Because I was not able to find my mother (actually, I didn’t even try to look for her, I was so jumpy that I couldn’t bring myself to do something that required patience), I had to take the bus to St. Abernathy’s. I do not take the bus often, and so I was instantly plagued with the fear that I would forget where the bus stop was, or I would miss the bus, or—and this, I thought, was the worst of them all—I would take the wrong bus, end up on the other side of town completely and miss the date that would become the very first emotional milestone of my life.

You must remember, for everyone else surely does, that before I met and became obsessed with Purchase I had not been a very open or feeling-oriented person. Sure, I knew what feelings were. A person can’t pass kindergarten without pointing out what is mad, sad, or glad. But besides the intense gut reaction I felt from my word magnets and paint globs and torn pages, people to me were just that: things of skin and bone that were born on earth and eventually died. I loved my parents and my sister because I was taught to do so, but I had never loved anyone else because I just didn’t want to. Out of all the movies I had watched with the best friends, or all the books I had read, or the songs Christal blasted at midnight, I thought non-platonic love was a big burden that would ruin us all if we weren’t careful. And since I didn’t like being careful, I thought I wouldn’t like falling in love.

But here I was, heart thrumming wildly, hands sweating profusely and train of thought falling off its tracks, because my hormones had decided to wake up and smell the redhead (albeit fake). I didn’t like to think that the reason I was so obsessed with Purchase was because I was helplessly falling for her, just like the song goes, but I was.

Just as I was about to start my usual rant of Why Love is Useless, which I had concocted long ago and perfected within the past seven days yearning, hands seemed to appear out of nowhere and I was held in mid-air for a few seconds before falling backwards.

"Um?" I mumbled. I had been so lost in thought that I didn’t even know where I was. Looking up, all I saw was sun, and I began to notice the dull ache in my bottom and the contents of my bag slipping out dangerously onto grass.

"Oh God," somebody said a tad hysterically. I wondered vaguely what all the fuss was about. "Shit, I’m so sorry—are you okay? Can you hear me?"

I could hear, but I wasn’t registering what I was listening to. I had always been prone to extremely bad falls, and after contact it usually took me awhile to understand what had happened and where I was. "Um," I tried again, putting a hand to my head. "Yes?"

"Okay, good," said the voice, and put a hand on my shoulder. On instinct, I flinched away, and the owner of the hand jerked backwards apologetically. "Sorry. Can you stand?"

A blurry image came into view—a hand, clearly being offered to me. I blinked a couple of times until my vision came into focus and then, seeing I had no other choice besides being rude, I took the hand and was pulled up.

"Thanks," I muttered, able to see now. "Where am I?"

"You’re at White Oaks Elementary," came the reply. Then a pause. "Did you hit your head? You seemed to be in a hurry…"

And then I remembered.

"Yes! I am in a hurry! Oh my God," I gasped, shifting my bag onto my shoulder so that nothing would fall out. "I have to run. Gotta go. Bus stop. I’m late, ‘scuse me," I babbled, walking past my helper and mingling with the bunch of waist-high (only because I was short) kidlets that had just come out of school. "Um, thanks," I called behind me, waving frantically. In reply, there was a faint message, but I was on the other side of the street already and hardly caring.

I ran past children grasping Elmo dolls to their chests, and teacher’s aides looking as if they needed a good, strong cup of coffee to survive the rest of the day. I weaved in and out of striking yellow buses, and Mini Coopers, and more kids on bikes. And then there it was—my bus, just pulling up to the stop, with a couple of elderly pensioners lining up slowly in front of the door.

So out of shape was I that I had to catch my breath, even in so short of a run. I staggered over to join the line, accidentally running into a middle schooler who called me a rude name. But I was finally here, and didn’t care.

"Fare," grunted the man at the wheel as I hoisted my short self onto the bus.

I realized that I didn’t know how much the fare was.

"To Vermont," I said, sheepish but pretending not to be. "How much is that?"

The bus driver gave me an exasperated look and then pointed to the sign above him. Vermont Bus Station, it read, in big, bold letters, is being renovated until the 29^th.

My heart did a spectacular flip and then broke off to fall, heavy, into the pit of my stomach. "What?" I said blankly, the word echoing in my car canals: what what what what what…

"You can read," said the middle schooler behind me, bitterly. "Bus doesn’t go there. Get the hell off so we can get on."

