3. Short guy in black acid-wash jeans and a Pearl Jam tour shirt who either is growing out a Mohawk or just has a very strange haircut
4. Almost-old woman with big glasses, yellowish-gold hair, fake leather purse, and pale blue pants made out of a material Darren is unfamiliar with
5. Tall young guy with his hand in the pockets of his shiny Detroit Tigers jacket, with a pair of big headphones covering his ears and listening to music so loud, Darren can almost identify the song
6. Short Hispanic guy (even shorter than the Pearl Jam guy) who has a sort of kind, round face, except for the pale finger-length scar running from his jaw to his forehead
7. Nearly pretty woman in her forties (maybe fifties) with dyed light brown wavy hair that is growing out noticeably and who appears responsible for
8. Much older and absolutely not pretty woman who actually looks like an angry duck and who’s clutching a small paper bag tightly with both hands
1 Justification Darren Would Give for Sitting in the Upper Deck of the Bus, Which He Didn’t Even Know the Bus Was Going to Have and Which Makes Him Feel Like That Much More of a Total Stud
1. Duh.
6 Features of Darren’s Seat That Could Be Improved and in Fact Should Be Addressed by the Good People at Superbus
1. It doesn’t go back.
2. The armrests are so narrow that you can’t really distribute your arm weight over them properly, meaning that the armrests actually seem to press pretty hard into your forearm.
3. The angle of the seat cushion and the seat back is more acute than it should be, even if it’s technically obtuse and not acute.
4. The seat seems too narrow, almost like it’s squeezing Darren from the sides.
5. There isn’t that movable footrest thing attached to the seat in front of him that Darren remembers liking on a bus in New York once.
6. There is clearly a broken spring or random piece of metal sticking out a little right around the height of his shoulder blade on the left side, and he’d move, only he wants to sit next to the window.
17 Conclusions Darren Reaches by the Time the Bus Pulls onto the Highway Twelve Minutes Later
1. Cities are ugly.
2. People who ride buses are overall less fortunate than people who don’t.
3. This seat is super uncomfortable.
4. I shouldn’t have sat so close to the front window, because it’s a little scary sitting so close to it without a driver in between, since without a driver you sort of feel like you’re responsible for the bus, or at least the top half of it.
5. It doesn’t really make sense that there are this many cars and trucks on this highway pretty much all the time.
6. The bus smells a little like sour milk and a lot like not very good vegetable soup.
7. My parents are going to be extremely upset by this, but it isn’t my fault they got divorced or that Dad is gay and just decided to tell me yesterday out of nowhere, so they shouldn’t get that upset.
8. The guy sitting at the other end of the aisle must think I can’t see him picking his nose, but at least he’s not eating it.
9. In terms of how Dad is going to find out what I’m doing, I can either text him, call him, ask Nate to do either of them, or just wait for Dad to get to North High, which will pretty soon lead to Dad calling me. It might not be a bad idea to not have it be the last one. Or the one involving Nate.
10. If these seats were more comfortable and it was sunny and we were out in Colorado or Montana or somewhere prettier and I weren’t almost running away, it would be kind of fun to take a trip on a bus like this, though obviously it would be more fun to take a trip like that in a car, which is something I’d like to do someday, preferably with a girlfriend, maybe even Zoey, because at least she drives really well, even if she probably isn’t the kind of person who would want to take a road trip out west, but maybe she is, who knows. Maybe all she needs to not be so weird is a boyfriend who would want to take a road trip with her out west.
11. I could just call Nate and ask him to decide how Dad should find out, but for some reason that doesn’t seem like the best idea in this case. Mom, even though she’s going to be mad, might actually be the one to call.
12. If you eat your boogers near the front of a bus, you must not care what anyone thinks about you.
13. I’ll get drunk with Nate if Nate offers to get me drunk, but I won’t suggest it myself.
14. When I’m older my life better be better than it is now.
15. I’ll eat lunch once we get to Indiana.
16. Maggie probably isn’t a bitch, even though I wish she was.
17. It’s very unlikely anything all that bad would have happened if I put my hand on Zoey’s hand when she put it on the stick shift back at Union Station. Maybe then I could have asked her about all that writing on it too.
