The Blue-Haired Boy (2 page)

PANAMA
City is expensive. I don’t have a hundred and forty dollars, one way, so I fork over fifty-one dollars for a round trip ticket to what I’m sure is the finest vending machine in Huntsville, Alabama.

I’m not leaving town; I’m taking a break. It’s all I can afford, monetarily and emotionally.

Gerry sticks her head halfway through the front door of the station. “Hey, Nods-a-Lot”—she waves at me—“I’m saving us a seat.”

“Be right there,” I say.

The man behind the counter takes my money, but reluctantly hands over the ticket to Huntsville. His eyes flick toward the door. “Nothing good ever happens on a bus,” he warns.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, hoping that’s not their
business slogan.

Rolling my ticket into a half circle, I exhale a cloud of questions. This is the part where I should change my mind about going. One, this is a waste of fifty or sixty bucks, which is practically a million in my world. Two, if Dad finds out, he’ll go ballistic. And three, as previously established, this is crazy.

But God, I need this. I know that I do.

So, even though spontaneity is not part of my personality, I am going to get on that damn bus.

And I do.

Dad can’t control everything.

Gerry waves at me when I board. I make my way to the back of the bus, past all the people who asked for a light and a quarter. The smell in this hallway-size space is an uncomfortable, contained version of the station, plus some additional toilet fumes. I’m glad I couldn’t afford Panama City.

When I reach Gerry, she shuffles her backpack and stuffed bear out of my seat to the floor and says, “Here you are.”

“Yeah,” I say, and drop into the blue captain’s seat beside her.

She turns sideways (in the space I can barely fit both knees), pulls one leg under her, and leans against the bus window.

Nervously, I swipe my hair across my forehead, knowing it will fall back and cover my face. “Yeah,” I repeat, because Gerry is comfortable with staring.

While my eyes dart from the seat back in front of me to her, and then again, to the seat back, she asks, “You do this a
lot? Follow girls onto buses?”

“No,” I say.

“Well . . . I’m not an ax murderer, so you’re in good shape.”

“I know that,” I say.

“No”—her blue eyes intensify—“you don’t.”

“Then, I guess you’ve got between here and Huntsville to kill me,” I say.

I can joke about this, because I’m feeling a magical connection between us. It doesn’t make sense, but I know Gerry’s as harmless as the stuffed bear beside her bag.

“Why not come all the way to Panama with me?” she asks.

“School on Monday. And I can’t afford to go any farther.” The bus rolls out of the parking lot. There’s movement beneath me. Wheels on pavement. Announcements about travel time to Huntsville. “But I’m on the bus,” I say, still a bit shocked at this simple truth.

“With me.” She gives a little squeal of delight and then leans toward me and says, “The last guy who sat there filled jelly doughnuts for a living. Can you imagine? And get this, he was thin as a rail and allergic to sugar. What about you, Bodee My-Same-Last-Name, what do you do?”

She doubles her staring power.

“Um,” I stall. “I go to school.”

There’s no way I can tuck my legs under me, but I swivel to face her. She has six earrings in her right ear, which look like a row of bridesmaids to a diamond-stud bride. There is also a tiny sparkle stud on her nose beside a scratch she received from
the face-plant.

Gerry breaks eye contact and says, “I loved school.”

Makes sense. So far, I can’t imagine Gerry hating anything.

“Any reason in particular?” I ask.

She thinks about this for a minute and then says, “I got to see my friends.”

“And now you don’t?” I ask.

“College.”

It’s April. Why isn’t she in college right now? I think most schools go through May. But what do I know about college?

“So . . . you’re just on a bus,” I say.

“So are you.” She looks around suspiciously. “And so are all of these people.”

I don’t respond. Which is one of those things I can do because silence, unlike staring, doesn’t bother me.

Finally, Gerry says, “Will your parents be pissed?”

Now I mimic her earlier action, scanning the bus. “Not unless they’re on here.”

“Seriously.” She giggles and shoves me. “Are you going to get in trouble for this?”

“If my dad finds out.”

She reaches down to the knee of my jeans and rips one of the threads away. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Nope.”

Gerry leans back against the window, closes her eyes, and says, “You have bruises. I saw them when you helped me up.”

And there it is, out in the open just like that. Gerry can call
it what it is, but I’m still not ready.

“Listen, Bodee-Bus-Station-Boy.” She opens her eyes again. “You can say whatever you want to me because you’ll never see me again. If you want to talk to someone, that is. You can call me your perfect stranger.”