The world seemed to tip out of focus, like when you’re editing a picture and you drag it too far to the side so all you see is black. Perhaps I am overdramaticizing—no, I take that back, I am overdramaticizing—but that is how it felt and all I wanted to do was go on a complete rampage. Seven days of wholesome redheaded agony for this? Sure, I could walk, but that wasn’t the point. But really, who needs a point when everything you wanted has just gone down the drain?

I stomped off that bus like I had never stomped before. I think I even spat on the middle schooler, just to make him pissed off. I even glared at the kind old people, whom I had always liked because they were so nice to me, but at the moment I wanted to be a complete bitch. And I think I succeeded. Mothers near the elementary school, feeling my presence a mile away, hid their children behind their legs and leaned in closer with their other pearl-clad friends to talk about me. Look at that angry teenager, they said as I hurtled past them at the speed of light, we’d best keep our kids away from her. She might eat them. And I might as well have.

Instead of rose-coloured glasses, I was seeing things through the fire of hell. I could have sworn that if I stared at the grass long enough on that day, all the lawns on the sidewalk I was standing on would have spontaneously combusted. If I had grabbed a child, he or she would have begun to scream in agony. And as I came to the crosswalk, the guy directing traffic, upon seeing me, jumped a little and dropped his sign.

"You look like shit," he said, after he had picked up his sign. "And you were okay just a few minutes ago."

I froze in my tracks, then, and looked at him. He was the same young fellow that I’d seen in the car last week, helping the little girl when she had fallen and waving at us when we passed. And, I suppose, it was also he who had helped me when I had fallen after our collision. If he, who I assumed was the type of guy to look for the best in everyone, thought I looked like shit then, then I probably did. I was instantly humbled, and even blushed a little.

"Oh. Yeah. Got into a fix back there." I waved my hand floppily in an obscure direction.

"That sucks," he said, and paused to blow a whistle (that came out of nowhere) to stop incoming traffic. While waving in the other side, he continued talking. "Saw you going to the bus stop. Did you miss your bus or something?"

Whatever this guy was doing to me, it was really calming me down. My heartbeat took itself off illicit drugs and began to wheeze itself back to normal, the organ itself pulleyed its way out of my stomach, and my fuzzy brain began to clear. I sighed deeply, and then I tried to laugh it off.

"Ohm," I said, and then cursed inwardly. I’d wanted to say Oh, um, but it came out ohm. Another fine example of my faulty people skills.

He laughed, too. "Ohm, huh? Were you meditating?"

Right then, I was pretty sure that no one else in the world could compare to how many times I had wanted to die in the past month. Here was another one of those times. "No! I just…well, no. I wasn’t meditating, ha, ha. I didn’t miss my bus, either; they’re just doing all this renovation shit downtown or something, and I needed to get to Vermont like, really soon. I’m probably late now."

As if staged, we both glanced up at the big clock resting on top of the elementary building. It was five past noon. He looked at me, and I looked back and shrugged.

"Did you say Vermont?" he said questioningly. Holding a hand out to stop outgoing traffic, he turned to me then and looked me right in the eye, not even bothering about incoming traffic. They were just piling in, not even paying attention.

"Yes I did. Um—," and I gestured to the cars speeding by us, "don’t you think you should…"

Another grin spread across his face, somehow accentuating the brightness of his hair. I could not help but relax a little more. "It’s okay. They all know me here." With ease, he blew into his whistle again with amazing breath and then took off his yellow vest. "Thank God, my shift is done."

I nodded.

"Would you like a ride?"

I stared.

He burst into laughter, a familiar scene, and then began to walk across his (I had noticed he practically owned the white strips of safety) crosswalk. "Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to rape you or anything." He turned around and winked, and then went on before I even had time to light up. "I live pretty near Vermont, that’s all, like right by it, and I usually do take the bus but since they aren’t going to run by there for a few weeks, I have to drive here every day now. It’s really…" he smiled. "…I mean, I love my job, but driving for me is a pain in the ass. If I could take you where you need to go, at least that would make my ride home a little less tedious."

