Bus

I’ve always viewed Christmas as a pimple. A really nasty ingrown one that doesn’t show itself completely until it’s ready. When the whitehead peaks and it’s all ready to be popped, that’s Christmas Day. The red, sensitive skin around it is the week before and after, and when you pop it, that’s Christmas itself. The pus comes out and it might scab over, remaining there for a few more days, and that’s the week afterward when everyone’s getting ready for the new year.

It’s a disgusting metaphor, I know. I purposely made it that way. The Holidays just really aren’t my thing. Maybe it’s because I never get gifts, save for a few t-shirts or a gift card from Carrie (I always get her gift cards to her favorite stores), or maybe it’s because I never have a friend to spend it with. It’s probably a combination. I never gussy up my apartment or string lights anywhere, I never buy a Christmas tree, and God knows it never snows in Yuma so I can’t go out and make snow angels.

Well, at least I never have to spend a lot of money.

I don’t know. I really can’t complain, since I get two and a half weeks off for Christmas vacation as well as New Years, and so I get to just stay in while everybody else is worrying about buying gifts for each other that they’ll probably never use, telling their kids about the blatant lie that is Santa Claus, and all sorts of other meaningless shit that just doesn’t sit right with me.

Two and a half weeks where I don’t have to deal with people. It’s a beautiful thing.

In fact, that’s one thing I’m looking forward to on Christmas Day. Some time alone with me, myself, and I. I wake up at ten in the morning with no intention of going out, I take a nice, long, warm shower and eat a bowl of cereal for brunch, and then I sit on the couch with my laptop to surf the Internet aimlessly.

I just have to sigh to myself. It’s perfect.

In fact, I’m feeling so generous that I open up Facenook and log in, just curiously checking out and laughing at the things that my “friends” are doing on such a waste of a day. Some folks from high school take family pictures with their stupid kids, my weird uncle Paul posted a blog entry about the dangers of mass consumerism, and Carrie added a photo of Ezra with Santa. It’s worth a chuckle. Seeing these people get so caught up in their computers, posting pictures when they could be spending that time in real life, it’s funny.

Or maybe I’m laughing so that I can cover up the fact that so many of these people have it better than I do.

Before I can settle on an answer, a little ding erupts from the speaks of my laptop, making me jump just a tad, wondering why it happened. In the corner of my screen, a little window had popped up – somebody’s picture, accompanied by the message, “hey!”

I squint at the tiny photo, but then I realize that it’s Mercedes who sent the message.

Huh…nobody other than Carrie has ever messaged me on Facenook before. How do I greet someone who’s not family in a non-asshole way…?

I settle on, “Hey.”

It says she’s typing. Then, “how’s your christmas going?”

I shrug for some reason and then respond, “eh, boring, but I’m not complaining.”

“do you have guests over?” she asks. I have to laugh at that.

“nah, nobody wants to hang with me lol,” I type back.

“ahhh, I know that feeling. I’m just kinda sitting here,” she messages.

I’m not expecting her to want to come over or anything. Why the hell would anybody want to do that? “I’ve been doing that for years, I’m used to it,” I type.

For a few minutes neither of us say anything. I’m about to log off and just go back to watching music videos on TV when suddenly, the chat sound alarms again and Mercedes asks me, “wanna hang out? Idk if you have plans for today but idk I’m up for it if you are.”

It takes me a second to register what’s going on.

Somebody has literally just offered to hang out with me. Is nothing sacred? Am I actually going insane, or…? I have to be dreaming. I slap myself a few times to make sure I’m good and awake, but when I look back at the screen of my laptop, Mercedes’s message is still there.

And suddenly I realize that if she’s alone, she must be doing the same thing I’m doing – sitting on my laptop with the TV blaring, not a single plan for the next week of vacation. And if she’s recognizing my pathetic lack of a social life and reaching out so that neither of us end up spending a major holiday alone, there has to be a certain amount of effort there on her part.

I respect effort. I never had a friend at school want to hang out outside of class, and it’s common knowledge at this point that I still don’t have any friends, let alone any who would voluntarily choose to hang out with me. I’m just trying to figure out why she’s asking me of all people.

So I stare at my hands as I type, “yeah I got nothing going on. What did u have in mind?”

I can’t believe it. Social interaction. It’s…it’s happening to me.

“yay!! :D” she responds. “hey I heard that wild river place is open today. wanna go bowling?”

“uhh that sounds good,” I type. I’m…still not completely down with thinking this is all real, especially since it’s happening so quickly. Before I can even ask about details, she’s way ahead of me.

“I can drive, just lemme know where you live.” It says she’s typing again. “also I can use it as future reference for when I want to look through ur windows, haha jk.”

I can’t help just a little smile. “just make sure I’m not naked when u do it. I’m over at holly ridge apartments, room 104”

“sweet, I’ll just come over now if that’s ok with u,” she continues.

“yup that’s fine,” I respond.

She logs off and so do I, and as I close my laptop, I just have to think to myself for a moment. Did I seriously agree to interact with somebody outside of work? I can’t even remember the last time that’s happened, if at all.

Well…whatever.

By the time I pull on a jacket and zip it up after putting on some decent clothes, she’s parked outside of my building in her huge-ass SUV, getting out of it and checking something on her cell phone. I see her through my window, glancing at the corridors, the outdoor hallways that lead to the rooms, and eventually I decide against making her search all over for my room and I just walk out.