Maybe it’s the
boy
that does it, or that she knows I need a safe zone, but I tell her five words without thinking. “O-kay, my dad beats us.”

Never, ever, plus an infinity of never evers, have I said that before.

To anyone.

Circa eighth grade:

The kid beside me in English class (after we read
Oedipus Rex
and had to discuss themes): Any dad who tried to kill his kid had it coming. Right, Bodee?

Me: Don’t know. Can’t even imagine that.

Circa freshman year:

Girl in my youth group: Sometimes I feel like my parents don’t understand me. What do you think, Bodee?

Me: My parents are great.

Circa last summer:

Lady at the burger joint: That’s a nasty bruise on your arm.

Me: Baseball.

The magic in lying is that people stop asking.

But I’ve just given the truth to Gerry without history or trust. And telling the truth feels like running off a cliff and hoping I can fly. Maybe this is my brave thing.

“Jesus, Bodee,” Gerry says. “Now I know you’re a real Lennox.”

“A real Lennox?”

“There’s a curse,” she says matter-of-factly.

I should freak out that Gerry—who is 100 percent stranger and 129 percent girl—has her hand on my leg, but I don’t. My normal fear of girls doesn’t seem to exist with her. Besides, the fact that I’ve just told her something I’ve never told anyone in my whole life is kind of a bigger deal than that right now.

“You’re staring at me,” she says.

“You’re touching me,” I say back.

“You touched me first.”

“No, I didn’t,” I argue.

She gives me a whiplash nod. “At the bus sta—” Stopping midsentence, she turns around to the window and begins to wave. “I almost forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I ask.

“To wave good-bye.”

“To who?”

“Whom,” she corrects, and then says, still waving, “To the city of Rickman, Tennessee.”

I wave, too. “This a tradition?” I ask.

“Yeah. I figure there’s a bunch of times in life you don’t know you’re saying bye for the last time. So I don’t take chances anymore.”

There are ghosts in her words.

When we’re done waving (no one waves back), Gerry
returns to picking at my jeans. I don’t stop her because she’s so focused on the task that I can almost see the little lab rats working in her brain. She’s the kind of girl who’d name the lab rats. (Tim. Tad. Todd. Trey. And Troy.) And I’m the kind of guy who’d remember their names.

With Rickman behind me for once in my life, I take a breath that feels as if it comes all the way from my toes. “Tell me about this Lennox curse,” I say.

“Oh, it’s totally shit, but totally true. Every Lennox I’ve ever met has been screwed to the wall. At least, that’s what Lewis used to say about us.”

I don’t ask who Lewis is. Maybe an ex-boyfriend. Maybe a brother. “How many have you met?”

“Counting the parentals and . . .” She takes a deep breath and points to herself.

I nod.

She stops pulling on threads and looks up. “Just you.”

“You’re basing a theory on four people?”

“Technically, six. Unless you have siblings,” she says. “And six is enough for Olympic volleyball.”

“That’s your rationale.”

She nods.

“Let’s play Two Truths and a Lie,” she says before I can ask more about the curse.

“We have three hours and that’s your go-to?” I ask.

I know the game. We played once at school. It’s one of those god-awful get-to-know-you games where someone says
three things, but one of them is false. When we played in class, I lied about all three: I like football, I like chess, I like reality TV. Hate football. Never played chess. Don’t have a TV. The class picked reality TV, and I grinned as if they knew me so well and sat down.

“What do
you
want to do?” she whispers.

I’m uneasy about the whisper until I realize all the people around us are asleep. Like snoring-asleep, which seems awfully trusting of them. I mean, what if we are ax murderers? They’d all die with cups of terrible coffee between their thighs and crumbs on their faces.

“You could tell me why you’re on the bus,” I say.

“Three reasons.” She makes her fingers dance against each other as she thinks. Then, it all comes out in one short burst of a run-on sentence. “Someone told me the world is made for exploring slowly, the guy I was dating said I got him pregnant, and . . . my girlfriend, who died, always wanted to ride cross-country on a bus. She can’t do it, but I can.”

Sadness is a quick emotion. I feel it all over my body when she lists her last truth.

“So what did your boyfriend name the baby?” I ask, since humor has some speed, too.

We both laugh.

“Thanks for not judging me,” she says.

“Why would I?”

Rather than answer, she slaps a kiss on her palm and pops me on the forehead. It’s a burst of affection that startles and
stays with me through the silence that follows.

When we’ve both lived in her exposed truth (an exchange for
my dad beats us
) long enough, she says, “You know,
Mr. Lennox
, you’re the best seatmate I’ve had.”