He looked at me, not at the road, and in between mixed feelings of confusion and approval I felt concerned. "Don’t trip over anything," I cautioned, pointing behind him. "There are trees and stuff."

Shrugging off the warning, he slowed to my pace and fell into step with me. "I know this place well. And besides, I think it’s you that we both need to watch out for," he snickered, referring back to my bad (and the thing is, it wasn’t even bad, I had just made it so) fall at the crosswalk. Embarrassed, I turned away.

When we reached his car—an elegant little black number, with two doors and bug-eyed, round lights—he pulled his keys out of his pocket and then, as if in afterthought, turned to me slowly.

"Since you’re still here, it means you’re coming, right," he asked me, a trace of doubt sliding behind his words. "Because if you’re going to get into my car and scream ‘Help me, I’m being kidnapped!’ on the freeway…"

I shook my head, but I probably would have done it, just because it sounded fun. "Nah. I’m safe, I promise." To show my honesty, I held up both of my empty hands and wiggled my fingers. "And I’m not armed, either."

We both laughed, me out of slight uncertainty and he of genuine cheerfulness. As we piled into the car—me having no difficulty at all, since I had noticed the vehicle had been manufactured for people my height, and my chauffer scrambling in with a bit of difficulty—I realized that I did not even know this young man’s name. I had seen him many times, knew how seriously he took his job and how nice he was (on the surface, at least), but I was getting into a car with him and I didn’t even know what his name was.

He seemed to sense this, because he suddenly mumbled something to himself, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

"I’ve been an ass," he grinned, and offered his hand to me once again. It was a gesture I would come to love. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Samson, and I will be your driver today."

Actually, I still keep in touch with Samson. He is a backpacker—a tourist, he keeps on telling me to call him, but I insist on backpacker, for the word tourist brings up images of Hawaiian shirts and large cameras and that is not Samson. But at the moment, he is in Thailand, and I am in New Jersey, and we are practically worlds apart. He tells me to keep in contact with him because, as he puts it, being away from me feels like that first car ride.

"What?" I was truly bewildered by this confession the first time he told me so—the night before his trip to New Zealand. "What do you mean, being away from me feels like—"

And he kissed me. It was the only way he could think of to shut me up. "It’s not hard. Figure it out."

The next day while he was on the plane, I thought about it. It was not easy, because my memory disposes of certain details that may be important after a period of time, but I managed to figure it out. For documentation and novel purposes, I repeat the memory as it stands here, for others to sift through, to figure out what in the world Samson was going on about. I promise that it makes sense.

On that day, Samson drove carefully and ideally, as if he had gone through driver’s education a million times just to get everything right. I couldn’t understand why he had put so much blame on driving, as I saw his skills fairly better than mine—he’d never come in close contact with a passing pedestrian, for instance, whereas I had almost run over a man in a wheelchair on my way to school once. This is why I take the school bus now.

But on the corner of 23^rd and Pierriot, we came to a red light—and passed it, going steady with our speed limit, but passing it cleanly all the same. The very first thing I did after we ambled across the no-go zone was check for police or angry drivers. Upon finding none, I turned to Samson, making sure I had a very confused look on my face, like the kind that actors and actresses must perfect for the obligatory scene in which one kills another for no reason at all. Why the big deal, you may ask? Taking my personality into account, it really may not seem so, but I am very in tune to driving rules, and am always absolutely apalled when anyone breaks them.

I had thought of Samson taking a dagger out of nowhere (just like the whistle) and stabbing Purchase many times. Apparently this image worked well with my facial features, for when Samson caught sight of me he turned pale instantly.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, running a hand through his hair to shake it off, "why are you looking at me like that?"

"You just ran a red light," I screeched, pointing back to the offending corner. "It switched to red seconds before we’d gotten to the light and then you just passed it. Did you even see it? Did you?"

Still pale, I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the passing shade of the side-road trees. "Oh, yeah."

"Yeah, what? You saw it and you passed it? On purpose? What?"

"See, um, that’s why I hate driving so much," he mumbled, avoiding eye contact with me—so different than before, but then again, I guessed he wasn’t expecting me to exhibit such an outburst. "I miss red lights a lot. It’s a habit of mine."

My jaw dropped. "A habit?"

