Escape to Montana

Date: 1/18/2021

My school was putting on a performance of some kind, and I was at the door taking peoples tickets. For some reason there were missing posters with my face everywhere, and I needed to escape without anyone recognizing me. I also had a “nose brace” over my nose, which in the dream was just a small weirdly-shaped bandage that I don’t think was doing anything. My friend Lana was going around asking if people had seen the person in the poster, and of course everyone was pointing at me, but every time someone came over I said “no, his hair’s a little longer,” or “no, his nose brace is on the wrong side,” and people seemed to buy it. (Side note: in at least this part of the dream I was a boy with dark brown hair that was styled kind of like a 1950s gang member). Somehow Lana and some of her friends knew I was trying to escape and wanted to help. Iona came over with a small hand-drawn map to a bus stop for a bus that would take us to Montana without asking about our identities. I asked her, “do you trust this map?” She said yes, because her mom had given it to her. We left. We (Lana, Iona, ma, and Miriam at this point) were on the school bus (my school doesn’t have a school bus, and this one just looked like a regular city bus, but in the dream it was the school bus) going down Spring Street. We had clearly gotten on hastily as it was pulling away, because we were sitting outside the actual bus on the little wheelchair-access ramp that some city buses have. In the dream the street was incredibly narrow, and when the bus pulled over to let people off, we were pressed up against the wall. We kind of looked at each other and nonverbally agreed we should get off before anyone noticed, so we jumped down to the ground. The bus driver (who I’m pretty sure was Mr. Bruno) noticed, though, and asked us what our PINs were (in the dream, riding the bus was something like buying school lunch—you give them your PIN and they add the cost to your account, and then you can pay for it then or pay it back later). I didn’t know what mine was, so I started panicking. Iona said, “sure you can have my number! It’s 5, 5...” and then she ran away. He chased after her briefly, and Lana and Miriam took advantage of his distraction to run away as well. I was the only one who didn’t run, and when he got back I asked him if I could pay for their rides, because I didn’t want them to be in trouble when they got back. He told me it would be $15 for all of us, and I pulled a $20 out of my wallet and told him to keep the change. I caught up to the other three, who were running down the street. It was suddenly night, and very dark. We emerged onto the stretch of Watertown Street near my house (which... is not where Spring Street leads, but whatever). We walked down Watertown and passed the normal bus stop. A few yards behind it was another bus stop, and its sign was shaped like a normal bus stop sign but completely blank. There were two benches nearby and the other three sat on one of them while I sat on the other. None of us were sure how long it would take for the bus to arrive. We waited for a short time, then Lana said, “hey, why don’t we play that game you used to like? The one where you dance and come up with silly nicknames for yourself?” In the dream, this had been one of my favorite games when I was younger, even though it sounds totally ridiculous and not like anything I would actually enjoy. I said “sure”, but nobody wanted to be the only one dancing, so we all kind of looked at each other for a minute. Then this random lady who looked like a fitness video instructor from the 90s showed up and started dancing. I didn’t ask who she was or what she was doing here. Instead I laughed and halfheartedly did a stupid little dance move and said, “I wish I could do this.” She replied, “it’s you! Crossing turtles over your hands!” Lana did something else and said, “I wish I could do this.” The lady said, “it’s you! Picking up baby turtles.” We went on like this for quite some time, one of us doing some made-up dance move and her coming up with a name for it, usually involving turtles. Eventually I forgot that I was even waiting for a bus.