“Well, Ms. Lennox, right back at you.”

She absently strokes the stuffed animal resting on her bag and says, “I wasn’t expecting this today.”

“You can say that again.”

But she doesn’t. Instead she asks, “Why does peace play hide-and-seek with us?”

“I don’t know, but my mom says peace doesn’t hide from us; we hide from it. She says there’s a way to be content no matter what.”

Gerry examines me as if the key to peace is beneath my skin. Finally, she asks, “Do you believe her?”

“I didn’t used to,” I say.

“What changed?”

“I got on the bus today.”

GERRY
lets twenty-five miles of interstate go by before she removes a stack of postcards from her backpack and says, “Here are the rules. You write one per destination. It has to go to someone who needs it.”

“But what if there’s no one?”

“Bullshit,” she says. “There’s always someone.”

“Trust me, there’s not,” I argue. Mom. Ben. Another name slides on and off the edge of my mind. Alexi Littrell. But that is not happening.

“Well, rack that pretty brain of yours, or I’ll make your boring ass go sit by Mr. Durengo, the bus driver. P.S., he smells like cigarettes and onions.”

I glance toward the front of the bus, but Mr. Durengo isn’t visible from behind his safety barrier. “You know his name?”

“Not actually,” she says with a smirk. “Do you always ask this many questions? I’ve known you an hour, and I just want to shake you. I live in statements, not questions.
Tell
me something, honey.”

I don’t tell Gerry that I usually can’t even get questions to come out of my mouth. That right now I’m pretty much as off script as I’ve ever been.

“Now, the postcards,” she says. “You simply have to do them. That’s the rule.” Fanning out the pile of cards as if she is the magician and I am her volunteer, she has me pick one from the deck.

Who are you writing to? How many of these have you written? What if I really don’t have anyone to send this to?
These are all questions I want to ask, but don’t. Instead, I take a blue postcard with puppies on it from the middle of the stack and say, “I’ll come up with something.”

“That’s the spirit. I only have one pen, so we’ll have to share.”

The bus messes with Gerry’s handwriting, but I can read the words she writes.

She stops. Curious. “Why
did
you follow me onto the bus?”

“That’s a question,” I point out.

Her eyes narrow, and her mouth twists in mock frustration. She waits on my answer.

“I had to,” is the only one I have.

. . .
because he had to
, she writes.

“You know, you really need to get a better story. My dead girlfriend likes things exciting. You followed me onto the bus because . . . there was a tiger chasing you or you heard there was a killer circus in Huntsville, and you thought what the hell, I like elephants. Or you followed me onto the bus because you’re doing a scientific experiment on the sanitarity of buses.”

“Sanitarity’s not a word.”

“It is now. I need a reason, Bodee Lennox, and I need it pronto,” Gerry says.

“Okay. I followed you onto the bus because . . .”

“Please don’t say you believe in love at first sight, because as you can see . . . I believe in love after death.” She taps the postcard a few times.

“I’ve never been in love with anyone.”

“Bullshit,” she says again. “The bus? Your reason,” she demands.

I spit out, “Because I need something you have.”

Gerry chews the end of the pen. “I can’t tell Lewis that. She’ll know it’s not true.”

It
is
true, but I say, “Okay, tell her it’s because you smiled at me.” Also true.

Gerry scribbles down my answer, nodding the entire time. “She’ll believe that. According to her, I have a smile the size of
Alaska.”

There’s a happy memory on her face. I imagine she’s recalling a particular time Lewis gifted her with these words. I give her privacy for the rest of her postcard and wonder what I will write when she forces me to take a turn with the pen.

Gerry kisses the bottom of the postcard and announces, “All done. Your turn.”

I’m ready for this.

“Who is Ben?”

“My brother.”

“Have I taught you nothing?” she complains. “Postcards are for lovers.”

“I don’t have any lovers.”

“And why in the name of the pope not?”

“Question,” I say.

“I have hair the color of a Florida golf course, and my girlfriend is dead.
I
get to ask questions,” Gerry says.

I exhale. “Okay, I don’t have any lovers because I don’t talk.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “Try again.”

I’m catching on that every time Gerry says
bullshit
, she puts her pointer finger to my heart. And usually she’s right.

“I’ll tell you why if you tell me about your hair,” I say.

“What do you want to know?” She twists a green lock around her finger.

I don’t fire back with sarcasm, even though it’s on the tip of my tongue. “About the color.”

“This, my blond-haired friend, is genuine Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid.”

“The kids’ drink?”

“Gerry and Lewis’s favorite kid drink, to be exact.”