When she sees me, she’s all smiles and throws her hand out, saying, “There you are. I didn’t even know where to start looking.”

“It’s not that hard,” I tell her, looking back at the huge array of apartments behind us. Well, on second thought…

I stop in front of her, just kinda standing there without really knowing what to do or say, so I scratch the back of my head.

“C’mon, let’s go! I’m really good at bowling,” she laughs, motioning towards her car. “I’m gonna kick your ass, Doug. Just a warning.”

“What, do you bowl in your free time or something?” Her enthusiasm is a little much for my morning mindset, but I try not to sound too grouchy.

She opens the doors and we step in, buckling up, before she answers, “Not lately, but I used to be on a team a few years ago. I’ve been needing a confidence boost lately, so that’s why I suggested we go bowling.”

Okay, there’s the answer. “That’s why you invited me out, huh? So you can watch me fail even more than I already do?” I probably should’ve expected this.

She punches my shoulder, not enough to hurt, but enough to shake me a little bit. “No, I invited you out because I want to spend time with you.”

“You already do at school.”

“I mean outside of the whopping fifteen minutes we get to talk every other day,” she says matter-of-factly.

“I’m kind of annoying in large doses,” I tell her. I mean, Christ, I even annoy myself.

She rolls her eyes as we pull out onto the main road that heads to Wild River. “I do not think you are, so there.” She hits the gas pedal and we lurch forward, way over the speed limit. “Why’re you alone on Christmas, anyways?”

Time to be blunt and honest. “All my family’s either dead or far away, so I’m stuck here alone.”

She glances at me for a second, but then she looks back at the road, then back at me, then back at the road. “W-wait, are you serious?”

I nod, unable to keep myself from smirking like an asshole just a little bit.

“Oh my God, I’ve always thought you were kidding about that,” she laughs. “I am so sorry. Now I feel like such an idiot.”

“No, don’t apologize,” I tell her. (She probably doesn’t mean it anyway.) “Something like that sounds like I’m joking around, but it’s too depressing for me to lie about.”

The small smile on her face disappears and she just stares at the road in front of us. Her voice is low when she asks me, “Are you really alone here in Yuma? No family, nobody you know?”

“Yeah,” I answer. It doesn’t bother me so much. The other bus drivers have had the same reactions. “I moved out here since my cousin used to live here. Then he got hit by a bus.”

She looks at me like I’ve got the most warped sense of irony in my life. (I wouldn’t argue with that.) “That’s awful.”

I don’t want to talk about myself anymore. I think about that kind of shit enough as it is, so I turn the tables on her. “What about you? Why are you alone today?”

She rubs the back of her neck, playing with her dark and curly hair as she says, “Well, every few years I go to Puerto Rico to visit my family, but that didn’t happen this year.” She pauses. “I moved out here because of the teaching opportunity they gave me after I got out of college after I was in the Marines, since there’s an air station here. So I don’t have any friends out here, either, even though I’ve been living here since last November.”

“You were in the Marines?” It shouldn’t surprise me too badly; she could probably knock me out with one punch to the gut. I wonder how strict she is with her students.

“Right up until I turned twenty-five, then I opted out so I could go to college to be a teacher,” she narrates. “Funny enough, that’s when I divorced my ex-husband, right when I came back.” She laughs when she says it, so I try to smile too, but I’m just kind of confused. So the brats on the bus were right about her being divorced, though why laugh about it?

“That sucks.” That’s the best I can do as far as sympathy goes.

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have been screwing around in bars while I was in Japan,” she snips, not at me, and there’s an air of hurt in her voice. “Never mind, you don’t want to hear about that crap. I don’t get to bitch about him too often.”

When I glance at her, she looks less tense. “That’s fine, we all need to bitch every so often.”

“It’s just that I’ve been kinda stranded here and it sucks to not really have an outlet, especially since I’m thirty years old and I’m already having a midlife crisis,” she goes on, her head tilted as she turns us onto a side street. “I don’t know. I guess I thought being a new teacher would help me make friends, but it’s not so easy. I swore to myself I wouldn’t end up alone on Christmas, that I would at least make one friend by that point.”

I have to blink and take it in before realizing what she’s saying. “Are you calling me a friend?”

She laughs, probably at my dumb phrasing, and then she says, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think we’re friends.”

I can’t argue with her without looking like an idiot and a dick, so I nod along and stare out the window for a little while. Maybe she’s right. I mean, she’s the first person I’ve spent Christmas with since I was living with my aunt Sandy and Carrie.

But in all seriousness, what are the odds that I’ve made enough of an impact on somebody to make them want to call me a friend? I’ve known Mercedes for a few months, tops. She added me on Facenook a few days after we met for the second time. She doesn’t even have my phone number and I don’t have hers. I don’t know anything about her other than what she just told me, and she knows all she needs to know about me.

Making friends sure as hell isn’t a cut-and-dry sort of deal, if I’ve learned anything from movies or books. So how do you even tell if somebody’s your buddy? God knows I don’t have the experience to know that shit.

I look back at her, driving so effortlessly, and her hands aren’t gripping the steering wheel as hard as they used to be. She’s even sort of grinning. It’s barely there, but it exists.