A Sense of the Infinite

My voice trembled. “Yeah.”

Snowflakes were falling around me in dense flurries. The houses on the street were quiet and dark.

“What’s wrong?” Ava said.

I didn’t answer.

“A

“I need a favor,” I said.

50

THE NEXT DAY, MOM DROVE ME to the Greyhound station to catch the bus to Maple Bay. It had snowed all night, and the fire hydrants wore fat white hats. Parked cars had sheets of snow draped over their windshields. They looked like hospital patients.

“Did you remember your toothbrush?” Mom said. She acted happy on the drive, but I could tell she was as nervous as I was. She hugged me and I tensed involuntarily, afraid she would detect my still-undetectable condition through both our snow coats.

“Give Pauline a hug for me,” said Mom. “Ava too.”

“I will.”

She gave me a twenty-dollar bill for no apparent reason and kissed me on the cheek. “Love you, A

“Love you too.”

51

THE BUS RIDE TO MAPLE BAY had a million stops. Every bus station had the same crumbly look as all the others, a concrete lip where people waited with their overstuffed bags, dirty yellow lights. Every highway exit had the same fast-food restaurants and gas stations. I slumped against the window and tried to pick out a tree or plant, some green thing my heart could curl its tendrils around and try to befriend. Why had we done this? I thought to myself. If nobody loved it, why? It was insane to build places that nobody loved. It was insane to cover all that was green and tender with parking lots and garbage bins.

I wondered if anyone else felt that way, or if I was just a freak. As the bus huffed and belched and pulled back onto the highway, a loneliness overcame me that was worse than anything I’d felt all year.

Midway through the morning, Noe texted me.

are you still mad at me?

i didn’t realize you thought i was promising to go with you.

i thought we were just talking and having fun.

It was so like Noe to wait until a time when we wouldn’t see each other for several days to start a dialogue like this.

i don’t know, I texted back.

it was the way you came back from the gym expo

and didn’t even bother to talk to me

like i should just adapt to your plans

A few seconds later, a string of texts from Noe came back.

i don’t want you to adapt to my plans

you should always do what you want, k?

you’re so incredible and smart

you don’t need me to tell you what to do

I stared at my phone. I didn’t have the energy to contradict her or call out all the truths she wasn’t acknowledging. It was easier to snuggle into the familiar ritual of flattery and reconciliation; easier to be lovable A

i know, I typed back.

i just got scared

i don’t want to lose you

you won’t lose me

we’ll visit all the time

i’ll come stay in your dorm room

and you’ll come home on breaks

: )

steven says you’re fascinating, btw

we talked about you for like an hour

aww

he was all, “she’s an undercover badass!”

and i was like, “i know!”

you guys are the best

oh

bus is stopping

have to pee

talk soon

talk soon

In a McDonald’s bathroom noisy with flushing toilets and keening hand dryers, I splashed cold water on my face, shook out my stale ponytail, finger-combed my hair. Beside me, enterprising women were brushing their teeth, putting on lipstick, taking swipes at their armpits with deodorant sticks.

“You done with the sink?” a woman said, elbowing in beside me and planting her enormous purse on the water-spotted countertop.

“Yeah, sorry,” I stuttered. I wished I could feel as confident as her. Swing my purse around. Take out a can of perfume and spray it at myself with such gusto that anyone in a six-foot blast radius must duck or be scented with Eau de Sex Sugar.

I trudged back to the empty bus, climbed on, and rummaged in the overhead bin for How to Survive. The seats with their detritus of squashed sweaters and half-drunk soda bottles looked like the little shrines people make at gravestones; plastic flowers gone crooked and leaky from wind and rain.

Our next rest stop had a mini grocery. I circled around the aisles, picking things up, inspecting them, and mentally disqualifying them. Everything was too expensive: two dollars for a flimsy little Oats ’n Honey bar that wouldn’t fill me up, a dollar twenty-five for a waxy, red, poisonous-looking apple, three dollars for something called a Yogurt Parfait, which was a plastic cup with white stuff at the bottom, then purplish jelly, then some oaty stuff that was supposed to be granola but surely couldn’t be. I could hear Noe’s voice inside my head, reading the ingredients lists out loud. Gelatin, delicious. Chocolate milk? You might as well drink a cup of corn syrup.

I circled for ten minutes, deliberating, half swooning under the too-bright fluorescent lights. All around me, people were grabbing things off the racks and buying them, filling paper cups with soft drinks from the machines against one wall, retrieving sunburned-looking hot dogs from the heated glass display case on the counter. I had that terrible feeling like in musical chairs, when the music stops and everyone else has gone for their chair and you run around the circle in a panic and you just can’t find one.

Finally I spied some discount ci

Two ci

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman sitting next to me. “I have to get out.”

She grunted and moved her legs grudgingly. I clambered over them and staggered down the aisle to the very back of the bus, where there was a tiny bathroom. Before the flimsy door shut behind me, two very Special ci

I am a ski

I rinsed my mouth at the dirty sink. I was pretty sure the whole bus had heard me heaving. Back in my row, the woman who was sitting next to me had changed seats—so much the better.

I sat down carefully and took a sip of water from the bottle Mom had made me bring. I felt so nauseous from the shuddering and the ci