I slammed into the wall as the train turned on the brakes, suddenly and painfully awake. Definitely not on my list of favorite ways to wake up. Blinking, not yet fully connected to reality, I sat up – and immediately hit my head on the ceiling. Dammit…top bunk. It would have been helpful to remember that a little bit earlier. Shooting a glare at the offensive ceiling, I rubbed the top of my head and looked down to see if Angie and Mel were awake; Katie was still snoring, just as atrociously as when I had tried to get to sleep last night. Yawning, Angie waved a vague good morning in my general direction. Mel turned over and buried herself underneath the cheap train pillow that had come with the cabin. I threw mine at her, just for effect.

No response; very disappointing.

The train had come to a complete stop by now. Confused by the fact that there were only trees outside the window and not a station, I reached to dig my watch out of my pocket only to realize that I was not, in fact, wearing any pants. That realization led to the further discovery that I was also not wearing a shirt. Very odd. I was sitting in a bunk bed in a tiny cabin on a train stopped somewhere in central or southern Spain, which was certainly not our destination, wearing nothing but the bare essentials of clothing.

I reiterate the fact that I was confused.

I rooted among my sheets in an attempt to locate my recalcitrant clothing. For my efforts, I was rewarded with the top leafy part of a half-eaten strawberry and a cap that looked like it might indeed fit Katie’s bottle of Apple Pucker. How the cap had ended up in my bunk, I had no clue; Jason had been hugging that bottle in Mel’s bunk last time I saw it. Ah, the drunk and their liquid friends. I remembered the strawberry, though – Katie had thrown it at Ross and he had gotten angry when it left a glaring red mark on the collar of his white shirt. And as I tried to calm him down, he had made some arbitrary comment about my eyes being the most unique shade of brown he’d ever seen. Explaining to a mostly-drunk person the difference between brown and hazel is not something I wish to repeat anytime soon.

My clothes, however, were not in my bunk. Fighting the onset of a slight headache, I flopped back down, trying to remember. However, the only thing I managed to remember was the fact that I had thrown my pillow at Mel, a thought that came to me as the downward momentum of my head met little resistance from the very thin mattress. The only good thing about that was that the unique thud and subsequent cursing managed to wake Katie up and stop her abominable snoring. She sat up and hit her head on the ceiling. I didn’t know whether to point and laugh, or just laugh.

Noticing that she, too, was in only her underwear reminded me of my quest. I contemplated the now doubly offensive ceiling for a moment, ignoring the illogicality of the fact that something that would hit me in the head would not be likely to help me find my clothes. Done uselessly contemplating, I turned on my side to question more likely sources.

“Hey, guys…got a couple questions for you.” Angie paused in mid-braid and looked up at me. Katie blinked dazedly. Mel made some sort of grunt from beneath the accumulated pillows, a sound I took to mean that she was listening. “First…where are my clothes?”

Angie, bobby pins in mouth, gestured towards the crammed mass of our suitcases and the pile of clothing on top. I saw what could only be my shirt, in plain sight, on top of suitcases, where it’s normal to keep clothes – it made entirely too much sense for me to process that early in the morning. I shook my head, as if that would help.

“We took them off after everyone left last night. It was like 100 degrees in here, remember?” Katie was fishing her clothes out of the pile. “Don’t you remember me telling you to take my pants off for me, ‘cause I was too drunk?” She giggled as she pulled on her shirt. “No way I could’ve slept in all these clothes – it was like an oven in here! And you said the same thing.”

Bits and pieces started coming back. I did remember that, the stifling heat. Spain in the summer is capable of roasting a person - especially when you cram thirteen people into a cabin made for four. All that body heat…yes, stifling is definitely the right word. On top of that, I was already a little well-done around the edges, just from walking around in Barcelona. Karmic irony – I decide not to bring aloe vera lotion, so of course I get burned.

I got down from my bunk to get my clothes, barely avoiding stepping on whatever part of Mel that was. As I sorted through the pile, pulling out my shirt and tossing it behind me, I looked out the window again. Ah, yes, my other question.

