{"id":5361,"date":"2013-04-22T00:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T04:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=5361"},"modified":"2013-05-07T10:22:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T14:22:04","slug":"scratch-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/scratch-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Scratch-Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scratch_Off_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The uniformed driver stands in front of gate 10 and wrings his hands. \u201cThe bus is full,\u201d he says, then puts his palms up like two little stop signs. It is Thanksgiving morning and the gritty-eyed travelers still waiting to board grumble with frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s overbooked,\u201d he explains with a shrug. \u201cThe next bus leaves at five.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frustration boils over and grumbles rise into shouts and curses. There is a commotion near the head of the queue, people screaming, elbowing one another. I watch one girl in particular from my seat on a bench at gate 11. She is not like the rest; no anger, no obscenities, just a wide yawn which she covers with the back of her copper tan hand. She looks Mexican; at least I think she looks Mexican, with these prominent cheekbones I can\u2019t stop staring at. Maybe she doesn\u2019t understand that the bus she is waiting for is overbooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour bus is full,\u201d I sit down next to her. I speak slowly and with caution. I figure she doesn\u2019t speak English.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d she says in perfect English. She rests her feet on the suitcase beneath her.<\/p>\n

\u201cMine won\u2019t be,\u201d I point to Gate 11. Only a few people sit on a long, lonely bench. One guy is real shifty looking. He is wearing a PennState hat and has a tattered green duffle bag cradled in his arms from which he has been removing prescription bottles and popping pills. His face is pockmarked with broken blood vessels, all buggy eyed and confused, breathing heavily. I wonder if he has looked in the mirror recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are you headed?\u201d she asks after an uneasy pause, during which I pull two mini bottles of rum from my coat pocket and pour them into my half finished Coke. I offer her some, and she takes the bottle and sips.<\/p>\n

\u201cErie,\u201d I say. \u201cMy parents still live in that beat old town.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it pretty much sucks,\u201d I tell her straight. \u201cThere\u2019s like a foot of snow already.\u201d<\/p>\n

She nods and scrapes at her black finger nail polish with a set of keys. Glossy flakes fall to the floor. It reminds me of the scratch-off lottery tickets my grandma used to play. The last time I was in Erie was the day before she died. I\u2019d been putting off visiting her in the hospital. It\u2019s something about that antiseptic smell and seeing all those human bodies falling apart. To me, once the doctors admit you to the hospital for the last time you are already dead. My mom had called and said Grandma wasn\u2019t doing too well, her vitals were vanishing. She said I needed to stop thinking about myself and make a trip up to see her before she passed on. When I got to the hospital she was in and out of consciousness propped up in the ICU with all those tiny plastic tubes projecting from her veins, trying to shrink the tumor bulging inside her brain, painfully slowing the inevitable. She was floating in and out of consciousness, talking a lot of nonsensical gibberish. The nurse said that the tumor was pushing against the prefrontal cortex and that was why she wasn\u2019t able to speak very well. But before she slipped away she was able to hand me a scratch-off and guaranteed it would be a winner. It wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is your bus headed?\u201d I ask the girl, jealous at those nails for being more interesting than me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean where is my bus headed without me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, well, your next bus leaves at five. That\u2019s what I heard the other driver say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard him,\u201d she says. \u201cMy ears work just fine.\u201d Her voice is tired and growing distant, but she smiles. There is vulnerability in that smile. \u201cI\u2019m headed to St. Louis to see my cousins.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Thanksgiving?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the plan. I won\u2019t get there until midnight now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I tell her I\u2019m sorry then pull a couple books from my backpack, pick one up and flip through the pages, then pick the other up and flip through its pages and make a couple notes in the margins with a pen. I want her to ask about one of them so we\u2019ll have more to talk about. Maybe she\u2019s read one of them in high school or something.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were staring at me earlier,\u201d she says instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched you,\u201d she says. \u201cI was wondering what a white boy was doing waiting around a dumpy bus station.\u201d She looks down and examines a small stain on her jeans and rubs at it with the palm of her hand, those chipped nails sticking straight up.<\/p>\n

I look around and notice that the only other white guy is that creep in the stained white PennState hat with his opiate care package. I turn back and look her in the eyes. They are big and brown and don\u2019t say anything, except, in a way, they are trying to say everything. They seem to scream: I\u2019m cold! I\u2019m tired! I\u2019m lonely! All the human vulnerabilities are there, and for a second I feel like I\u2019ve known her forever. I wonder if my eyes say the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t own a car. This dumpy bus station in my only way home,\u201d I explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never met a white boy who didn\u2019t own a car. You sure you\u2019re white?\u201d She reaches over and scratches the skin of my arm with her nails like it might scrape away and reveal a different color beneath.<\/p>\n

She laughs. So I laugh too, you know, to even things up. But I\u2019m not really sure why we are laughing because I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s a joke. Maybe we are laughing for different reasons. She keeps scratching at my arm and we both keep laughing.<\/p>\n

I hear someone calling for boarding at Gate 11. It sounds distant and for a moment I consider missing my bus to stay seated with her on the bench.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my bus,\u201d I stand up and wave awkwardly.<\/p>\n

\u201cBye,\u201d she says and waves back with one hand bending her fingers like she is crinkling up a paper ball. She goes back to picking at her nail polish then covers a yawn of gargantuan proportions with her palm.<\/p>\n

I pause before getting on the lonely bus and look down at where she scratched my arm. Red marks streak up my skin in a way that tells me I\u2019m no winner.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

T.C. Jones is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and is currently the director of\u00a0the Jam2Jam literary and art series\u00a0based in\u00a0Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in\u00a0the Monarch\u00a0Review,\u00a0The New Yinzer, and won the TAR Award\u00a0for Fiction in\u00a0The April Reader. He is currently working on a\u00a0collection of short stories examining Rust Belt Culture which includes the short story “Scratch-Off.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The uniformed driver stands in front of gate 10 and wrings his hands. \u201cThe bus is full,\u201d he says, then puts his palms up like two little stop signs. It is Thanksgiving morning and the gritty-eyed travelers still waiting to board grumble with frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s overbooked,\u201d he explains with a shrug. \u201cThe next bus leaves at five.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frustration boils over and grumbles rise into shouts and curses. There is a commotion near the head of the queue, people screaming, elbowing one another. I watch one girl in particular from my seat on a bench at gate 11. She is not like the rest; no anger, no obscenities, just a wide yawn which she covers with the back of her copper tan hand. She looks Mexican; at least I think she looks Mexican, with these prominent cheekbones I can\u2019t stop staring at. Maybe she doesn\u2019t understand that the bus she is waiting for is overbooked. READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":5502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,200,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5361"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5577,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5361\/revisions\/5577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}