4 Pointless Phrases Spoken by Darren After His Mom Answers before the Second Ring, Which He Wasn’t Expecting Her to Do at All
1. Nothing much
2. It’s all right
3. Yeah, sure
4. You know, whatever
6 Considerably More Pointed Phrases Spoken by Darren’s Mom Once He Spills the Beans, Which He Only Does After She Asks Him, “What’s All That Noise in the Background?”
1. You what?!
2. Oh, Darren.
3. Your father is going to be extremely upset, you do realize that.
4. And Nate helped you, didn’t he? He probably encouraged you.
5. This is really unbelievable.
6. Just unbelievable.
9 Arguably Childish Accusations Darren Finds Himself on Occasion (Such as, Uh, Right Now) Wanting to Hurl at His Mom
1. You think you’re so perfect or whatever, but you’re not.
2. You think you understand me, but you totally don’t.
3. Computers are stupid, when you get right down to it.
4. And so is California.
5. You’re mean.
6. Dad killed the cats because of you, and you still made him get a divorce, and that was before he was even officially gay.
7. It’s not my problem you guys have so many problems.
8. You always think you get to decide how everything’s going to be, but now I get to decide. I do.
9. You’re always bossy. You are. Just admit it.
1 Two-Word Phrase That His Mom Has of Course Used a Lot for Years and That Has Evolved Considerably during the Past Eighteen Months and That Recently Darren Really Hates to Hear Her Say, Because She Now Tends to Say It with Contempt, Impatience, Bitterness, and/or Disbelief, Except for When She Says It Just Now, Because Now It Almost Seems Like She Still Loves His Dad, or at Least Can Still Feel Bad for Him When Someone, like Darren, for Instance, Does Something Really Lame and Inconsiderate to Him, Such as, for Example, Ditching Him and Going to Ann Arbor by Himself
1. Your father
2 Possible Sources of Courage That Allow Darren Not Only to Persuade His Mom Not to Drop Everything Right Now and Get on the Next Plane to Detroit, but Also to Say, and Pretty Firmly at That, “I Want to Visit Nate Alone; I Don’t Want You or Dad to Come, Okay?”
1. Her tone is kind of all over the place during the conversation. Anger, disappointment, bewilderment, but then some guilt, too. Which sort of makes sense since, had the family not broken apart, it seems much less likely that things would have gotten to the point that Darren would be skipping school and taking a bus by himself to Ann Arbor. And so who’s to blame for the family breaking apart and things getting to this point? Not Darren, that’s for damn sure. He didn’t ask for his mom to go to California twice a month, or for his parents to split up, or for his dad to be gay. Okay, so maybe that last one makes it his dad’s fault, but it wasn’t like his mom exactly stepped in to make that any easier to hear. And Darren didn’t even ask Maggie to suddenly kiss him yesterday, not that his mom or dad can be blamed for that, either.
2. The bus started picking up speed as it finally left Chicago behind.
And then, a couple of miles later, just around the time his mom started talking about flying out there, it went over that bridge that, when you’re traveling on it in the other direction, comes right after the sign that says WELCOME TO CHICAGO with the name of the current mayor below it. It’s a pretty ugly bridge, just a lot of steel girders, not one of those cool suspension bridges, but for some reason this part of the highway itself arches way up in the air at a pretty steep angle, which nearly makes up for the lameness of the bridge itself, because it almost turns the bridge into a ramp, like you should be able to blast off into the air when you get to its highest point, which feels like it’s got to be two or three hundred feet up in the air. And so the speed, and the bridge/ramp, and the going up, plus Darren sitting right near the front of the upper deck of the bus, feeling a little bit, or deciding to try to feel a little bit, like the bus is an extension of him, even if it’s a smelly bus filled with losers—this made him feel like he might be able to do all sorts of things he couldn’t normally do.
