A few years ago I had a history teacher who I believed to be the most intelligent person I would ever come into contact with. Not only did he know everything there was to know about the subjects he taught, but he also had a working knowledge of nearly every other topic in existence. And he never hesitated to impart a random tidbit of his vast encyclopedia of knowledge to his class to break apart the monotony of taking notes.
One such fact struck me now; a trivial piece of knowledge in comparison to everything else he had taught us that year.
Back when the Freedom Riders had tried to end some of the widespread segregation in the South, they rode interstate buses into some of the worst affected Southern cities to try to force compliance and change by bringing attention to the issue. And while change did come slowly in response to their efforts, many buses were attacked and bombed in the meantime, and the rides were often not without causalities.
One of the worst attacks against a bus occurred in Anniston, when a Greyhound Bus was assailed by a mob and burned before it could even complete its route.
While the fact had little to do with my current situation, I couldn’t help but recall it if only for the one minor detail which now did hold a place in my life.
The Greyhound Bus.
I never expected to find myself riding a Greyhound Bus, or any interstate bus for that matter, and I most certainly never expected to find myself riding one with the intentions to meet someone I cared about to the point of loving, but had never actually seen in person.
I didn’t even know Sato’s real name.
I probably should have asked her that.
Looking back, the sheer number of emails we sent back and forth felt as if it numbered in the thousands. But in reality, I doubted we had even reached fifteen. And there was still so much I had wanted to ask but couldn’t bring myself to type up.
I really had regressed.
I could confess to her, but I couldn’t ask her for a simple name.
Not that she would have told me anyway, we were just strangers outside of the game.
That much had quickly become clear as soon as I left the comfort of the game world behind for the plain and uninviting format of an email client.
After an initial awkward exchange where we both apologized for our respective mistakes without actually mentioning the root cause of those mistakes, we confirmed that we were who we claimed to be, because you could never be too certain, and then, surprisingly, actually agreed to a meeting.
Not that I had anything else going on.
Not that I would ever miss a chance to meet Sato in real life.
After divulging our relative locations, we decided to split the difference and meet in the middle, resulting in a total travel time of about three hours for each of us. Which seemed best to me anyway, because meeting in a location unfamiliar to both of us would at least present us with another similarity aside from our gaming habits. And aside from the latter, I wasn’t sure what we would have to talk about.
I had never done anything like this before.
And of course I hadn’t begun to doubt my decision until I had paid for a ticket and boarded the bus, either.
It’s not that I couldn’t drive; I just didn’t trust myself to be behind a wheel when my hands had yet to stop shaking.516Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1j73EZT3sA
I had made the decision to go myself, and as an adult it was mine to make. But the difference between seventeen and eighteen seemed strikingly small when reflected on, and it hadn’t been long since I had made that leap anyway.
You made your decision, so stop making excuses.
Nothing I could think of could stop the panic that was rising inside me.
What if my parents who so rarely came home suddenly took off and found me missing? And what if I hadn’t locked the door behind me? Or the oven had been left on? Any seemed probable. But they were all just lies I had invented to cope with my own lack of information.
The Sato I knew in-game was an entirely different person out of it. That was true of any player. I didn’t even know what she looked like or sounded like, or if she was even female. The last one seemed particularly important now that I thought about it. Lying isn’t hard online; it’s as easy as breathing for some.
But Sato’s own words came back to me, from the last email she had sent to me before our plans became sent in stone.
Don’t worry, R, I have a feeling everything will work itself out alright.
I calmed, if only for a second. Then the intercom crackled to life overhead and the driver announced in a bored-sounding voice that the next stop, mine, was only ten minutes away.
I hoped that the ten minutes would last an eternity. That’s what they would feel like anyway.
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