Ghost Towns In The Ocean ☀︎ Ryden

8 | the president

july 16th

- uhh hey im high on meds and on vacation in beautiful california and covered in hives bc of an unknown allergy (most likely shellfish) so honestly theres no better time to update this (also the bus scene that takes place in this story happened to
me on a bus in downtown washington dc on the way to a melanie martinez concert. the old lady issue. itll make sense when you read)

this song is the president by snow patrol and its so calm and quiet and just. meaningful the lyrics mean so much i really really recommend this song. for real.

━ i've crashed to earth, but i'd fallen for so long that it was just relief

"Do you sell notebooks here?" Ryan was greeted with a sort of joking look from the worker lady, she wasn't taking him seriously and he wasn't necessarily taking himself seriously either. It was a paper craft store, what else would they sell? Individual sheets of loose leaf paper for a buck a piece? Now that he thought of it, Ryan could admit that it wasn't a bad business venture.

"Yes..." The worker lady said, obviously unprepared to deal with the chaos and confusion that was Ryan Ross.

"Where are they?" Arguably, it was a giant store and the worker lady wasn't providing any sort of guidance.

"Aisle eighteen," she said, and promptly disappeared. So Ryan searched for aisle eighteen, which was full of notebooks. Full of them. Now he was just overwhelmed because jesus, did there have to be this many notebooks? All he wanted was one he could write in with pens that didn't have thin pages which would let the ink bleed through.

An easy solution could be pencils, but Ryan thought pencils were for idiots who doubted themselves enough to have to erase their work and start over on what they had already did. Pens were for bold people with class. Markers were for assholes.

Ryan wanted a bright notebook because, though he was attempting to bask in his sadness and depression, there was some part of him that desperately wanted out. So he picked out a bright blue notebook with a German brand name and graph papered pages. Normally, he would like lined paper, but he was quickly coming to realize that squares could make his writing even more neat. Not that his handwriting was anything spectacular, but he was really losing his patience with the stupid typewriter, and there were no keys to press when it came to his own handwriting.

He took the notebook and then went searching for pens. It took far too long for him to find the actual aisle, and then took him even longer to pick out any. He ended up with a four pack of Faber Castell black pens, each with a different sized tip. Life was fine. Knowing that he had plenty of tape back home, Ryan bought his book and his pens and left the store. Once he exited back to the parking lot, he was once again hit with the realization that he would have to take a bus to get home.

Jesus.

When he first entered the bus, he was greeted by the sight of an old woman practically in the middle of the aisle, slumped over her walker so far that he was afraid she would fall chest first onto the ground. He had counted out his quarters for the bus driver, but now stood stock still in the middle of the aisle, wondering how he was supposed to get around this woman.

"Please step past the yellow line." The bus driver's voice came from behind him, and Ryan eased his heels over the piss yellow streak on the floor. The old woman's walker nudged his leg. He was terrified. Everyone was looking at him with these expectant facial expressions, as if he was supposed to do something about this woman. He stared at her. She did not stare back.

He held onto the handles on the ceiling and tried not to crash into anyone as the bus sped off. Ryan had no idea where his stop would be. At the next stop, more people than he was comfortable being run into by boarded, and some dude told him to "move, bro." The lady was so far out into the aisle at this point that she was basically taking up all of the space. Panicked and utterly clueless, Ryan crouched down and basically crawled under her walker. The gritty floor of the bus scraped his knees, and he stood up with all of the dignity that he could muster.