Aria went outside to sit in the sun. Her wet hair made parts of the fabric of her coat look darker. Even though the air was cold that morning, the luxury of the sunlight wasn’t lost on her. She let it caress the contours of her face. She opened the top of her coat to let it touch the edges of the ever-present ache in her heart, but was interrupted after a brief time by the sound of the bus driver giving everyone a five-minute warning.
She was the first person back on the bus. Taylor was the last. He had made a nuisance of himself during their meal break, failing to establish a rapport with any of the passengers, with whom he had tried to establish several connections. They seemed irritated by his chummy demeanor. As he walked down the aisle, the few people with an empty seat beside them seemed to tense up for fear that he would sit down next to them. “Hey,” he said, all but crawling over Aria to claim the seat next to the window. “That felt great to stretch my legs for a while.”
Aria afforded him a customary smile. She extracted from her pocket the granola bars that she had stolen and handed one to him. For a half a second, he seemed taken aback, then said “Ah, thanks” and immediately ripped open the packaging. The homey oat-and-honey flavor mollified the both of them. As the bus made its way back onto the highway, they ate without talking, feeling lucky for the snack, which for both of them felt like pure indulgence.
Taylor was in heaven. Out on the open road, he felt like life was finally moving forward. When he was getting what he really wanted, his body had a way of responding by letting go of the pain of years of not getting it. It did so with memories and it did so with tears. Instead of sleeping, he listened to Aria begin to write in her journal and stared out the window at the blur of sagebrush and other cars passing by. His eyes were burning, having welled up in response to memories that his body was exhaling up and into his awareness.
He remembered when he was five years old and had wanted a bike so badly. He wanted it so that he could feel just the way he felt now. He had woken up on his birthday to see a bike poorly wrapped in wrapping paper in the center of the living room, waiting for him. Later that day, he and his older brother had gotten into a fight over it and, as a punishment, his mother had forced all of the kids into the car. She drove to the Salvation Army store where she had purchased the bike and then proceeded to force him to re-donate it. He remembered the divine weight of the bike when the man at the store took it from him. He had gained his freedom and, in the same day, had lost it.
He remembered the incarceration of the group homes. When he was 12 years old, two other boys at his group home had placed two of their CDs inside his room and then reported them missing. When the staff had resorted to a room check and had found the “missing” CDs in his room, they immediately called the police. If Taylor had been a kid in a normal family home, the consequence for stealing would be a scolding or losing TV time or being grounded. In the group home, the consequences were the cops being called. No matter what he said, they would not believe that he hadn’t taken them. And so, he became hysterical. Eventually, in response to the escalation, the staff made the decision to drug him with antipsychotic medication. He was arrested and taken to the juvenile detention center. He remembered thinking that except for the fact that he was completely alone in the detention room, jail was not much different than the group home.
He remembered sitting in front of the judge, who scowled at him with displeasure, passing judgment for something he had never done. Judgment from an ignorant position of never having lived through any of the conditions that he had been forced to live through. Taylor wished the judge would suffer the same way that he had suffered, but knew that day would never come.
When Taylor had tried to explain himself, the judge had barked, “I’m not buying it today,” and had sentenced him to both probation and counseling. When he was released from the detention center, he was driven to an entirely different group home. He had been transferred. This was what it had felt like when he was young, an endless routine of hopping, of never belonging to one place, of never staying long enough to grow roots.
As he watched the country passing by, Taylor felt like he was leaving the prison of it all behind. He felt defiant and victorious. He saw his father’s face in his mind. Taylor couldn’t decide if his father had been sad to lose him or if he was glad to see him go. He wondered why he was not enough. Not enough to value, not enough to want. Not enough to make his father stay, instead of leaving them all behind when he did. The cool of his father’s indifference could not calm Taylor’s fury at not being loved enough. He felt the agonized sea of parting ways crack and heave against his heart. The sound of his heartbreak rang like a bell underwater. But he did not break under the blow of it. The hope he held for the life he was headed toward wouldn’t let it happen. He was done wanting, done waiting for a life he would never have there. He was done wanting things from people who would never give those things to him.
