Page 2 of What I Should've Said

Rest of your life. Those words stand out like a penis in a pair of gray sweatpants, and they’re not even the right words. The right words would be more like, Will you promise to make yourself blissfully unaware of the truth and fake your way through the life your mother and Thomas want you to live?

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, but when I open them again, the mirror might as well be one of those funhouse mirrors at a carnival, comically scrunching and twisting and turning my face up into all sorts of horrific expressions.

I don’t look like a blushing bride. I look like a woman who just had her entire world shattered with one sentence—I hope the truth will set you free.

Quickly, I gather the envelope, my little bridal purse, and the extra fabric of my train, and I exit the bathroom without looking back.

When I don’t find anyone waiting for me in the hallway, I make my move.

The bride-to-be couldn’t remember the groom’s face…so she ran away instead.

Saturday, July 31st

Norah

Some people say the best way to start over is to dive in headfirst.

Though, those people probably aren’t doing it into the emotional equivalent of a brick wall like I am.

The engine vibrates as the driver hits the brakes and brings the big ol’ Greyhound bus to a stop with a less-than-gentle foot.

“Red Bridge!” she shouts over her shoulder, and her voice is so raspy, I imagine smoke billowing out from between her parted lips. She grabs the crank handle to her right with a hard hand and yanks the bus door open with a bang.

I hop up from my seat and gather my belongings as swiftly as I can.

After being sandwiched on this creaky metal tube for the past nine hours, only getting a handful of fifteen-minute breaks at gas stations so the driver could alternate between chain-smoking cigarettes and filling up the tank, sometimes dangerously at the same time, I’m more than ready to get the hell off.

I glance out the window as I swing my backpack onto my shoulder but stop in my tracks when I note the big yellow bridge that sits off in the distance.

“Last call for Red Bridge!” the driver shouts, and her blondish-gray bob swishes from side to side with her movements.

“Um…are you sure this is Red Bridge?” I call out toward her, cautiously making my way up the aisle, and she stares at me in the rearview mirror.

“Oh no, honey, you’re right. I’ve only driven this same route for the past twenty years and make a point not to follow the bus navigation. It gives me a real thrill to drop people off at the wrong stops.”

“I’m not questioning your bus-driving skills, which are awesome, by the way. Just fantastic, not-scared-at-all, feel-so-safe, this is the best bus ride I’ve ever had.” I punctuate that lie by holding up two thumbs. “But the Red Bridge red bridge is…well, yellow.”

She doesn’t offer any kind of response. Doesn’t even bother looking at the very yellow bridge I’m referring to. Instead, she just sits there, continuing to bore holes into my skull with crinkly, crow’s-feet-highlighted eyes. I think this is her silent, universal way of saying “Get off my effing bus.”

But as you might suspect, Red Bridge has always had a red bridge. For the first six years of my life that I spent in this sleepy Vermont town and, again, five years ago when I came back for my grandmother’s funeral—red.

As the driver glares, I speed up my crisis of reality and scoot my way down the rest of the aisle as carefully but quickly as I can. But cautious turns into clumsy, and before I know it, I’ve run over three people’s shoes with my bag and elbowed another two in the backs of their heads.

Each impact earns me more glares.

“Sorry! I am so, so sorry,” I mutter and flash apologies at as many people as I can, but the only real solution is to get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks off this bus, whether it’s really my final destination or not.

When I finally reach the exit, I lug my suitcase behind me, and it bounces erratically down the four big steps. Each time the wheels contact metal, a painful clanking echoes inside my ears.

I cringe. This is definitely not the kind of care my best friend Lillian had in mind when she let me borrow her favorite Louis Vuitton suitcase. And I highly doubt Louis himself expected this kind of trauma to his luxury goods. Lil’s poor bag will probably need therapy after this.

Clear of the bus door, I pause to get my bearings, but Harsh Helga at the Helm of the Greyhound is done waiting. In a cloud of dust and dirt and through the scream of its engine, the bus takes off behind me, leaving me in a whirlpool of its wake.

Just like that, I’m alone—something I haven’t been in years. And I’m in the middle of nowhere.

I look at all the trees and the absolutely wrong-color bridge.

This has to be Red Bridge…right?

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