5 Stages of an Exercise in Imagining His Future, Which Darren Undertakes After Talking with His Mom, but Before Calling His Dad like He Promised
1. He’ll take a gap year after high school and go on some program far, far away, in like Bolivia or Kenya or even Mongolia, where you dig ditches for some village that is getting running water for the first time. The food will be totally awful and he’ll be pretty lonely most of the time, but Darren will lose a bunch of weight and get super tan and somehow learn to handle just about anything, so that when he comes back to go to college he’ll almost be brand-new and not such a total wuss all the time.
2. By then his mom will have officially moved to California and arranged for him to have residency there too, something that will allow him to get into Berkeley or UCLA, schools he probably wouldn’t be able to get into otherwise.
3. He’ll join or even help form a band that will get pretty big around campus, so big that they’ll tour one summer up and down the West Coast and open up a couple times for some indie group that everyone’s crazy about. Maybe they’ll even get a record contract or tour in Europe the next summer.
4. It’ll take a while, but he’ll eventually find a major that’s totally perfect for him, psychology or art history or architecture, who knows, and there will be this one professor that gets super into him without making a big deal about it, and he’ll come to graduation, where he’ll shake Darren’s hand really warmly and hand him a book on Freud or Van Gogh or Frank Lloyd Wright in which he wrote some extremely kind note, something like: To a wonderful student, the future is yours!
5. He’ll go to Chicago for a few weeks near the end of the summer after graduation to visit Nate (who is living in the city, where he and a friend opened a successful café/bar that has live music at night) and his dad (who is living with Gary, who is actually pretty cool, plus somehow the whole gay thing somehow miraculously stopped mattering so much after Darren went to Mongolia, not that he hung out with tons of gay people in Mongolia or anything). His first night there he’ll be drinking a beer at Nate’s café/bar, and Zoey will walk in.
It will take him a moment to recognize her, because she let her hair (which is now natural light brown instead of dyed almost black) grow out, plus she is dressed totally different (just these really cool jeans and this funky, sort of loose tank top, which lets everyone see the sentence tattooed just below the nape of her neck that says in a perfectly half-elegant, half-casual handwritten font, Love saves the day), not to mention she took out the piercings over her eye and around her lip, but kept the one in her nose, where she now wears a thin silver ring that looks kind of sophisticated and bold at the same time.
She’ll join him at the bar, and they’ll catch up but also just sit there in silence a lot, both sensing how the two of them and this night of theirs are sort of gradually peeling away from the rest of the city here on a Thursday near the end of the summer. Once the band starts, they’ll check out a few songs (after all, that is why Zoey came to the bar in the first place), until right at the end of the third song they’ll both turn to each other and say, almost at the exact same instant, “Hey, do you want—” and neither of them will even have to finish the question.
They’ll slowly wander around the neighborhood for a while, catching up, checking out the cool houses, sniffing the occasional wildflower, feeling like almost actual adults, until suddenly they’re making out on a picnic table in a small park. They were both sitting on top of it, talking and looking out into the night sky dotted with silent planes. He made a little joke and they started laughing, something that for some reason compelled them to turn their heads toward each other and kiss.
Meaning they’ll have this intense fling the rest of the time he’s in Chicago, so he’ll pretty much not see Nate or his dad and Gary. They’ll barely sleep, falling totally in love, the way you can fall totally in love with the help of Chicago near the end of the summer, the whole thing so intense and steadily spontaneous that a couple weeks will go by before the future resurfaces as a thing the two of them might want to think about.
And so it isn’t until the last three or four days that he and Zoey will start trying to figure out how to not just have to say good-bye to each other when he leaves, because he’s already been accepted to a Master’s program in architecture in L.A., not to mention she’s moving to New York in late September because she got this amazing job at an art gallery, so there’s just nothing either of them can do right now, which somehow makes those last three or four days the craziest of all, no sleep, long talks, plus, of course, marathon lovemaking (not sex, lovemaking) sessions that seem to take place halfway to another planet.
