Better Nate Than Ever Read Free Page B

counter you’re doing one heck of a job manning, to request a ticket out of here. It’s downright ludicrous, I’ll admit as much, but on the topic of my mom: She’s just in the bathroom.” Shut up, Nate. Shut up, Nate. “And I’m sure she’ll be out in just a moment, but she’s going through a bit of a stomach ailment and asked that I please take care of my ticket, alone, before she gets out. Because it could take quite a while.”
    The lady continues to eat potato chips. “Okay,” she says, not asking for Anthony’s ID or anything, selling me one ticket.
    One ticket to my dreams.
    Which costs fifty-five dollars not including tax, these days.
    And now I’m staring out the window at a familiar world zooming past, colors bleeding from grey (Pittsburgh) to bright red and blue (a car accident) to brown (somewhere thirty minutes outside of town). Libby shared a really good technique that is thus far working beautifully: Crumple up a bunch of Kleenex and put them on the seat next to yours, and nobody will sit next to you on long bus trips. Try it sometime, guys.
    At our first rest stop, only forty miles into the voyage, a man follows me off the bus and into the bathroom, standing right next to me at a urinal. For a moment I wonder what the best way will be to make myself throw up on him when he tries to kill me.
    My stomach is empty, after all.
    I finish up and turn around, not looking at him, race to the sink, then decide it will be better to have slightly dirty hands than to kill time until he kills me , and as I’m running to the exit he says, “You dropped this outside.” I turn around and he’s waving Libby’s manila envelope, which must’ve slipped from my bag.
    This man must be a New Yorker, returning home. Nobody ever helps me with anything in Jankburg, PA.
    I practice my smile next.
    From the time we leave the rest stop and make it to Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania and crawling with criminals, I practice smiling in the face offear. Anything could happen at this audition. I could forget my words; I could stutter my own name. But if my smile is firmly intact, if I can show that I’d be an ideal employee, someone who’d never cause a problem, maybe they’ll hire me just for the team spirit I’d bring. Twelve minutes into the smiling exercise, my jaw cramps. Underbites are not designed to be overworked or tested.
    I have two donuts, for comfort.
    A woman in front of me is listening to something loud on her headphones, trendy music that Anthony probably knows, and that would normally irritate me—but tonight, the distraction is pulling me out of my own terrified, self-doubting mind. Her head bops to the downbeat, hair cascading up and over her seat into my lap, and I wonder if New Yorkers have such big hair. Probably not. They probably all shave their heads or have discovered some other trend that is going to be totally intimidating and exciting.
    What if I have to get a temporary tattoo at the border, as we’re pulling in to New York Manhattan City Island? What if they stamp my hand like at the underage club Anthony goes to on weekends, and what if the ink is so dark on my pale, lifeless, grey-Jankburg hands that my mom immediately recognizes it: the stamp of a border crosser. Of a bad kid who snuck away.
    She’d kill me.
    No, she actually would. “Don’t try to run away from home or anything stupid. I’ll kill you if you get yourself killed.”
    Actual recent quote.
    Okay, I didn’t want to do this, but take a two-minute detour with me. You need to meet my mother. It’s time.

A Quick but Notable Conversation with Mom, a Week Ago
    I had both dogs on their leashes (Feather, of course, and Mom’s awful lap warmer, Tippy). We were breaking the front door when Mom appeared next to me, in her big blue parka. Uh-oh.
    “Lemme just walk you to the corner,” she said, “and you can take them the rest of the way down past the Kruehlers.’”
    Often when I’m walking Feather (alone), I pretend I