"I mean," he quickly said, to cover up his mistake, "it’s not a good habit. It’s just, I look more at the road than at the sky, because that’s what I was told to do, years ago in Driver’s Ed, so sometimes I miss lights and I pass the red ones, just because I don’t catch them fast enough."

That’s so stupid, was the first thing that ran through my mind, but I knew saying so wouldn’t be such a good idea. It was, after all, our first meeting, even though I’d forgotten that long past already. "You could get killed," I stated firmly, turning away from him and crossing my arms across my chest, "all because your reactions aren’t fast enough. This is why you take the bus, isn’t it?"

He nodded. "Well, yeah. I don’t have to worry about it, then."

We sat in silence from then on, me still angry at how little a thing could potentially damage someone’s life so easily, and he trying to concentrate on the traffic a little more (for my sake only, he confessed later). As we neared Vermont, he asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.

"St. Abernathy’s, if you know where that is," I replied, understanding fully how one could miss the fact that the poppy-drowned mound was a school and not a sanitarium. "It’s down the road, that big…"

"I know," he said, and I noticed his tone was a little subdued—in fact, he sounded almost shocked. "Can I ask why?"

"No," I said, a little scared. He looked a little wary now, as if offering me his hand and a ride was a mistake, and he would now have to suffer awful consequences. (Oh, how little I knew of him then!) "I mean—why are you asking?"

He shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. I noticed his grip on the steering wheel had become tighter. "It’s nothing. Weird place, that’s all."

"I know what you mean." Really, do I know, I finished silently.

551 Vermont came faster than I expected—and when it was time for me to leave, it was harder than I expected. Here I was, sitting in a nice car with a nice guy who I’d never even met before. What could I have said? Thanks for the ride, and then never see him again, like I was using him? But he was the one who offered! I was still frustrated as we pulled into the miniscule parking lot littered with poppy petals, and when he turned off the ignition and turned to me, I look up at him angrily.

"Um," he said, retreating back into his own seat. I realized he had been reaching over me to unlock my door. "Sorry."

"Oh," was my feeble reply. I could feel my face getting warm, and I knew it was another one of those times that I hated being a soft thinking and delicately made woman. Curse the lesser sex, indeed. "No, it’s not your fault."

Taking this as approval, he leaned over me once again to unlock my door. For a split second, I smelled eau de businessman: slick oily smoke from bars, a hint of alcohol from too-late nightclubs and expensive cologne to try and cover it all up. But he pulled back quickly, the lock only having been a latch and Samson having been the politest guy ever, and I lost that feeling of infatuation, the feeling of being in the dark.

"Do you need a ride back? I don’t live far from here," he said, looking out onto the not-really-there grounds of St. Abernathy’s Non-Correctional School for Girls. "Since the bus station is closed, and all."

"No, I’ll be fine. I have a ride back," I lied.

He turned to me, looking a little apprehensive. "Then I’ll be seeing you."

There was no other word for the situation than awkward. Quickly I got out of the car, trying not to kill myself by doing so, as that is how I usually ended up with car doors. "Try not to die," I called by way of farewell. "You’re a pretty nice guy. It’d be a shame."

And I shut the door, leaving his words unsaid. I heard them muffled through the window, but that was all. As far as I was concerned—which was really not a lot—that was the last time Samson and I would be in such close quarters. I forgot about him soon enough.

It was the tingly realization that I was finally in the same place as Purchase, breathing her air, stepping on gravel that she herself had walked on, that allowed me the same adrenaline I’d lost minutes before to shoot through my body once more. I went from relaxed and even listless to hyper and jumpy in mere nanoseconds. With amazing speed, I ran from the parking lot to the backfields of St. Abernathy’s—a short run, but it took me a long time to catch my breath.

When I reached the green—not really green, but I am going on the brochures here—I stopped and panted, ashamed at my total lack of physical endurance. My hands on my knees and my head light, I looked around and saw nobody. The dry, yellow fields full of weeds were completely empty. Catching my breath in my throat, I began to panic: was I too late? It was only half past noon, surely Purchase would have waited, or if she had left, I would have seen her in the empty distance. But I saw no one; no matter in which direction I turned to look.

I bit my lip. Was it over already? Had I lost my first and very possibly last chance? The organs within me oozed defeat and rejection; and I slid down to the spiky earth, the cold fence behind me my only support.

