How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [134]
The cabdriver, though, wanted to ask a million questions and kept looking at her in the rearview mirror, which made her really nervous. Was he gonna call the cops on her? She said finally, “I live in a foster home, and I’m going to see my mom, who is in the hospital in El Paso.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to do it in the daytime?”
Katie shook her head. “Nobody was gonna let me go.” She looked at him in the mirror. “What would you do if it was your mom?”
He just nodded. When he dropped her off, he said, “Careful now, sweetie. The world isn’t a very nice place.”
“Believe me,” she said. “I know that.”
“Somehow I think you do.”
It was also tricky to get a bus ticket, since the woman behind the counter said she needed an adult to buy it for her. Katie thought of her mom joking with some dealer, and said, “My mom’s a meth addict. I don’t think she cares if I take a bus to see my dad at Fort Bliss.”
Her eyes softened. “He’s a soldier, huh?”
Katie nodded. “He’s been in Iraq, but he’s out now.”
The woman sold her a ticket for sixty-three dollars. When Katie settled into the seat by the window, she felt like crying and didn’t know why. The bus was quiet and the baby fussed a little bit, and it seemed like the loneliest place in the world. If her head had been too noisy before, the silence seemed to echo now, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She wished for Merlin. She wished for the smell of bread.
Get off the bus and go home, said a voice in her head.
And then she thought of her dad trying to kill himself, leaving her behind like she was some empty cup he was going to throw away, and she stayed where she was. Using her sweater as a blanket and her backpack as a pillow, she fell asleep and didn’t wake up until they were outside Albuquerque.
In Albuquerque, it’s pretty early and there aren’t that many people around. A homeless guy with about twenty-seven years of grime on his neck and cuticles says, “Hey, girlie, you got some change for an old man?”
She shakes her head and pulls her pack closer to her. He calls out behind her, “Hope you’re never hungry and homeless!” and for some reason it makes her mad. She turns around and glares at him. “I have been, thanks.”
He looks sad, but Katie just stomps into the bathroom. She pees and washes her hands, carefully not touching anything without a paper towel. Looking at herself in the mirror, she sees that her face is greasy and there are bags under her eyes—eyes that look so mad bright that she wonders, with a fluttering in her chest, just what the heck she’s doing here.
It passes. In the station, she finds a fake Egg McMuffin and a glass of orange juice. She buys a bag of Skittles from a machine and tucks those into her pocket, then she heads back to the bus.
It’s still quiet. Other people are eating, too, and she can smell coffee. Unwrapping the sandwich, she stares out the window and waits for the bus to go, willing the seat beside her to stay empty.
In a few hours, she’ll see her mom. Who has now been clean for two months, so she’ll be in good shape. Once she sees her, talks to her, Katie thinks, she’ll know what to do.
Ramona
El Paso is a ten-hour drive, straight down I-25 through New Mexico. Because I’ve been awake since two, I drink coffee and take the first shift. Merlin is in the backseat, his nose lifted to the two-inch crack at the window, but after a while he curls up on the blanket I put down for him and tucks his nose under his tail.
Jonah mans the CD player and eats a bagel and cream cheese we picked up at Starbucks. “Woman runs a bakery and I have to eat store-bought bagels,” he says, lifting his eyebrow.
“I didn’t know—”
“Joke!” he says, holding up a hand. The scent of his chai is exotic and pleasing, and I think that I don’t know him well enough to be in love like this. He’s essentially a stranger, someone