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The next day, I had to pack. My aunt and uncle dragged out all my old suitcases and brought them to my room. Adriann had come over today and was helping me pack.
“Gosh,”
Adriann said, looking around at all the clothes and things strewn around my
room, some things in suitcases, but most not. “This is so weird.” I sighed in
response. I sat down next to her to take a break from packing. I surveyed my
progress. Most of my clothes had been stuffed into the suitcases. I had a few
bags that had my things (clothes, books, CDs, other things I can’t live
without) for the road in them because we were right smack dab in the middle of
this nice little tour. Most of the stuff that I wouldn’t be taking on tour my
aunt and uncle would pack up and send to the house.
As I
looked around my room, I started to feel tears creeping up to my eyes. How
could they do this to me? I had finally found the place that I thought I really
fit in. I had made friends here. I went to a normal school. I lived in a house
365 days a year instead of living on a bus a fourth of the time! For once in my
life, I felt stable. Stable in this environment. I had never really gotten used
to my old life. I didn’t want to travel on a bus one-fourth of my life. It just
wasn’t what I wanted. But now I had no choice. I had to. My family had decided
for me. I felt the tears coming. Coming on strong. Then, without warning, they
started to fall.
“Hey,”
Adriann said, “come on, don’t cry. It’ll be okay. Come on, it’s okay.” She
hugged me and I cried and cried into her shoulder.
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The next morning, my eyes had opened and for a minute, I thought everything was okay. But then it came hit me. Hard. I was leaving today, to spend my life on a bus. I looked around at the suitcases cluttering my room. I remembered the night before when I had cried my eyes out to Adriann. I pulled on the clothes I had set out the night before for myself to wear. I didn’t bother with any make-up or anything special with my hair. Just brushed it, and went downstairs. Uncle Tom had already left for work. He left early every morning. He had said goodbye night before. I remembered how I had thought while he told me how much he would miss me; It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to say goodbye. If you’d tell my idiot family I’m not ready to go back yet… But it didn’t matter. Even if I had said that out loud, he wouldn’t have done it. He would have smiled and shook his head and said, “Now Jessica, you know you should. It’s what your family wants.” I had heard similar mini-lectures before.
At the kitchen table, Aunt Kate set a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of me. I picked at them with my fork and stared at them. I wasn’t hungry. Aunt Kate sat down across from me with an identical plate for herself.
“Now they’ll be here at noon, so make sure you’re ready.” She went on and on about how I should be ready, blah, blah, blah. She was at how nice it would be to be back with my family when she finally noticed I wasn’t listening. I set my fork down, its clattering on the plate the only noise in the room. She reached across the table and put her hand under my chin so I had to look her in the eye.
“Now you listen here,” she said firmly. “You don’t have to like this, and you don’t have to be happy about it, but don’t you dare ruin it for your family. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time and you don’t have the right to spoil it because it’s not what you want.” I looked at her sneeringly as she picked her fork back up and scooped a bite of pancake into her mouth.
“Why shouldn’t I ruin it for them?” I asked viciously. “They ruined everything for me! They’ve been waiting for a long time for THIS? If I don’t want to be there, and I don’t want to be with them, then how much fun is this going to be?” I pushed my chair out from under the table, scratching it on the linoleum, and stood up. “If I don’t want to be there, and I’m gloomy and depressed, what makes you think that this go-round is going to be even a smidgen better then the last one! It makes absolutely no sense, any of this!” I was fuming now. How dare she say all that to me? Ruin it for them? What about me? Isn’t that what this is all about? Me?
“It makes perfect sense, Jessica Hanson!” she cried, standing up too. Those words burned in my mind. Jessica Hanson, Jessica Hanson. That was me. No! I was Anna. Anna Lawyer. I tried desperately to convince my mind I was Anna Lawyer, not Jessica Hanson. But I couldn’t, because my mind knew the truth. And so did I.
“What doesn’t make sense is that you left that family! A perfectly perfect family! There was nothing wrong with you life! There are millions of girls who would give anything to have you life! What? Was it not good enough for you? Was it that it had to be all about you, and in that life, someone else got more attention than you?” She didn’t have to say that the someone was my brothers. We both knew that.
My face burned in shame and anger. I could feel more tears coming, still more after the buckets I had cried into Adriann’s shoulder the night before. I whipped around and ran to the front door. I threw it open and ran into the early morning sunshine. I heard it slam behind me. SLAM! I was doing it again. I was doing it again and I couldn’t stop. I was walking away.