When they hug good-bye at the airport (she drives him there, of course), Zoey totally breaks down, burying her face in his chest and half-soaking his shirt, and for a while, maybe because he’s completely exhausted, he feels sad but not like he’s going to lose it, until she gives him this kiss with lips that are cold and wet from her tears, and that does it, meaning he cries a little too, maybe even more than a little, but still, the whole good-bye almost feels great, even though it hurts like hell most of all.
4 Terms of a Possibly Lopsided and Partially Conditional Quid Pro Quo Darren Agrees To Near the End of a Pretty Short Conversation with His Dad
1. Darren will be allowed to visit Nate by himself.
2. Darren will not do this kind of thing again. Ever.
3. His dad may come to Ann Arbor on Sunday morning to see Nate for a bit and return Darren to Chicago, though this doesn’t need to be decided yet.
4. Darren and his dad will commit to finding ways to have difficult conversations, as there are clearly a number of difficult conversations the two of them ought to have.
3 Parts of His Lunch That Darren Starts Eating Quickly Once He Thinks the Conversation Is Over, Only Then He Suddenly Finds Himself Asking His Dad Another Question
1. CHEESE AND MUSTARD SANDWICH ON WHEAT
In fact, Darren had already said “Bye” to him, but then this came out:
“When did you know?”
“When did I know?” his dad asks, maybe confused.
“Yeah, you know. When did you know? About . . .”
“Well,” his dad says, and then doesn’t say anything for a while. Darren doesn’t say anything either, just chews. “I knew many years ago—”
“How many?”
“—but then, then I thought perhaps I didn’t know. Then I did again, then I didn’t.”
Darren swallows a large bite with some difficulty. “What?”
“Because I didn’t want to know.”
“Huh?”
“Until about two years ago. Then I knew again. And this time I knew that I knew, whether I wanted to know or not.”
“Oh.”
“Though I still didn’t know when to tell your mother. Or you and your brother. Or how.”
“Oh.” Darren takes a sip from his water bottle.
2. SALT AND VINEGAR POTATO CHIPS
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nbsp; “Does that make sense?” his dad asks.
“But so why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
“Well,” his dad says.
“Seriously, once you told Mom.”
“Well.”
“Why’d you wait so long to tell me?”
“Darren.”
“Huh?”
“Where are you right now?”
“On a bus. I already told you.”
“And why might that be?”
Darren stares into his nearly empty Ziploc bag of potato chips. He switches the phone to the other side of his head. Then back to the first side again. He almost stands up. He feels, in addition to everything else he feels, a bit like a moron. Or an idiot. Or maybe even an asshole.
“Yeah, okay,” Darren says. “I get it.”
“We can talk more when you get back.”
“Okay.”
And then they really hang up.
3. A PEAR
1 Person Darren Did Not at All Expect to Find Lighting a Cigarette Right outside the Bus, Which for Some Reason Has Come to a Stop at the Edge of a Gas Station Parking Lot in Paw Paw, Michigan
1. Zoey Lovell
2 Highly Processed Food Products Darren Purchases for $2.78 inside the Gas Station Food Mart After for Some Reason Saying, of All Things, to Zoey, “Hey, You Should Sit Upstairs. It’s Kind of Cool There.”
1. Mr. Pibb
2. Snyder’s of Hanover Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Pieces
7 Theories, Not All Plausible, Darren Comes Up With to Explain Zoey’s Presence on This Bus, While They Silently Share the Pretzels and Mr. Pibb
1. Back at Union Station he actually did say to her that Ann Arbor is pretty cool and that she should come with, so she decided to.
2. She figured out pretty easily that he was sort of running away from home, which she’s been pretty close to doing for a while, and if Darren can sort of run away, then why can’t she?
Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You Page 8
