DAMAGED

KAT

The first photograph of me was taken in the back of busted old tour bus. My mother sweaty, in a thin black chemise, so pretty it felt ridiculous to try and understand it. My father shirtless and blurry, his eyes bloodshot and his grin stretched bigger than his face. He was holding me up like I was the Lion King, red faced and wrapped in a Social Distortion shirt. I'm certain he was high and she was in pain but it made for a happy moment caught in time. Everything in life was like that moment, messy and unplanned. I could be angry that my young mother had to give birth in a tour bus that had more patch ups than any form of transportation should have and still be considered worth traveling in. I could be angry that my dad was clearly intoxicated on what I don't know. The truth is it's hard to be angry with the dead. They didn't die that day but they did on a night five years later in that rickety bus. She was tossed and pitched across the bus so many times she would be unrecognizable as that girl in the picture. He was thrown through the windshield, high and wearing the first shirt I had ever worn. He thought it was a talisman of luck. That was the beginning and the end and I was left in the middle, five and spunky and trying to survive. Now I'm twenty-five and it's still the same, just survive.

I was on a tour bus now but the windows weren't blacked out and taped closed to prevent a draft. The sky outside poured rain as the universe wept for me because I couldn't. It was never my plan to spend the twentieth anniversary of my parent's death on the road surrounded by my band. A few spare musicians on a festival circuit in damn near hurricane conditions. The whole situation seemed fitting nonetheless. I tried to trace the raindrops but they blew free from the glass as fast as they pelted into it. I pressed my forehead into the window, letting the cold seep into my skin and I waited for the bus to rock me to sleep. We had another seven hours and it already smelled like too many bodies and felt like a restless mob. It was our bus but two other bands had got shuffled on when the other two buses turned out to be plagued with mechanical difficulties. I wasn't normally one for sentiment but I had some fucking feelings and this was not a day I wanted my space to have been invaded. I cringed at the sound of a high-pitched laugh that occasionally hit me on the temple like an ice pick. I could make it seven more hours and then I would find a dark space alone and drink until I forgot who I was and why I was sad. The rocking motion eventually pulled my eyelids down until sleep pulled me the rest of the way under.

I woke with a flash of annoyance. The elbow that had dug into my ribcage was in fact probably now stuck between my two bottom ribs. I glared at the body that had flung down beside me, I mean god I was already sharing my bus couldn't I just have the fucking seat to myself? I looked up because the tanned arm with the hint of a tattoo peeking out from the black sleeve was not familiar.

"Sorry, there was nowhere else. I flopped down fast so you couldn't Forrest Gump me." His smile wasn't really a smile; it was just a half smirk at best. I rolled my eyes and looked back at the window. Today wasn't the day for making new friends; it was the one day I thought of what I lost. "Okay. Well I'm going to sit here and try to keep my arm out of your body parts." He pulled his arm back over to his side and closed his eyes. Any other day I would have said it was no big deal. I would have laughed at the dirty sounding way his words came out. It wasn't any other day. I looked at my phone and I reminded myself that it was only six more hours. I closed my eyes again but I couldn't turn off my other senses. His body put off heat, a lot of heat and he smelled like the cold. I don't know how a person smells like a feeling but this guy did. I vaguely remembered his band coming on the circuit at the last stop, I searched my brain for the band's name but I couldn't find it. He was from the indie stage, I was from the punk and rock stage. This tour was a marriage of the two different genres. I wandered to the other stage more often than not, I was born with my stage in my blood but my heart responded to the other. It was a long running joke in my band. They called me a PINO, a punk in name only but even they couldn't argue with my roots. I breathed in deeper; his smell was good even if the invasion of space was not. He hadn't moved but the rise and fall of his chest could be felt through the bench seats that reminded me of a school bus, he was asleep. His acoustic made a scraping noise against the floor every time a hard wind hit the bus. I put my head back against the window and thought that there was just six more hours.