What does a bus stop mean to someone?
Well, to most it’s just a temporary resting place. Unimportant to the overall
journey. Just a place to wait for the bus to take you to where you want to go.
But to one girl, the bus stop was her destination.
Never having
been outside her room, her only form of escape was to look out the window and
imagine herself standing at that bus stop. Because she had been trapped inside
her whole life, she couldn’t fathom that there was anything beyond the bus
stop. People simply got there, and then were whisked away. Gone. She didn’t
care about where she’d go, she just wanted to stand, breathing in the
not-so-fresh air, maybe sit down at the bench, maybe talk to one of the people
sitting there. It was the most exotic place in her small, lonely world.
She didn’t
understand why people at the bus stop never acknowledged each other, let alone
talk. Occasionally late at night two people would come together, but it was
always dark, and she would be asleep. If she had someone to talk to, she knew
she would “talk their ears off,” as her mother always said.
Her mother
said a lot of things. So did she. But she didn’t have anything to talk about
anymore. And nobody to talk to. She would make up stories about the people
waiting for the bus. The man wearing a lot of makeup, the woman wearing
sweatpants. The little boy looking curiously at her through the window. She
waved and he looked away. How rude, her mother would have said.
She wanted to
leave her confines so badly, but as time went on, the urge to try to escape was
fading. She never understood why she couldn’t just walk out of her room, but
something held her back. She spent her days curled in bed, or staring out her
window. She was hot all the time but no matter how wide she opened the window
she couldn’t get enough air to cool her down. Nor could she just jump out of
it.
Two people
were standing next to each other at the bus stop talking quietly. Too quietly
that she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying as much as she strained
her ears. She sighed and got back into bed pulling the covers over her pale
body.
~✺~
“I hate going to this bus stop. Always gives me the creeps.”
“Really? Why?”
“Do you see that broken down abandoned looking house right
there? There was a fire and a little girl died, but they never found her body.
Sad.”
“Well here’s our bus, let’s get out of here.”