“Hey, anybody know why we’re stopped? This is certainly not a train station in Granada, and I highly doubt it’s even 10:00 by now – the air’s not sizzling yet.” How was it that my shirt was on top and my pants seemed to be at the bottom? I kept digging.

Katie looked at her watch. “Nope, it’s only 9:10. Hmm. That’s weird.” She was putting on her daily mass amount of jewelry. Looking at Mel still buried in her bunk, she made a face and yelled, “Hey, get up sleepyhead!” She threw her pillow at Mel, too. No response. I swear that girl could sleep through the apocalypse.

“Shit. My pants aren’t in here.” I threw the clothes back on top of the suitcases. Someone knocked on the door. “Double shit! Guys, I don’t have any pants!” I pulled the sheet off my bed, wrapped myself up in it, and scrambled back onto my bunk. Katie rolled her eyes at me and started doing her hair. Angie answered the door. Mel did nothing.

It was Ross, slightly more red-eyed and disheveled than usual, and with the red strawberry stain still prominently in view. Katie saw it and started to giggle. I shot her one of my That’s-Not-A-Good-Idea looks. As a mature young woman of 18, her response was to stick out her tongue at me. She didn’t say anything to Ross about it, though.

He was still standing there, leaning on the door frame, just looking around at us absentmindedly. Angie, with her hand still on the doorknob, hesitantly motioned for him to enter, unsure what he wanted. The motion caught his attention and he turned to her. With what appeared a great deal of effort, he lifted his arm and pointed a finger at her.

“You, you’re nice.” He paused, and then looked up at Katie, narrowing his eyes. “Strawberry…,” he accused. Then he turned and saw me huddled in my sheet. Looking directly into my eyes, he said, “Hazel, not brown.” I knew a brief moment of satisfying triumph. Then, ignoring the lump that was Mel, he nodded and turned to go. I reached out to tap him on the shoulder and stop him.

“Hey, Ross, you wouldn’t happen to know why we’re stopped, would you? I mean, this is hardly Granada.” I indicated the view out the window - rather a lovely array of shades of green, if you stopped to think about it. His gaze followed my hand and he looked out the window as if only now realizing we were stopped. I suppose that, to a hung over person, it feels like you’re moving all of the time anyway.

Before he could formulate an answer, Jason appeared in the still-open doorway (a door condition I didn’t really appreciate, being clad in only a sheet and underwear). The first thing he saw was me, half leaning off the bunk in my questioning of Ross. He stopped short, looked at me for a moment, grinned, and said, “Hey, toga girl, we’re in Spain, not Greece.” Katie dissolved into giggles, laughing with Jason and Ross. Angie just shook her head, smiling a little half-smile. I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Thanks for the geography lesson, J. Answer me this one: where exactly in Spain are we then, since we’re obviously not stopped in Granada?” I pulled my sheet up higher. “And hey, in or out guys, the door’s wide open for Christ sake.”

They came in and closed the door, still chuckling. Ross sat on the floor (which probably wasn’t the most sanitary of choices, judging from the rest of the train) and Jason sat next to Angie, picking up her pillow to make room. Then, noticing Mel still sleeping, he chucked it at her.

No response. And now she had all four pillows, too, the greedy narcoleptic.

Jason glanced out the window and then back up at me, grinning again. “The train hit something a little while ago, something significantly larger than, say, a rabbit. Apparently, they stopped to find out what it was and make sure it didn’t hurt the train at all - not that I think it could, this big hunk of metal. Rudy says we’re about a half hour or so from Granada, and as soon as they sort this thing out, we’ll be off again.” He sat back and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms, smiling in satisfaction.

I just looked at him, refusing to rise to the bait; very irksome, to call someone out and then have them actually know the answer.

I stoically decided to ignore his smugness. Instead, I found where I had tossed my shirt when rummaging through the clothes pile and put it on. No more toga – now it was like a really hefty bikini wrap. From Greece to the Caribbean. I glared at Jason, daring him to make another comment. He didn’t notice. From my bunk, I continued searching the room for my pants, enlisting Angie’s help while Katie chatted with Jason. Ross stared into space. Mel did nothing.

