Paradise

FIVE

I don't know how I end up at the bus stop, not the ones that lead to mundane places like Walgreens, Starbucks, and Olive Garden, but the dangerous bus stops. The ones that don't lead to anywhere in Rolling Hills. The ones that lead to foreign cities and foreign people. This bus stop was right in front of the local park; kids in yellow-and-black soccer uniforms running through the field and evergreens as a gentle-faced woman in a designer jumpsuit lazily blew her whistle from the stands, flipping a page in a magazine.

People like Mrs. Burnsby used to exclaim how absurd it was to have such a danger in front of the park of all places as if a five-year old could suddenly decide they hated Paradise and take a bus out to Santa Monica. In fact, just the idea of even wanting to leave was some kind of atrocity because Paradise was where everyone wanted to be, nestled in tudor homes and blinding greenery, safe from all the "horrible city jungles" that lie around it.

I don't think it's absurd to want out. I'm just not allowed to.

Or at least that's what I thought.

The idea, like a big, blurred, inviting light in the middle of the ocean, had emerged, dancing around me like fallen leaves in Autumn. It had come to me in The Wolf's den last night but now it had reappeared like a song of 'What if's,' and 'Just maybe's.'

Maybe I wasn't stuck here. Maybe I could escape, jump on to the first bus that stopped, and get away.

As if some unknown force had heard my contemplating, a bus whizzes around the corner at that moment, slowly rolling on it's gigantic wheels towards the very dangerous bus stop I sat upon. It was a dark blue, the words, 'Sunny California,' and the number, '55,' printed in bright, summer colors on the bus. The windows are dark and tinted but I can still see the driver, a heavyset woman with wispy, blonde hair and a beet-red face staring blandly at the road in front of her.

When the bus stops, the driver doesn't look at me, nor the passengers that hurried off the bus with their hefty luggage in tow. I watch the passengers in awe, mostly because they all look so different from the people that reside in Paradise. They don't dress in preppy jock ensembles like the Orc and his friends, nor the good conservative Christian look of every adult in Paradise. They are all exotic Californians in their own right, wearing suits, torn jeans, flappers, and of course, one tie-dye t-shirt with the numbers,'420,' printed across.

They all file out like a show of rainbows and dizzying concepts and I can't help but wonder where they're coming from.

"Hey, kid, you coming or not?"

The wispy-haired bus driver regards me with a snappy voice that doesn't reach her grey eyes which are glazed over as if she isn't even the woman in the bus, the woman limply gripping the wheel and staring at me as if there is nothing inside of her. I realize she's like me, like the Orc, like The Wolf; the living dead. I wonder what killed her in the first place.

"Hello, I don't have all day!" She yells hoarsely and I shake my head and avert my eyes.

The bus doors start to close, making a painful screeching sound, as they did and I fiddle with the black sketchbook in my hand. If I open it, flip through the pages, then I'd be opening myself up to it again; the Orc and his shaking fists that had been around my throat but hoping to squeeze the soul out of his own.

I think that's how I found the bus stop, it was the closest thing that counted as the farthest thing from Rolling Hills, the only place I could escape to without an elastic band snapping me back if I lingered too far from the beautiful, teal house.

"Wait!"

The bus doors nearly crush a man squirming his way out of the vehicle before they quickly open with another loud whizzing sound. Dark red luggage bags fall on to the sparkling sidewalk and the bus's victim curses. However, the bus driver doesn't say a word, simply looks down at the man stumbling to get his things with almost a tired expression before closing the doors and slowly whizzing back on to the street.