Just as I was thinking how much the emo-kid scene became me, I felt something probing the back of my neck. It was cold and sticky, and…it was giggling. I immediately jumped up from my dejected position and looked around frantically, ready to kill (in figurative terms) whatever thing had crept up on me.

"You’re early," said the attacker. I instantly ruled out insects and mute serial killers, and then turned around, trying to make sight of whoever it was.

"Who’s…?" I mumbled, turning back to the fence.

And in the middle of that little square of dead wildlife, wearing bright colors as if to rub in my face how completely oblivious I could be—there stood Purchase, hands behind her back, (fake red) bangs swinging flirtatiously in her eyes. Once again every inch of my fragile anatomy imploded, and as we stood there looking at each other, I wondered if she could sense that I was hyperventilating on the inside.

With one finger, she beckoned me towards her, a smile spreading slowly across her soft features. She looked almost devilish, almost as if she was calling me over to devour me with her brightly painted lips. But I didn’t care. Let her have her way with me, I thought, and with a burst of pride that was almost rancor I threw open the fence gate.

And just like in the movies, things slowed to a complete stop and the heroine is allowed time to dig deep into her skull, pulling questions out of nowhere, coming to conclusions that no one else can see. What was I expecting on that day? Life, liberty, and/or the pursuit of happiness? A girlfriend, or a lover? Hell, or heaven? Thinking about it now, I know that I wasn’t expecting anything. All I knew was that I wanted Purchase. Where, I don’t know or don’t remember—perhaps in my arms, or standing behind me, breathing down my neck, or in my bed, or in my mind (and she succeeded in that). I opened that gate not because I wanted something I could deal with in my spare time, but because I wanted someone who would tell me what to do when I didn’t know—something that had the potential to break me, because I was tired of being the one who broke things.

(The allowance of thinking time is over, and my movie returns to normal speed. I am waking, it seems…and now I am walking…)

"As I said," Purchase purred, taking my hand in her cool, bony fingers as I neared her, "you are early, my dear."

(It did not take me long to learn that Purchase could sensualize anything, if she so put her mind to it. I don’t even think she needed to concentrate—it was an involuntary reaction, second only to breathing. "Darling, pass me that cake," she would think she was saying, only it would come out in a low, deliberate hiss so that everyone within five feet of her felt the same chills along their spine that everyone else was. As it was then, the word early came out eaaaarly, like the vernacular of a witch, and I wanted to die…just die.)

But her accusation made me dizzy nonetheless. "What do you mean, I’m early?" I asked her, looking at her watch. It was quarter ‘til one. "You said noon, didn’t you?"

She laughed. "Heavens, no." Squeezing my fingers in her hands, she pulled me towards the back door of the art room. "I specifically wrote down one o’clock. I remember exactly. Maybe it smudged."

It hadn’t smudged—the handwriting was as clear as day, the ink precise and thin. But I decided to play along. Common sense was outdated, according to my subconscious standards.

"Yeah, maybe," I said meekly. "So where are we going?"

"In here," Purchase said smoothly, unlocking the metal door and then pushing it open. "You’ve been in it before. My room."

Never actually having gone on a real date before, I had no idea how to act. I had a general idea—you don’t get to be seventeen without knowing the basic facts of ‘going together’—but actually living it was a different matter entirely. As soon as we were both in the art room (well, now I had my doubts as to what the room actually was), and the door was securely locked behind us, we stood together, saying nothing, showing everything. I was nervous. She was complacent. I was sweaty. She was perfectly composed.

"Soah," I mumbled, and then swore. I’d meant to say so, uh, but it came out soah. Like the ebonics version of ‘soar’. It seems as if that day, I’d lost my ability to put together words properly.

Purchase giggled.

I tried once again to speak correctly. "So, um…" That started out well, so I went on, pronouncing every word like I’d learned it yesterday. "Why is this your room?"

"I live here," she answered, not batting an eyelash.

"Oh yeah?" I didn’t believe her. She was cracking her knuckles now, and averting my eyes. My people skills were at it again.