What happened to Lewis?
My brain screams the question, but it’s one I won’t ask. If Gerry wants me to know, she’ll tell me.

“You really love her,” I say. And I choose not to say
loved
. Because while I don’t have a lover, I understand that love wouldn’t care about dead or alive.

Gerry takes a deep breath. Then she surprises me and flips the tables. “
You
love someone. And they love you. It’s in your eyes.”

I sigh. “Probably my mom.”

“That’s refreshing. Lewis’s mom hated her.” She unties both her boots and reties them—a nervous habit. “Now, the Kool-Aid.”

Gerry tilts her head this way and that, examining me. Without warning—Gerry seems to do everything without warning—she grips my head like a soccer ball, and then runs both hands through the three-to-four inches of the mess I call hair. “You know, you would look amazing with some Berry Blue.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I say.

“Yes, you would,” she says. She leans over the seat and taps
the man beside us on the shoulder. He’s asleep, but she’s willing to wait as he rouses himself. “Excuse me, sir. Do you think my friend would look good with blue hair?” she asks.

“Yeah, fine,” he says, without looking, and resituates himself in his chair.

“See, Sleepy Pants agrees with me.”

“I hardly think”—I lower my voice—“Sleepy Pants is the authority on Berry Blue.” As far as I can tell, he hasn’t cut his hair in twenty years.

“Then I’ll be the authority,” she says. “What would your mom say?”

“That it’s only hair.”

“Jesus, she’s right. I should have that tattooed across my forehead,” Gerry says. “You want to do it now?”

“Here?”

“No. There.” She points to the bus’s one-seater bathroom.

Now, this is another of those moments I should think about longer than I do, but Gerry’s a witch—a bona-fide spell caster—who makes me want to be brave and do things I’d never do. Because I look right at her and say, “You have the stuff with you?”

“Ooh,” she squeals. Sleepy Pants gives us death eyes, but Gerry’s already dragging me from my seat and toward the bathroom door, three packages of Berry Blue in her hand.

Two people do not fit here, I think, once she closes the door and turns the little latch that says
OCCUPIED
. If either of us had eaten today, we’d be out the door. I’m a dude, but even I
have reservations when she closes the toilet seat and shoves me down onto it. I also have reservations about God’s decision to give humans a nose. Totally not necessary right now.

“We have time to do this?” I ask.

“’Course. These buses are slower than Lewis’s grandma.” Her hands are in my hair again, and I close my eyes at this intimacy. It’s not sexual at all, but it is something. I’ve needed a friend for a long time, and I didn’t realize how badly until Gerry fell off the bus, and I, for better or worse, fell on after her.

“Hey,” I say, trying to find some words that go with this crazy, swirling emotion. “You know how you work a puzzle, and then you get to the end, and there’s a piece missing, and you look everywhere for it, and can’t find it, and so eventually you give up and put everything back in the box, and maybe even throw the puzzle away? But then, like a year later, you find the piece under a couch cushion?”

“You talk in run-on sentences,” she says.

“I think you’re one of those lost pieces,” I say.

From her smile, she knows this is a compliment.

“What I’m trying to say is . . . not only do I not talk . . . I don’t have any friends,” I whisper.

Her automatic “Bullshit” happens as expected.

“No. It’s not.”

And something in my voice must tell her I’m serious, because she releases my hair and drops onto my lap. She gives me the
is this okay?
look, and when I nod, her two arms feel
like a spider’s eight, and they wrap me up in the most genuine hug of my life. “Listen, Lennox”—her voice is at the back of my head—“from everything you’ve said, you have a mom who loves you. Sometimes that’s enough.”

Tears have a sound. They slide down a face in silence, but the quiver they put in a voice is unmistakable. And Gerry’s voice screams of tears.

I don’t know what to say now. So I choose to hold her back as if I, too, have eight arms and a thousand souls. Beneath us, the road hums and bumps us against each other, but neither of us lets go. We rattle around this tiny gray, plastic world like a two-body pinball.

Finally, Gerry leans back to look at me. “You’re maybe . . . the perfect guy. If only I were straight.”

Straight or not, I am the least perfect guy. She stops me from shaking my head. Physically stops me.

“No. I mean it,” she says. “You are a guy who gets on buses to figure things out. You listen more than you talk. You . . . you hold on to broken girls after everyone else lets go.” She flares her nostrils and adds, “In a bus bathroom. That says something about you. And I think someday that’s going to make all the difference.”

“To me or to someone else?” I ask.

Gerry smiles. “Both.”