Another knock on the door. Ross twisted and opened it. It was Matt. He glanced around, giving quick nods to everyone in greeting (it made him look rather like a bobble-head, you know, those things that go on the dashboards of cars and…never mind). Taking a breath, he paused, and then very seriously announced, “It was a goat,” and left the room.

Nobody said a word for a few seconds. Just then, the train lurched into motion again and you could almost hear all of our brains clicking into place with sudden comprehension. So we were on our way again. Good. I was getting tired of this train cabin. But where the hell were my pants?

Jason fixed his eyes on me, flashing an infuriatingly smug grin. “See? I knew what I was talking about. Haven't you realized by now that I know everything?" I once again regretted throwing my pillow at Mel – Jason was a much more deserving target. Sometimes it seemed the whole purpose of his existence was to get under my skin.

As I was searching around for some other, preferably hard, object to throw at him (what I wouldn’t have given for a hefty shoe…), he laughed at me and stood up. Tapping Ross on the top of the head, he said, “C’mon, Ross, let’s go back to our cabin and let the ladies here get finished dressing. Can’t have them walking around Granada in bed sheets, after all.” Ross stood and moved towards the door. It appeared Jason was following him quite innocently, until he reached up and grabbed the edge of the sheet I was using as a skirt, pulling it as he went out the door.

I really should have seen that coming.

“Jason, you bastard! Let g-” was all I managed to scream at him as I unwillingly followed my bed sheet off the top bunk and landed in a heap, half on top of a still-unconscious Mel and half on the floor. Collecting myself, I made ready a verbal assault that would probably have made my mother disown me. However, before I could start on my well-justified rant, he laughed, made a bow, then closed the door and went back to his cabin.

Cheated of my intended target, I grabbed one of the pillows from Mel’s bunk and threw it at the door as hard as I could. “You jerk!” Not that he could hear me anyway, but sometimes you just have to yell and throw things around – I’ve found it to be very therapeutic (yes, I know…anger management, here I come). I heard giggling behind me and spun around. Katie was red in the face and practically falling over in her bunk; Angie was biting her lips to keep from laughing – biting them hard. I grabbed the other two pillows Mel wasn’t aware had been thrown at her and chucked them at those two. I started to say, “Oh, shut up! It wasn’t even that funny,” but I started laughing with them halfway through and collapsed onto Mel’s bunk.

“Ugh, you guys are determined to be noisy, aren’t you?” The persistently-unconscious Mel finally woke up and rolled over. The first thing she did was hit me half-heartedly with her pillow. This, of course, made us laugh even more. Blinking and looking around, Mel furrowed her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t we have been in Granada by now?”

Katie, between bursts of laughter, pointed at me and managed to spit out “She lo-lost her p-pants…there was a, a goat…and Ja-Jason pulled her, her sheet.” This absurd, yet accurate, sum-up served only to confuse Mel further and make the rest of us develop stomach pains from laughing so much. I managed to choke out “We’ll be there s-s-soon, so g-get ready.” Even Angie had completely collapsed in laughter at this point.

Mel raised her eyebrows and gave us one of her You-All-Are-Crazy looks. “You all are crazy, just so you know. I’m getting dressed.” She stood up, throwing the sheets back. She was right, the whole day had been insane so far, and she hadn’t even been awake for it. My stomach decided to seriously cramp just then from laughing so much, so I leaned against Angie’s bunk, closing my eyes and trying to stop.

“Hey guys…whose are these?” I heard Mel ask. I managed to break off the rest of my laughter and opened my eyes to see what she was talking about. Mel looked at us, pulling something from between the wall and her bunk, and held it up.

It was my pants.

04/06/2003

Author's Note: A story I wrote for my creative writing class. Only very, VERY loosely based on a true story.

Posted on 04/21/2003
Copyright © 2024 Amanda J Cobb