"Yes, really. I was disowned as a teenager," Purchase told me, loud and with better diction than I could have ever mustered. "St. Abernathy’s took me in when I was fifteen. Ever since, this has been my home, and I’ve been trying to reform…"

It was like watching a bad documentary. The ligthing was mediocre, the script mild, and the story bland. It was because of my own insensitivity that I refused to believe Purchase’s story; my own ignorance that created this very first rift in our relationship. I just thought she was high, but she was completely and utterly sober. I’d thought she was merely telling a story, but she had chosen to expose her life to me. In short, I am a horrible person. Do not let anyone deny it to you.

"Okay, wait," I finally cut in, tired of hearing what I thought was complete bullshit. "You’re telling me that you were disowned by your family, so you came crawling to this place, and they took you in, and now you live here? In this room? I thought this was an art room. At least, that’s what they told me…and are you high?"

She smiled, only this time, it was sad. Seeing such a change in Purchase-atmosphere immediately made me feel like a bitch: had I done this? Was I the reason for that sad smile? It hurt me, it really did.

"Sorry," I mumbled, truly apologetic. I shuffled around to her side, pulled out a stationary metal stool from underneath one of the tables and tugged on her sleeve. When she turned to me, her face was so doe-like—eyes so wide against her frame of red—that the urge to kiss her was nearly overpowering.

But as most things go, I had to resist. "Sit down," I said to her instead, offering the chair in place of my lips. Thankfully, she accepted this choice and straddled the metal circle, while I went and sat on the one across from it. It wasn’t much of an improvement to our simple little date (my pathetic first, and probably her more experienced zillionth), but at least we were at eye level.

"So keep on going." I was ashamed for my earlier disbelief. Surely if she had dragged me all the way down here she wouldn’t be telling me lies, was my more thought-out reaction. Surely if the story had been purely mythical, she would be laughing by now.

Before speaking, she reached across the empty space that stretched between our chairs and took my hands—still warm—in hers, still cold. "I have this thing about contact," she explained to me, running her fingertips over my palm lines. "It drives me crazy if I don’t have any physical connection with the person I’m talking to."

It explained future mishaps of Purchase grabbing the people she was talking to in public, causing bouts of molestation accusations, but I could not find any prior evidence. I didn’t care, though. Her hands were soft. "Okay."

So then she continued her story. Abandoned—no, not abandoned, just ‘dropped off’—at the age of fifteen, St. Abernathy’s took her in as a student and an art teacher. She went to school on weekends, with the adults, learned the same things that everyone else her age did but all she was to them was a more advanced delinquent, one who had done something so horrible that she had to be removed from the other masses and put into the congregation of the grown-ups. The reason that Deidre and Sandy (DG #s 1 and 2, she told me, quite amused at my made-up labels for them) knew her was because they smoked together on the weekdays. Or, as Purchase put it—‘sometimes we smoke, and sometimes we do…other things."

"Do the teachers know about this?" I asked, my voice foreign to my own ears. It had been awhile since I’d spoken.

"Of course they do, but they won’t say anything as long as we don’t cause scenes." Her face contorted into that same melancholy state and I wanted again to kiss it away. "Last time you came—I caused a scene." And she laughed.

"Did you get in trouble?"

"Oh, no. I’m not a regular student, so they don’t treat me like one. They just took away my cigarettes."

And she gestured to her empty cardigan pocket—where she kept her smokes, I guessed.

"They call it a non-correctional facility, but anyone who really steps in this place isn’t fooled," she breathed, her little girl’s voice sounding like a hush-hush secret. "We’re all different, just like in a normal school, only we’re all out and about, like in a real correctional institute." Her fingernails began to wander around the inside of my wrist. I imagined my veins popping, blood pouring out everywhere. "Deidre’s in here for drugs. So is Sandy. NyQuil—" That one didn’t have a real name, apparently. "—Is in here for stealing. I’m the worst one of all, though."

I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. I tried to look her in the eyes, but I was too scared. So I focused on our intertwined fingers, instead. "Oh yeah?" I murmured, like I already knew that it must have been something dreadful. And in a way, that’s how I felt. But I tried to cover it up, tried in vain to remove my foreshadowing thoughts. "Tell me."

With deliberate slowness, as if all the frames in our movie for two had been poisoned, she leaned towards me and put her smoking gun, hush-hush lips to my ear. "I’m a filthy whore," she whispered, and all the blood in my body immediately rushed to my head.