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As I walked, I felt tears falling down my face. They came pouring out of my eyes and down my face. The surprising thing was that I didn’t make any noise. I was looking down, racing along the sidewalk. A song lyric I had heard on some unknown radio station in some unknown song by some unknown musician came to my mind: I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know where I might be… That lyric was true of me physically and emotionally. I was so absorbed in thought, I didn’t see or hear Adriann walking towards me. All of a sudden, she was just there.
“Jessie?” I looked up. I completely forgot that I was crying.
“Jessie? What’s wrong?”
“I…I…uh…” I tried desperately to think of an excuse. “I don’t know,” I said miserably. I crumpled down and sat in the middle of the sidewalk. Adriann sat down next to me.
“Come on,” she said gently. “What happened?” I sighed and looked at her.
“Oh, I don’t know. My aunt and I had a fight.”
“About what?” I gave her a look that clearly said: Stupid question.
“Well,” she said, chuckling, “I had to make sure.” I cracked a tiny smile at her. She smiled back. After a minute of silence, she said, “So I guess you’re, uh, leaving today, huh?” She was looking at her hands when she said it.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “At noon.”
“Gosh,” she said, “that’s only an hour and a half from now.”
“Really? I didn’t know it was that late.” She nodded halfheartedly.
“I’ll write you every day,” I said. “No matter what city we’re in. I’ll steal Tay’s laptop and email you.” She smiled warmly.
“And I’ll write you back everyday.”
“I gotta go say bye to everyone else,” I said. She nodded.
“Want me to come?” I smiled.
“Sure.”
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I walked back into my house at exactly 11:53 AM. I could hear my aunt clanking dishes around in the kitchen. She sounded mad. In my coat pocket were notes of all kinds. There were addresses, and email addresses, and “I’ll miss you” notes. I had gone to see everyone I was friends with. Not just Adriann, Lucile, Elizabeth and Marie. I made sure everything was in my bags and stuffed the notes into a side pocket. I didn’t bother taking off my coat. What was the point? There were only…five minutes left to my life. My family was very punctual. I stood up and walked to the kitchen. I slid into a chair at the kitchen table across from my aunt, who was casually reading the paper. After a few minutes, she lifted her eyes from the paper and looked at me.
“Are you ready?” Her voice was cold.
“I suppose.” But I knew how to get to her. I pulled out a section of the paper she wasn’t reading and started to read it. Just my luck, it was the front page. And who was on it? Hanson. The headline read, “Hanson to Continue National Tour.” Why was that a big deal here? Why was it front-page news here? They didn’t even live here. But you have for the last three years, a little voice in my head said. I set the paper down. Ding-dong! That one simple noise brought my world crashing down. Aunt Kate looked at me and got up to answer the door. I heard her open the door and say hi to my mom. I stood up and walked in; putting on the fakest smile I had in me. Don’t ruin it for them. Shyeah right. My mom smiled warmly at me, but said nothing. I noticed Aunt Kate had put on a huge smile for my mom. Huh. She wasn’t fooling me.
“Let me get my things,” I said in a sugary-sweet voice. I came back with three bags. Two bags of clothes and one backpack. The tour wasn’t much longer.
“Bye Aunt Kate,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. She smiled back at me. Still not a real smile. I smiled at my mom and we headed down the steps.
“Bye Kate,” she said, waving. She followed me up into the bus.
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This part of the
story is told from a general point of view, not Jessica’s or anyone else’s.
This is just the way we did it.
Hours later, around 8, Jessica had fallen asleep with her CD blaring in her ears. She had mastered the art of sleeping on a bus years ago. When she had first come onto the bus, she had been surprised to see that it was pretty much exactly the same as it was a few years ago. She didn’t have time to look around much, though. Family members immediately bombarded her. They had to get going though; they had to catch up to the other buses. She was also surprised to find her old bunk had been left unoccupied. She had as her own again. Now though, she was asleep. Zac walked up to her bunk quietly. He pulled back the small curtain. He knew she didn’t want to be here. He was about the only one though. The rest of his family was too stupid to realize that. He gently took the headphones off her head. He wanted to know what CD she was listening to. He put the headphones on his head and was very surprised at the sound of his own voice.
“In an MMMBop they’re gone, in an MMMBop they’re not
there…”