I love riding with a city bus. I already wrote about how it calms me down here. A couple of days ago I was on a city bus on my way to the university. It was what I would call an ordinary winter day. It was snowing a bit, not too much but just enough to make you wet if you didn’t have an umbrella. Drivers in cars were nervous as they always are when it’s snowing outside. It was a chaos on the streets, cars humping and changing lanes all the time just to get to their destination a little bit quicker. Slush on the pavements was the reason why the pedestrians were nervous. They wanted to get to a warm and dry place where it wasn’t snowing and the floor weren’t slippery. As I said – an ordinary winter day.
The bus stopped at a station and I redirected my attention from the madness on the street to the people standing on the station, waiting for their bus to come. They all seemed nervous, most of them were without an umbrella so their hair and clothes were wet. They were impatiently staring at their watches and down the street to see if their bus was coming. Everyone seemed annoyed and cranky because the weather was awful and they all needed to be somewhere.
At one moment I noticed a boy running to catch the bus. He tried to maneouvre through the crowd at the station with his bag bouncing on his shoulders. A bunch of high-school kids were standing on the sidewalk and one of the boys tripped him so this Lonely boy as I named him, almost fell to the floor. Somehow he managed to balance himself so he didn’t fall and he managed to catch the bus. He found a seat near me, and it was faced backwards so I was able to see his face.
He was probably 17 or 18 years old. His dark brown hair was wet because of the snow and his cheeks were red because he was running for the bus. I saw sadness in his dark chocolate coloured eyes. He was nervously looking at the floor. When the bus moved from the station he looked out at those boys who tripped him but quickly turned his head away like he was afraid of them. He looked at me for a moment and seemed sad and ashamed so I smiled at him, hoping that it would comfort him a bit. But he probably thought I was laughing at him since he looked away in an instant.
He wore dark blue jeans and they seemed very old. There was a big hole in them, where his ankle was and they were very ragged at the bottom. His brown shoes weren’t appropriate for this weather and his feet were probably wet. He wore a dark red winter jacket which was probably a couple of years old and at least one size too small for him. It was ripped where the pocket should be.
He seemed intelligent but not very outgoing. I think he doesn’t have a lot of friends and he’s probably bullied in his class. I doubt he ever speaks out for himself because he seemed too shy to say anything. He probably just wants to fit in and doesn’t want to be even less popular.
On the next station three girls came on the bus and he looked at them. His face changed, it became softer and I saw his eyes sparkle. One of the girls said hi to him and then all three of them started laughing. I assume they are class mates and he’s probably in love with the pretty blond one. He was looking at her with a mixture of passion and tenderness in his eyes. I don’t know if she didn’t notice or she just ignored it. She is probably the popular girl and it would inappropriate if she would like him.
The bus was approaching the next station and he stood up. He looked to where the girls were and then he turned around and went to the door to wait for the bus to stop. He was nervously changing his feet and looked at the girls once again. They didn’t even notice him anymore, they were too busy talking about the shoes one of them saw the other day.
The bus stopped and he pressed the button to open the door. He looked at me and nervously smiled, obviously he knew I wasn’t laughing at him. Then he stepped off the bus.
