” Turtle says. “It’s a simple kiss. I get that he’s queer. I’m queer too, but for God’s sake this is a performance. He acts like he’s pressing his lips against a slug. Pretend I’m a hot guy if you have to. I literally do not care. Just be professional.”
Jack laughs and turns up the music.
I may not be into show choir but nothing makes me happier than singing, except maybe hanging out with these two, so I sip on the cinnamon latte and sing my face off.
I almost forget about the note.
Almost.
I keep it in my pocket and feel its heat between my thumbs.
Copyright © 2022 by Estelle Laure.
