Moving On

On the way to the station, the bus rocked down the path of stones and stomped-on twigs and the house with the brick-red roof. There was no one on the porch waiting to see the bus pass, waiting to glimpse Anna’s face in the passing windows, no light or hole in the curtained windows. Beside the curtain stuffed into the side of Anna’s seat, her one eye turned. She dropped the curtain, frowning.

She passed 99 Speedmart, green, a copy-paste of a heartless franchise, but misty with the memories of running in and out as children. On mornings when she realised she’d forgotten to order lunch from the school office, she would rush here, order a pack of cereal and a gurgling bag of milk cartons, and her friends would be beside her, promising to follow even when she’d only forgotten to order lunch.

Further down the road was the red-rimmed front of a restaurant. The walls were smooth and bright, so few were their customers. The air inside had an untouched purity, the music heavy as if to stuff the atmosphere with the artificial weight of people. There were paintings all across one side of the restaurant, only three of them, but each large to flush the place with colour. The dishes were simple, bunched up into the centre of tiny plates, but light and enjoyable, so she and her friends came back one day, probably. Either way, the memory remained in that restaurant that they ventured into once or twice.

Their school was small, and on the works to becoming an official international school. The cafeteria was on the bridge of non-existent to preparing for operation, so most of the school hours were brightened in the middle with the afternoon sun, running from shop to shop, scouting for a good lunch, always accompanied somehow by a good long laugh stretching into the whipping air. She wasn't sure how it was that the laugh was always there each time, one way or another.

Her old school glided into the window frame and passed. Too many things floated beyond the concrete space of that school. Nothing in the bright, orange sign splayed across the building triggered a single memory, but that bright, orange sign that remained the same had her heart stretched and melted. Every day she got out of her mother’s car she looked up and saw that sign, between the sky and the glass doors.

After that, there was the road she took after school, going home. They crunched down that path, sometimes glassy and slick with rain, and she remembered running across the road in a hurry, hands over her head, down to the food stalls right there, sweaty with steam, puffing with the grilling of meat on burnt sticks.

She turned to her window, to the tiny orange speck swinging to the back of the bus. Gone. They passed a bunch of shop lots and roads blurred with cars, then stopped at a red light. She picked at her teeth. Her heart bumped once; something crawled through her neck like electricity. She shut her eyes and told herself this was nervousness about starting anew.

At the station, she considered missing the train. She stood very still on the platform. The train came, and people behind her stepped forward, and she could hear the hard, cut-out voices of corporate workers and thumping boots, so she went forward, onto the breathing floor, and through the tangle of upright bodies. As she waded through, her body shook; her bags stuck together and twirled and knocked into people, and she paused every few steps wondering if she had enough time to run back to the platform before the train took off.

She lowered herself into a seat, slowly. She grabbed a fistful of her jeans and stared at her protruding knuckles.

For the short time before the train left, she saw a lot of people she knew calling out to her, jumping into the window frame to catch her attention. She leaned into the window and their faces turned to strangers, nothing in their clothes or bodies belonging to people she knew. The train hummed and heaved and sighed down the tracks.

She pressed her cheek against the window, and it shook and squeaked. She threw her head back, but the back of her seat was too low, her head hanging off the back of her neck at ninety degrees. She thought of the family trip she had when she was eight, the five-hour car journey filled with bumps and heavy-lidded wakes and her head rolling instinctively to her brother’s shoulder, which he shook off and grunted. Her grandmother murmured into her ear, pulled her head over to her side, and she settled there and slept.

She got off the train at her stop, hailed a cab to her new apartment, knocked her luggage up each step to the lift and upon entering her bedroom, tore open the largest bag and pulled out a thin stack of pictures. She held the pictures in her hand and laid herself flat on the carpeted floor, not looking at them. She took most of those pictures herself; her grandmother was in one of them, and by merely holding them Anna saw her in the hat with two red peonies, bright like hearts. The wind and mist were thick behind her—or maybe that was Anna’s memory failing. Even so, she held her palm flat over the pictures until they were glued to her skin.

Her eyes rolled in her head. The ceiling glowed, pale sickly plaster.

She thought of her mother’s polka-dotted skirt breezing out of the doorway and the door shutting.

Her father had been sitting in that doorway when she left. She said to him, “In case you wonder, I packed everything.” Then: “I left the food I bought yesterday in the fridge.”

He helped push her luggage to the door as if it was merely one of her business trips, and Anna sat in the kitchen watching them, wondering if he was acting that way because she was there.

Their old ceiling looked just like this one.

She stared at it till it turned grey, and the streetlight outside whizzed on, basking the bare, plaster apartment in a sallow, crusty yellow, like something old.