The Citrus Syndrome

12 ; god

God

Isaiah

I have managed to maintain my original coloring throughout the bus ride. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for my seat buddy. By the time the bus stops in Dallas, he has wretched in the aisle three times and has turned from pasty white to ashy gray.

His son is still bouncing. He's the only person on the entire bus that moves.

We're stopped, though, and I'm anxious to get off of this damn coffin on wheels. I can still hear Nattie's weak voice in my head, repeating my name.

If I arrive and she's dead, I've already decided what I'll do. I'll kiss her one last time and tuck her into bed. I'll lay down next to her and sleep for as long as I can. Then I'll blow my brains out with my gun cause we're all gonna fucking die anyway.

Yes, I brought my gun. I've watched enough of The Walking Dead to know I might need it.

The people on the bus remind me of zombies. They have hollow, sunken eyes and rotting skin. The woman in front of me? She's dead. She looks like she could be sleeping, but I can tell. There's a stench, and it could only be the aroma of death.

My biggest fear during the ride has been the bus driver catching TCS. What if he had a hallucination in the middle of an intersection? What if he dropped dead at the wheel?

By my own logic, at least it would have put the lot us out of our misery. But I need to see Natalie and Bo before I die.

Bo has been my best friend ever since I was the only black kid in our prestigious private high school. As far as blond, sarcastic white guys go, I thought he was pretty cool. But goddamn were the people at that school ignorant. Well, my mom called them ignorant. I called them racist. They acted like they'd never seen a black person before.

I remember this one kid, William (Bo nicknamed him Hillbilly) who asked my why I didn't have an afro. I'd just looked at him for a couple minutes, and he stared back. That was the same kid who asked me what the ghetto was like.

And the worst thing was, those kids weren't just saying things to antagonize me: they legitimately had no idea. I swear, everyone in Waring, Texas is either White, stupid, Baptist or all of the above.

All the Baptists got on my nerves, too. My family is decidedly agnostic, so I didn't take kindly to all the little suckers around me trying to kiss God's ass enough to get into heaven.

Bo wasn't like that, though. He liked rock music and skateboarding and hot chicks, which, according to his Seventh Day Adventist parents, will cast him straight to hell when his time comes.

When his time comes. I sigh, looking out the window at the unmoving Texas landscape. Maybe it is time to start kissing up to God. Hell doesn't sound too pleasant.

Why is no one moving? I growl at the window, waiting for Mr. Zombie to get out of my damn way. I'm getting antsy just sitting here, so I tap him on the shoulder. I regret it instantly, because I can feel The Citrus Syndrome hanging heavy in the air, threatening to smother me if I make one wrong move.

The man doesn't look up. I'm not willing to touch him again, so I sigh and do something bold.

I remember jumping over bus seats back in elementary school. That was back in Easton, Texas, where white people are more rare than summer snow. All my friends were black and Indian, some Puerto Rican. The bus driver was black, too, and she liked to beat up on the two white kids on our bus (they were sister and brother) but let the rest of us do whatever we wanted. At the time, I thought it was justice. Now, that's obviously just racist.

But in my four years on Bus 22, my friends and I developed several seat-jumping tactics that will serve me well right now.

Mr. Zombie's little boy watches as I climb up on the top of our seat, crouching like a tree frog. I haven't done this in awhile, so my first hop is clumsy. I nearly land on the dead lady. Righting myself, I continue to squirrel-leap over the dazed bus passengers.

No way am I stepping in that aisle. It's disgusting -- blood, vomit, piss, shit. You name it. Every kind of human output imaginable is in the aisle of this bus, and it smells the way I imagine Pigpen from Charlie Brown would up close.

Turns out, I was right to be worried about the bus driver. He's upchucking in his little mini trash can when I reach the front. He hasn't opened the doors, so I do it for him. I feel like yelling "Class Dismissed!" I doubt the zombies would even react.

So I leave the bus alone, sprinting on my travel-shaky legs. I gulp in breaths of fresh air, running in a direction that is simply: away.

I remember the joke Bo used to tell to scandalize his friends. What do you call a school bus full of white people? A twinkie. I asked him one day what a school bus full of black people would be called, and he just laughed. In Waring? Either a prison bus or a hallucination.

Ah, Bo. He always thought he was so funny.

I see Maplewood Street. Good, I'm near Natalie's apartment building, then. The sidewalk is empty, so I keep sprinting. Cars whiz by every few seconds, very rarely following the 30 miles per hour speed limit. I look in the windows as I run by, amusing myself by pretending to be Oprah. "You get a horrible disease, and you get a horrible disease! Everybody gets a horrible disease!"

I don't actually do that, of course. I'm just thinking about it to distract myself from Nattie.

Natalie's afraid of lots of things. Her hallucinations must be horrible. I want to call her again, but restrain myself. She can't really talk, anyway. My phone's already down to 21 percent, and I didn't think to bring a charger.

Bo's the one who introduced Nattie and I in the first place. I was 23, she was 19. His girlfriend had decided that her best friend needed a boyfriend, and Bo had decided that I need a woman. So they set the two of us up together.

I remember being shell shocked when I saw her. I guess I wasn't expecting Vi's best friend to be a gorgeous blonde with an interest in 90's grunge and classic rock. Any chick with a Kurt Cobain t shirt is worth a chance, in my book.

Falling in love was a bumpy ride, for us. I soon learned about her stalker ex-boyfriend and her fear of blood and gore and her past struggles with anorexia, things that no one bothered to mention until we were a month or two in.

Her ex was fucking insane. I found out about him on accident. He called while she was in the shower, and he kept calling back. I got annoyed, to I picked up and said, "What?" And he flipped out.

Natalie emerged from the bathroom to find me shouting at the phone, yelling for him to fuck the hell off. I'm coming over, he kept yelling. I'm gonna come beat your ass, you dickhead! Get away from my girl! I remember Nattie yanking the phone out of my hands. She hung up and threw it against the wall.

He did come over, started banging on the door, but be didn't open it. When he started slamming his body into it, I threatened to call the police.

Here's her apartment building. It's drab and gray, filled to the brim with college students from The University Of North Texas. It's quiet, too quiet. I push through the revolving door, pausing in the lobby to catch my breath. There's no one here.

I sprint across the empty lobby to the stairs. I take them two at a time, nearly tripping over my own feet in the process, but I hardly notice. All I can think of is Natalie's dead body, broken and bleeding on the floor.

If she is still alive, I won't let her die alone.