His seatmate slumps, head lolling for hours. There’s still paint on his hands from where he tagged the last bus station. He’s ready to leave his mark on the competition. Hopeful that he can create something here that will follow him back out into the world. He’ll be the next Banksy. No. He’ll be the first Atrius. （His real name is Kyle, and he hates it and everything Kyle was and could be. But he made the mistake of spelling Atreus wrong, so any chance he has of being googleable is taken by a health insurance company. A branding failure by someone determined to exist outside of brands.）
Christian fell asleep with a smile but secretly despairing. No one here seems like a good contact. His idea to do this for potential business opportunities seems as unlikely as actually winning the stupid thing. Maybe he’ll meet someone from Ox Extreme Sports. Everyone needs a good salesman. If he has to knock on one more door and smile while asking about solar panels…
YouTuber Sydney and app developer Logan connected in the forest in the way Christian wished he had managed to with someone. They’re going to make a new app together based on Sydney’s fledgling YouTube prank show. A national prank competition. It’s gonna be huge. They’re glowing even in sleep, secure in their imagined brilliant future. Dinners with Musk, charity summits with Gates, partnerships with Frye Technologies, and so many terrible pranks to get there.
Rebecca has priced out exactly how much it would cost to go from an A to a C. She thinks C is big enough. The agent she met with told her she had potential, but she’d need a little more up top for him to be interested. She’s never been able to settle on whether he meant professionally interested, or casting couch interested. C is the letter that will get her her dreams, and $50,000 is the number that will get her to the letter she needs. She sleeps with her EpiPen-filled purse clutched against her chest like a security blanket.
Rosiee just wants to sell some fucking jewelry. Just once. Just to prove she’s not the loser her mother always predicted she’d be. But silversmithing requires silver, and silver requires money. She’s been hiding from her ex for four years. She can hide for a week, no sweat. Her ear is so heavy with jewelry, it clinks against the window where her head rests. The hostess’s eye lingers over the snake twined around Rosiee’s wrist. So pretty. She actually has talent.
In the front of the bus is Isabella, the eternal intern. She’s interned at more places than she can remember. She wants face time with Ox executives, too. She needs a salary. God, she needs dental benefits. Fifty thousand dollars won’t even cover her student loans for the education she borrowed herself into the ground for. The incredibly expensive degree that has yet to land her a single income-producing job. She grinds her teeth in her sleep.
The bus bumps along the deep tunnel of night, sealing in fourteen desperate dreamers against the world.
Fourteen pairs of bleary eyes open. They assume the bus stopping is what woke them.
They’re wrong. The bus stopped hours ago. While they slept, half a dozen people climbed on, checked names and photos, marked them off on a list. The jewel-toned woman drifted up and down the aisle again, pressing her fingers to each forehead in benediction before rejoining the others outside of the bus. She insists on the pageantry of it, the formality, as they all bow their heads in a minute of silence. A few shuffle their feet, eager to leave. A few roll their eyes. And a few close their eyes in fervent gratitude. Then they’re done, and off to finalize all the logistics, or take their posts, or shut themselves inside their houses until the next meeting before it’s over at last.
With no evidence remaining of their visitors, the passengers stretch. Eleven phones are pulled immediately from pockets and purses. “No service?” Isabella asks, feeling panicky. What if she has a job offer? What if one of her infinite résumés has been flagged for potential? What if someone wants to connect on LinkedIn? No one has ever hoped to receive an email from that morass of despair more than Isabella.
“What provider do you have?” Jaden drapes his arms over the bus seat to best show off his biceps. He used to do these things deliberately, but now it’s reflex. He’s trained himself and his body to perfection.
“Verizon.”
“T-Mobile. Nothing.”
“AT&T,” beautiful Ava says, scowling. “Nothing either. Even the Ox Extreme Sports app we had to download isn’t working. I was going to go live on Insta.”
“What about the NDA?” Isabella says.
“Well, obviously I wasn’t going to say anything specific.” Beautiful Ava scowls.