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I was in the middle of nowhere. I looked around and saw nothing but grass and the occasional singular powerline. Where did it lead too? I had no idea.
Was I in Kansas? Or somewhere close adjacent? I felt a familiar rumbling in my stomach, this had become more familiar with living in Vegas.
We never had much food, if any we just had some stolen tangerines and disgusting cheap wheat bread. I placed my palm on my gaunt stomach, pressing slightly. As if on command, my stomach began to rumble on cue. I stared out the window again, no change in scenery at all. I had no map, my phone was dead, and I was starving.
I turned around to look at the people around me, just to familiarize myself with the people I would spend the remainder of this torturous bus ride with. Everyone were the same typical cut people, just like they were out of a newspaper clipping.
A skinny girl with box-dyed blonde hair sat in the backseat reading a vogue magazine; a middle aged guy with the nerdiest glasses ever, wearing a button up blue shirt and khaki pants, along with a fresh cut; an old woman with badly dyed hair to disguise her ever graying hair; there was also a young girl with black hair in an all pink outfit, and pigtails with the board, uninterested mother.
Then there was me.
I was a kid with broken glasses, lenses too small for my face, disgusting old tee shirt I threw on in a drunken drug induced daze, old pants probably two sizes too small, and creased shoes.
I stuck out like a sore thumb. If someone were there to take a photo of this bus right now people would most definitely think I was edited in or some sort of main character. Like I had something to say, and I didn't. There was nothing to say.
I checked on my phone again, sighing when the low battery symbol showed up again. Like I wanted it to come back up somehow.
I looked through the first pocket on my bag, looking for my broken charger. I dug out the charger. Knowing that the next stop I would charge my phone.
I also checked the charge of my iPod while I was at it. Sixty-percent it said. Not bad at all in my opinion. I smirked for a second before turning off the iPod. Hoping that it would conserve its battery for a little longer. It wasn't like they die that quickly, Boris and I would listen to it for a whole night and it would be at fourty-five the next morning.
I was stuck, in the middle of nowhere. No cell service either. This is what I get, what I should’ve prepared myself for. The bus ride from Vegas to New York would be different than the plane ride. Also because I was coming down from a massive high, unlike the plane ride.
I was hungry, alone, phone dead, with a dog in my bag, and I had just left my friend of two years back in Vegas to run away. Get me out of here. I take one last look at the scenery that laid out before me. There was nothing but grass, but this time no trees at all. Is this what hell is like? Is my dad experiencing this right now?
Where am I? In a book explanation on the Midwest, I heard of a state with no trees for miles on end. Kansas. Kansas, I knew it, I was in Kansas. It looked just how it did in the Wizard of Oz movies, except I didn’t see any houses for miles, or tornados.
I knew Popchyk would get impatient if I didn't feed him those nasty old chips from the cab guy, but I was too busy thinking about Kansas. I tried to remember all the little details that were in the book, but having read it in elementary, I forgot. All I knew was that there were no trees and it was just plains. Dry, when I swallowed I could feel a scratchy feeling lingering in my throat, the kind you get after a long night of chain smoking.
I leaned my head on the weirdly cold window, get me out of Kansas I thought.