Dana stared at the lines on the college ruled paper, lines which begged to be filled by something. Nothing came to mind though, as she sat in the rather uncomfortable seat on the bus. The slow, quiet hum of the wheels on the road- punctuated by thumps as it hit the occasional pothole- could not have been more distracting if dogs had been chewing at her feet. She sighed and looked out the window.

The scenery outside was flat, boring. Kansas, in other words. Uninspiring in others still. She rummaged in her bookbag, putting the clipboard away and pulling out a book.

Sitting alone by the window, she started to read.

---

Late into the night, the bus was still moving. Dana thought she was possibly the only one still awake. It didn't really matter, she never had slept much, and certainly never on a bus. She was just uncomfortable sitting up, and moreso, sleeping where others could see her. It was a weird little quirk, but one she had always had. Even when she had been living with her fiancee, she could never sleep in the same room as him, not for any real length of time.

But that was in the past. For now, she was just trying to make the time pass.

"Excuse me," a melodic voice asked from the aisle. Dana looked up to see a young woman, short, a bit overweight, but otherwise nondescript. "Oh, so you are awake. Mind if I sit here?"

"Free country," Dana replied, her soft, light voice ringing in the silence of the bus."Thanks. It's just too quiet in here at night."

"That's the point of night, neh? To be quiet in."

"Maybe. Maybe it's just a different time to be alive."

"Right. While we're at it, winter is just a time when there's free ice on the ground."

The woman looked at her a little oddly, "Bitter much?"

Dana looked up from her book and glared at her. "Pry much?"

"Honestly? Yes. I find people often need to talk about things they don't want to talk about."

"How... psychobabble." Dana brushed a strand of her brown hair away from her eyes. "And how entirely presumptuous. I assume you're the one you think everyone should talk to?"

The woman shrugged. "Maybe. I just offer it to people who seem like they need it."

"Oh? And I need it?" Dana laughed. "Your senses are off."

"Perhaps. Maybe you just need to think about it."

Dana shook her head. "Maybe you just need to go away. If I want a psychiatrist, I'll pay for one."

The woman shrugged, then stood up. "Ah well, my name's Edith. If you need to talk, I'm riding all the way to the end of the line."

"Right. I'll look you up."

Then Edith was gone. Dana shook her head, then pulled out her clipboard and started trying to write again.

---

The morning came, finding Dana still awake. She was staring blankly at the still empty clipboard, trying to think of someway, something to write. It was a worthless effort, though. Nothing seemed to inhabit the spaces of her mind but blankness, blankness and things she was trying to leave behind. Things she didn't want to think about, that she most certainly didn't want to talk about.

That was all that was there, though. Rejection and fear and and sorrow, all the things she was running away from.

"Good morning," came that same damned all too happy voice from last night. "Get some sleep?"

"Oh yeah. Can't you tell from how wonderfully bright eyed and chipper I am?" Dana said dryly.

"I'll take that as a no."

"You'd be right."

"I still think you have something that you need to get off your chest."

"And I still think you need to mind your own damned business," Dana said, getting irritated.

Edith just sat down and looked at her across the armrest. "Trust me, if you talk about it, you'll be much happier. Maybe you can even get some sleep."

"Okay, this is just about as much as I can take. If I tell you, will you shut up and go the hell away?" Dana growled out.

"Sure. If that's what you want."

"Good, then you wanna know my whole story. I'll tell you what happened. For the past three years I've lived in New York with my fiancee. Little two bedroom apartment, nothing great, but we were happy. We both had our little quirks. I'm very much the definition of an artistic type. I do things in my own weird little way, but we were used to each other by then. Now, he was very much a business type, middle management." Dana dug into her backpack again and pulled out a picture of herself and her fiance.

She was on the left, smiling widely, her shoulder length brown hair shoved over the left side of her head, covering her left ear and eye. Her blue eyes shown brightly out of her rather thin face. She was slender, not terribly so, but enough so that people who didn't realize she was like that normally worried about her. Larry, though, was the very picture of a model manager. He had black hair, short slick and styled, with green eyes that shined over a pair of expensive sunglasses. She was dressed in a black shirt and black pants, with a trio of bracelets on both arms and seven ear rings running up her visible ear. He was dressed in what could be best described as business casual. White button down shirt, slacks, and, though not pictured, Dana remembered him wearing dress shoes. She'd been wearing sandals.

"This is Larry. We were engaged for a long time, never really able to set a date to get married, but we were in love. He was everything I wasn't. Wherever I rebelled, he conformed.. No one thought we'd stay together." Dana laughed a bit, even though she felt like crying. "We were mismatched as all hell, but it never mattered."

"Never mattered... then I caught him cheating on me. The cocksucker had been cheating on me for as long as we'd been engaged."

"So you broke up with him after you caught him with her?" Edith asked.

"I don't think you quite got what I meant when I said 'cocksucker.' I caught him with my older brother. He was dating me so that he could sleep with my older brother," Dana shook her head. "How sick is that? I mean, shit, if he'd've been banging a friend of mine, we'd probably be together still. But that?" Dana wiped her eyes. "I couldn't fuckin' believe it. And after I caught him, I didn't stick around. I went home, grabbed my shit and left. Decided I'd go to California and try to start a new life there. I didn't even say good bye, but then, he didn't deserve it."

"That's one hell of a story."

"Yeah. It is. Now I've told you, so go away."

Edith nodded, then stood up. "All right. I hope you feel better."

"Go to hell."

Then Edith was gone again.

---

It was a day later when the bus reached California and Dana got off. She'd finally fallen asleep later that night, mostly because she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer, so she was rather refreshed when she got off the bus.

She was still down, but she was certain that there was something better waiting for her in California than she ever had, ever would have had, could have had, in New York. She strode out of the bus station with a renewed sense of purpose, she would make it here.

She would make it or die trying.

But first... she pulled out the picture of herself and Larry, the last physical reminder she had of him and looked at it one more time. Then she crumpled it up and shoved into the trash.

And she was gone.

Author's Note: This is an entirely unplanned second part to 'The Ride Through'. It's connected through Edith, but isn't really connected thematically. They are parts of the same story, so I put them together. Anyhow, I'm always trolling for prai- constructive criticism, so drop me a line, or just plain review. Anything. As per usual, be my e-mail addy. Feel free to e-mail me.