Only You

midnight

I have no idea where I'm going, but I'd like to. 

It's just every night this happens...I give up and run away for a while. Every night, every summer. My parents are used to it, and I've got no one else to try to stop me.

No one really cares. 

Next week my senior year begins. Next week I turn nineteen.

I was held back a year. Freshman year of high school. No one knows this, I never bothered to tell them. I have the proof on my credit card, birth certificate, driver's license. I'm a full-fledged adult by now. I can go wherever I want. Just have to wait it out one more year.

I watch the road bleed by in a stream of gravel ribbon, the highway signs flashing like the stars in some people's eyes. The stars always burn out eventually, one way or another. I've gotten used to it. The same people who once told me I was the fire that ignited them now look at me with the glassy eyes of a corpse.

I don't blame them. It's me, not them.

The bus pulls up at an estranged highway bus stop. I look to see if anyone gets on or off here, even though no one ever has. I don't know why people would ever even erect a bus stop sign in the middle of this endless highway in the first place. No one I know ever wants to run away, except myself.

But tonight someone does get on. 

I try not to stare, because I know what it feels like to be completely stripped by someone's eyes, like you are a delicious piece of candy waiting to be eaten. But this woman is beautiful. She gets on the bus as a goddess walks the stars. Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying and there are scratches on her shaking hands, but she still looks like she is made of everything that is dangerous and exquisite, like a million broken diamond shards. 

As she pays the fare, she catches my eye. I look away quickly, casting my eyes to the window again. Out of the corner of my eye I see her move down the aisle.

She sits next to me.

The bus is practically empty, but she sits next to me. 

"I hope you don't mind me sitting here," she says. Her voice sounds like the calm rumble of a mountain stream. 

"No," I say. I don't know why people say they hope you don't mind, like you would ever actually say "yes, I damn very well do mind, please get the fuck out of my face". 

The woman looks me over, and I know what she's taking in at first glance. The long sleeves even though it's summer. The dark circles beneath my eyes, the worn jeans with the frayed edges, my torn lips, my dark hair like thousands of black wires forced into a messy bun. 

I look at her back, because now she's looking at my eyes. Her eyes are comets of ice. She's so damn beautiful. She looks like a creature people have tried to tame and failed. I don't see the little lines at the corners of her eyes, or the way her mouth curves down from the miseries of life. I see her eyes and know she is beautiful.

"I'm Cate," she says. 

"Jude."

"It's nice to meet you, Jude."

"Thanks."

"Do you have any idea where this bus is headed?"

"No. Out of town."

"Shit," she mutters. Then she looks at me, and forces a laugh. "I'm sorry. I just...I didn't mean to be here."

"Me neither." I point at the map of the bus route, pasted on the wall by the bus driver's seat. It's yellowing and peeling off the wall at the corners. "You can look there to see where to get off."

"Thanks, I will." But she doesn't get up to look at it yet. She just goes on looking at me, and for the first time I don't mind. I want her to see me, because I know I am broken in her eyes and just the sight of her gaze feels like a healing. There's no pity or disgust in her look because she doesn't know me. I'm just another messed-up stranger to her. It's delicious to know it. She can't judge me. After tonight, we'll never see each other again.