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Rain. It figured. We came all the way to the middle of the desert and we got there the one day it rained. None of us had umbrellas, of course, so we huddled under the awning at the Reno bus terminal, the fifteen of us taking up the whole platform with our piles of personal luggage and lab equipment, the sorriest-looking herd of scientists I'd ever seen. Fortunately no one outside our group needed the space.
When we were presenting our tickets, Carlos had asked to see a schedule just to double-check that we were on the right time. The lady at the ticket booth had looked at him like he had two heads when he told her where we were going. She had to dig the right schedule out of a filing cabinet because apparently no one ever took the 615 to Night Vale, only out of it. It was the only bus that would take us there and it only came once every two hours, so we collectively shrugged and sat down.
Two hours passed, and then another, and the rain pounded ever harder. Hiro and Mia went to the vending machines and practically emptied them, returning with armfuls of soda and chips that we all passed around as Rochelle and Carlos and I reminisced about our early days together. About how Rochelle introduced herself to me in first-year chem by gently informing me that the Bunsen burner had just set my hair on fire (I haven't worn it long since). About how hard we giggled when Carlos pointed out that certain pieces of our lab equipment bore the brand name “Arlington Standard Seismograph”. About group cram sessions and fudging our methods and spending late nights on the quad, staring at the stars and telling each other our hopes and fears. I miss those days sometimes, even though I wouldn't change what I have now for the world. Nostalgia doesn't have to equal longing, I think. I think my nostalgia is more of an appreciation for the past, for all the ways my life could have gone where I never met my best friend and my girlfriend and never found this town I'm proud to call home, but somehow I did, and that is the most remarkable thing in the world.
“Hey, Latoya,” I said, gesturing towards Carlos, “did I ever tell you the story about the time this guy got drunk during finals week, wore a hula skirt and put-OOF!” I was cut off by Carlos elbowing me in the gut.
“Shut up, Dave,” he said. “We agreed to never bring up the helium incident again.”
Latoya raised an eyebrow in confusion. I winked at her and made a note to myself to tell her about it when Carlos wasn't around.
If we'd known on that day what we know now, we might have seen rain in the desert as a sign. A small bit of oddness to warn us about the world we were about to enter. If we'd known then what we know now, we might have done something to mark the occasion. It would be the last day of normalcy all fifteen of us would share, the last day in which the scariest thing we had to worry about was grant money running out and not, say, having your skin eaten by sentient moss. Five of our members would end up packing up and going home within the first two weeks of research, fearing for their lives and their sanity. Four more never saw the outside world again. The six of us who have survived this long keep going because we love this town, with all its danger and nonsensical rules and frustrating refusal to be explained.
None of us sitting in the rain that day could have had any idea just how much our lives were about to change. All we knew was that there was apparently some really unusual seismic activity for us to study, that no one in our group could find out any info about Night Vale (Googling the place just turned up a black screen with red text that said TABOO repeatedly), and that currently the awning was doing a horrendous job of keeping the rain off of us.
Mia caught the sight of headlights to her left and pointed. “Hey, the bus is coming!” she said. We all stood and started to gather our things until the bus got close enough to read the route sign. “No, that's the 612,” said Pasquale with a sigh as it pulled onto another platform.
“By my count,” said Carlos, looking at his watch for what must have been the twentieth time, “our bus is now.... three hours and eight minutes late.”
We all grumbled and sat back down and kept waiting, wondering what could possibly be so interesting about some podunk town to be worth all this trouble.