“It’s a new number,” Ryan explained, looking abashed. “She changed phone companies after my dad left, it’s—” He broke off. “She got a deal.”
“Okay,” Gabby said quickly. “Well. My parents are in North Carolina, but let me try Celia, maybe?” She did, calling Celia’s cell four times in rapid succession and then the house phone twice, and getting nowhere. Hi, said her mom’s voice on their ancient outgoing message. You’ve reached the Harts . . .
Gabby punched End on her cell phone, feeling her anxiety creep as the little red battery indicator got skinnier and skinnier. Her heart sped up, throat getting tighter; the soles of her feet itched inside her sneakers. What the hell were they going to do?
Then she glanced at Ryan, and felt herself calm down.
“Okay,” she said again, taking a deep breath and tucking her hair behind her ear. He was so clearly miserable and useless at the moment that it made Gabby feel weirdly capable, like she had someone to take care of all of a sudden and it was making her brave. She opened the Maps app on her phone, waited for the blue dot to find them, then squinted at the screen. “We’re like six blocks from the Greyhound station,” she reported after a moment.
Ryan looked skeptical. “You want to take a bus?”
“Well, I don’t want to stay here all night,” Gabby said, then felt herself soften. “I think we kind of have to bail ourselves out here, dude.”
Ryan looked like he was going to argue for a moment. After that he just looked sad. “Okay,” he said finally, digging some crumpled bills out of his back pocket and putting them down on the table. “Let’s take a bus.”
RYAN
The Albany bus station was a little like what Ryan imagined the seventh circle of hell would be like, if the seventh circle of hell had a McDonald’s in it. He leaned against a greasy metal pillar with his arms crossed while Gabby went up to the Greyhound window and talked to the bored-looking clerk sitting behind it. He wondered what kind of bad decisions you had to make in your life to wind up manning a bus station window in Albany on a Saturday night in October. He wondered what kind of bad decisions he himself had made to wind up here.
“Okay,” Gabby said, coming over to him with a couple of paper tickets in her hand. “I got us a bus. It doesn’t leave for another hour and a half, and the closest it gets us is Poughkeepsie, but it’s better than nothing.”
Ryan nodded. “Thanks,” he mumbled. He knew he was being a tool, letting her handle the logistics of getting them out of here, but it was like something in his brain and body had shut off as soon as his dad got up from the table at the restaurant, like he’d hit a power button somewhere.
They found a place to sit on a wooden bench in the waiting room, between an old lady knitting a hat on skinny circular needles and a sleepy-looking homeless dude with a cart piled high full of grocery bags. Ryan crossed his arms and stared at the dirty tile floor. He hated his dad for being such an unrelenting asshole. He hated himself for losing the game. He hated Gabby a little, too, for being here and seeing this. For taking care of him like he was a little kid.
“Ryan,” Gabby said finally, in a voice like maybe this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get his attention. “Come on. The bus is boarding.”
They found seats near the back of the bus, Gabby sliding into the window seat and shoving her backpack down between her Conversed feet. He could hear Drake leaking out of somebody’s headphones; a few rows ahead of them, someone was eating something that smelled strongly of garlic.
Neither one of them talked as the bus pulled out of the station and toward the highway. Eventually the broken-down cityscape gave way to strip malls, then the blurry outlines of naked autumn trees. The bus was dark except for the glow of streetlamps outside and somebody’s reading light a few rows ahead of them; Ryan thought possibly Gabby was sleeping, when suddenly she spoke.
“I’m going to ask you this one time, and then I’m never going to ask you again,” she said quietly, staring straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of her. “Did your dad ever hit you?”
“What?” Ryan blinked at that, surprised and kind of weirdly offended. His dad could be kind of a jerk sometimes, sure—his dad had been a jerk today—but he wasn’t some kind of Lifetime-movie child abuser. “No.”
“Did he ever hit your mom?”
“No,” Ryan repeated, then added, “Jesus.”
Gabby exhaled, leaned her head back. “Okay.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Ryan started. Shit, he was so embarrassed. This whole day was a wash, clearly; he wanted to smooth it over as quickly as possible, then forget about it and be done. “This was a clusterfuck, I—”