We are barrelling down American Avenue when the shuttle swerves again, throwing Missy up against the side of the van. She looks like she’s about to vomit, holding her purse in toward her stomach, and I can’t help but feel something.

Missy is who she is and I am who I am, as the van jolts to a stop, Missy folding over her bag this time, nothing but the seatbelt to hold her in place.

It’s a six minute ride from our hotel to the Mall of America and we’re nine minutes in, driver having circled around to the Outback Steakhouse before starting his regular route, cutting through the parking lot to pick up another rider. When the guy doesn’t show, the other party in our shuttle revolts. This one lady in the back—sixty-eight, seventy, or so—looks like she’s going to pass out if she doesn’t get to buy her Cinnabon now, now, now, tapping the backseat floorboard with her foot.

Over the dispatch, the operator’s cursing, wanting to know whose idea it was exactly to tell a hotel guest they’d pick them up there instead of at the lobby.

“I’m waiting,” the driver says, except he doesn’t, swerving around the corner of the Outback at 25 mph, nearly knocking down the take-out sign.

A streak down Old Cedar and two smashed flowerbeds later, here we are. Missy’s wanted to go to the Mall of America since she was a kid.

She is marrying my brother: I’m not that sure why. She’s not his type. Most of the women he’s dated are pretty and she isn’t exactly shy—just awkward—sitting on our sofa the night she met our mother, going through her hair—and when I say going through, I mean it. She had all of it pulled forward like she was the Addams Family Itt, examining strands piece by piece.

“So, Missy,” Momma said, “What do you like to do?” and Missy just sat there, sorting out the ones with split ends.

There are no salons in the Mall of America, that’s the one thing it’s missing, equipped with a theme park, a movie theater, a Crayola Experience, and a bookstore we will not visit. Missy’s bridal party is already waiting, having flown in the night before. “We’d like to get everything ready,” the MOH said to me on a call, “so don’t tell her we’re already here, it’s a surprise.”

I don’t know exactly what Missy thought when only I came to meet her for the van. Her friends live all over—San Antonio, Atlanta—so it had been just the two of us on the flight. She’d been quiet then too, but by the time we got to the lobby and no one else showed, her bottom lip had begun to quiver; she kept looking down at her phone.

Who almost cries at a Residence Inn? Or better yet, who has her bachelorette in a mall? Not telling Missy about the others had been easy, it meant I could simply not talk, and my preference is to keep my shut my mouth around her.

“I’m marrying this woman,” my brother had said, “and I don’t really care what you think.”

Fast forward three months, here we are.

“Y’all going to be at the entrance?” I text the MOH as the van reels its circumnavigate path in front of a red, white, and blue star statue.

“We’re here,” Missy says and I don’t say, “No shit,” because of the joy on her face. She’s elated—finally—living the dream, and I wonder if this glow is what my brother sees in her, if around him she looks this happy.

“Are you parking this thing or what?” says the woman in the back of the van as the driver flies right past the stop. The man next to her sighs and Missy’s face is falling.

Over the dispatch, the operator screams, “Outback, why aren’t you at Outback?” then tells the driver to haul ass—he does, turning us away from the mall.

“I’m calling corporate,” the woman yells, “I want off this thing now,” then down go the brakes, the brakes go down hard, and the van thrusts to its surprising stop.

Before I can stand, just as Missy starts to, the woman pushes through. She’s shoving and pressing and altogether making her way and it doesn’t really matter if the path is clear. Poor Missy gets sideswiped, the handbag goes flying, and I think this is a very bad day.

“Get up,” I mouth, then reach out my hand, but she’s cowering against the wall. “What are you doing?” I say, “Let’s get off this thing,” the woman by now gone enough. At this point, the driver yells, “Shit or get off the pot. I ain’t got all night,” while the dispatcher screams, “Outback! Outback!”

Well, that’s when Missy starts crying, silhouetted in her seat against a one-hundred twenty-nine acre mall. “Look,” I tell her, “Mall of America, right there,” stretching out my hand. I pick up her purse—thankfully zipped—and say the words “let’s go.”

But Missy is sweating with wet on her brow, there’s a tiny drop on her lip. Her face goes all pale and she’s breathing real shallow and I think back to the hotel, that if she’d looked in the lobby like a breakdown was coming, well, that break has finally come.

A basketcase, I think, that’s who my brother’s going to marry. She just can’t hold it together, and that’s when Missy begins to cry.

“Oh come on,” I say, pointing out the door. “The Mall of America—it’s right there,” and I can even see her bridesmaids, they’re walking out the front, “Look, it’s all your friends!”

But Missy just sits there, holding the ghost of her purse, then she pulls forward her hair.

“Fuck this,” says the driver, then hops on the gas, and I’m wondering if the mall has a doctor.

Meanwhile, my phone’s blowing up, text after text: “The Residence bus right???” and “Thought we saw u!!”

What kind of doctor does one even see for whatever the hell this is?

“Missy,” I say, “Hey,” I sit, “Slow down. Look at me. What’s going on?” not sure what to tell her, “That place is your childhood dream.” And that’s when she starts doing it—sorting her hair, sorting through it all—and I say, “Hey, take a deep breath,” then lie: “You’re doing just fine.”

“My purse,” she whispers, “Water,” and there I am going through this ten gallon thing, a monstrosity with a strap. My brother would never forgive me if she had a heart attack now.

“There,” I say, softening my voice, “There. That any better?” and she sips. She takes a deep breath then two others and then she sips again. “The shuttle will come back around, it isn’t that bad,” speaking to her like a mother, “The mall doesn’t close ‘til nine,” as the van rattles down its path toward the hotel again, jumping up and bumping over more flowers. “Just think,” I tell her, “it’s our first inside joke! You’re really my sister now. All these years later when we’re old, you’ll say, ‘Remember that bus,’” and Missy starts to laugh. She laughs and she laughs and she laughs some more and I wonder if she’s cracked. I wonder if she’s missed some meds.

He can’t marry her, I think, he’ll spend his whole life with crazy. That ride will never stop, but my brother meant it when he said, “It’s my decision. And if you can’t find a way to get along with her, this is it between me and you,” so I’m trying. I’m trying to get to know her, to marginally be friends. I should leave, I think, just get off at the next stop, let her make her own way to the mall, and that’s when Missy begins to shake.

“Alright, that’s it,” I scream to the driver, “You’re turning this thing around,” and he argues back and I argue with him and I say, “Look, can’t you see her? Now turn it around, take us back to that mall, before she falls out on here!”

And he does. He does so safely, he does so securely, as if the driver heretofore known had been possessed—demon excised, the real driver back, competent, capable, adept.

I pull out my phone and send all the texts: “We’re coming,” “Get ready for fun!!!!!!!” The van whips back around, I pull Missy to standing and dry her face with the back of my hand. “You can do this,” I say, much more to myself. “We’re going to have a good time.”

+++ 

Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit), was named one of the “best books of the century (so far)” by New York Society Library. Her work has appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, Salamander, MysteryTribune, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. A Sinking Fork, Kentucky native, she lives in New York. Get one of her stories delivered to your inbox every month by subscribing here: patreon.com/terenaelizabethbell.