THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 12 - helpline

    I awoke to the sun painting the inside of my eyelids a deep coral. Outside the window, there were mountains in the distance. I tied my bad arm to my bag to keep it elevated while I slept, but now a numb tingly pain ran the entire length of it. I crawled my fingers up the tape, wincing at its soreness.

What have I done...

I told myself as soon as we got to Denver, I'd find a drug store and wrap a proper bandage around it and it would be fine after that. It's just a little cut, that's all. All I cared about was that I could still busk that day if I had to.

Other people on the bus were waking up, too. I scanned the conversations until I found a set of voices I could lock onto. The ones that stood out the most belonged to the two men in their forties, seated across the aisle from me. They were talking passionately. One was big and slightly balding, wearing a black windbreaker with a golf shirt underneath, and the other was as skinny as a pin, sporting a thin, silver chain necklace, just like the one my brother used to wear in high school, and a goatee that matched his jet black hair. That's what we'll call him for now: Goatee. Whatever gel he had put in it had worn off during the long bus ride, making the top of his head look like a porcupine who'd been out in the rain.

"What did you type in?" Goatee asked, looking down at his phone.

"Just google Millwright Mine," said the bigger one, looking over his friends shoulder. "Click news."

"Here it is." He put on his too-small glasses in order see the screen better and then lifted out of his chair to look to the front of the bus. He looked back down at his phone, then back to the front. "Aw, fuck you Pete," he groaned, tossing a five dollar bill at his friend.

"Punk cares more about damn rocks than people making an honest living. He's not even from there, why the fuck did he care?" argued Pete aimlessly, as he tucked the bill into his wallet.

"If I was your cousin, I'd beat the shit out of him," said Goatee. "Getting laid off because of what some anti-capitalist scum did, I'd lose it on the guy..."

"Hell, I'll lose it on him now," said Pete."Beat some sense into him. Daddy obviously didn't do it."

Goatee continued reading on his phone. "Says here there were others. That's how he got out. Some other kid confessed."

"Nah, he obviously did it. Look at him. The kid who fessed was probably talked into it. Probably thought it would make him some kind of dirt-bag royalty to sacrifice himself for their King."

"King?"

"They connected him back to other attacks. He's good at what he does so they couldn't prove it, but it's obvious. That's why his sentence was going to be so long," Pete explained.

"How long?"

"Six years is what the news was sayin'."

"Six years for lighting a fire? Holy shit!"

"That's nothing," countered Pete. "If only there was a janitor in there when it happened...then he'd be locked away for forty plus."

"Yeah, I don't know Pete..."

"It's what he deserves." Pete was showing no effort to keep his voice down at this point. It was like he wanted everyone on the bus to know that he was angry and passionate about something. Some people are just proud to have an opinion, I guess.

I followed his glaring eyes over the rows and suddenly it became clear who they were talking about. The guy who was reading when I first got on was now sitting lower in his seat with his hood up.