I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the cool glass of the window. Bus smell, as I’ve come to call it, reached my nose. Usually, it filled me with anticipation. Right now, it reminded me I no longer had a home.
And we hit another pothole.
“Ow,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead.
Pulled out of my pity party, I noticed that almost everyone around me was sleeping, and I was grateful for the quiet.
After all, ‘woe is me’ is a party for one. Extra guests ruin it with their optimism.
I didn’t want optimism. I wanted to wallow.
Wary of hard surfaces, I leaned my head back against the seat, ready to let the melancholy wash over me. Only my brain got overexcited and gave Wallowing a party horn. How could I reflect on what I lost when all I could hear was: “Everything sucks.”
Nope. I wanted to sink into grief, not despair.
Eager for a distraction, I grabbed the black plastic headphones and connected them to the Discman. I scanned the pages of my CD case; the crinkle of its vinyl sleeves was a welcome break from the voice in my head.
En Vogue…Mariah Carey…Paula Abdul. I stopped. That’s the one. As the disc spun, I pressed next until I hit track 3. The syncopated punch of Opposites Attract knocked me straight back to eight years old, to my favorite backyard, where the jungle gym’s paint turns your hands blue with every swing on the monkey bars.
“NO! You go that way, and I go this way!” my best friend squeals.
“But the song says, two steps forward and two steps back. You go here.” I jab my finger toward the front of the patio. “And I go here,” I huff as I jump toward the worn red brick wall of the house.
“Fine, but when she says opposites attract, we should run together and meet in the middle.”
“Yes! Let’s try it again.”
She runs to her starting spot, and I run to the boombox. “Ready?”
“Ready!”
I hit play and rush to my place. We go through our moves, and at the right time, we run together…and crash.
Heads bang, bodies bounce backward, and we land on the ground.
“I didn’t mean we run into each other!” my friend yells, rubbing her wrist.
Mom pokes her head out of the creaky screen door. “Everyone okay?”
She looks down at our scraped hands and frizzy, sweat-soaked hair.
I shrug. “We’re just practicing our dance.”
Before we could fix any dangerous choreography, the song ended, and the player whirred. I planted both feet on the ground, letting the bus’s vibrations reorient me. After a beat of silence, Cold Hearted began.
Suddenly, I’m ten. Squished in the backseat of the car, my knees are too high from the mountain of toys and puzzle books at my feet. I glare at it. “Like that’s gonna make moving any better.”
“Honey, you’ll love this new place. Your school is around the corner, and think of all the new friends…” Mom says for the hundredth time.
I still don’t want to hear it. Instead, I turn up the volume to drown her out, but nod along so she won’t realize it. I could recite her words as well as the lyrics of this song — and the song is better.
As I watch her mouth move, I decide to imagine it’s her voice instead of Paula Abdul’s. So it makes perfect sense when she points at me right as Paula hits Girl, don’t play the fool. For a moment, I forget what she’s really talking about and giggle.
She’s a cold-hearted snake…
A pang in my chest pulled me out of the memory.
“Yeah, that’s enough,” I thought, pressing stop.
I flipped through my case. Then flipped through it again. A lump in my throat made me skip past what I really wanted to listen to, but the tug in my gut made me go back.
My fingers traced the handwritten graffiti-style letters spiraling across the mirrored surface of the CD, a map of the people I’d left behind.
As I closed the lid and pressed play, I felt the echo of the ink’s ridges rippling across my skin.
The music etched on the other side reverberated in my ears.
The friends in that band? They’ll be just as hard to erase as Sharpie and plastic.
Turning back toward the window, I brushed away tears with the back of my hand and scoffed. I must’ve been the first person ever to cry over ska-punk music.
My hand found the multicolored beaded bracelet on my wrist, and I began spinning it around and around — like the CD, like the thoughts in my head, like the wheels on the bus.
And there went Wallowing’s party horn again.
I threw the headphones onto my lap.
If only quieting my mind were as easy as the music. If only controlling my life were as easy as
picking a song.
Instead, I’m living in nomadic irony — real irony, not Alanis irony. When the teen tour started, I had a home, but the minute I boarded this bus, I became untethered. Six weeks traveling to new places, and at the end, I’m off to another I barely know. Permanently.
Some might argue that, once I lived somewhere, I was no longer a nomad. I strongly disagree.
Heart thumping, I looked up, hoping anyone was awake to talk about anything else.
Hey now, hey now, hear what I say now. Happiness is just around the corner.
The bus shook with fifty teenagers jumping in their seats, hands in the air.
The Vengabus is coming. And everybody’s jumping. New York to San Francisco, an intercity disco.
I blinked slowly, then let out an incredulous laugh. The pounding wasn’t my heart. It was the music’s bass. Had I really missed everyone, including The Venga Boys, singing at top volume?
The bouncing CD case on my lap pulled at my attention, but for the moment, the joy on the bus sent ripples through my pity party.
I still didn’t want anyone’s optimism, but technopop was just music, right?
This was written by our contributing writer, Lauren Reisner.
Image Source: Unsplash, Alexander Ugolkov
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