“Are you sure I don’t need to call the police? You’re safe now, whoever did this to you can’t hurt you anymore,” Wendy said. It was nice to be in the company of someone who actually seemed to care for my wellbeing, even if I knew nothing about them. That said, I wasn’t about to tell her that this all happened because I got handsy with myself on a bus.
“I-it’s fine,” I said, still not fully recovered from the cold. “I j-just wanna g-go home.”
Wendy looked at me empathetically, recognizing that I wasn’t gonna talk about what happened to me. She still seemed like she’d prefer getting the authorities involved, but wasn’t going to do anything I wasn’t willing to.
“All right,” she said. “I was on my way back home from a friends house, but I’ll get you home first. Where am I taking you anyway?”
I told her the name of my college, and which dorm I was in, but the way she looked at me told me something was wrong.
“I’m not sure I know that one.” She paused a second, before reaching to hand me something. “Here, just put the address in my phone.”
I took it, and began typing it in. That’s when I realized just how stranded I’d been. Almost 500 miles?! Where the heck was this history camp? I was in a completely different state. Hell, I wasn’t even in an adjoining state. My shock was obvious, prompting Wendy to question me.
“Is something wrong?” she asked me. I just passed the phone back to her, and her eyes went wide. “What happened to you that you're stranded this far from home?”
I was still working on believing it. I figured the bus must have been driving at least somewhere near eight hours. If we’d stayed on the highway the whole time then even with stops it was entirely possible to go that far.
There was no way this girl would drive me that far, as nice as she had been. I felt like having another meltdown. Why was it that every time I seemed to be doing something right, the world just fucked me harder? I could call Alicia, but knowing her she’d just take her sweet ass time and not even bring me something to wear. Carrie would just end up making me streak a few new places. I didn’t even want to consider calling Lisa.
