
The Girl At The Back Of The Bus
By: William Kitcher
The February night was cold, windy, damp, and slushy. The plows hadn’t completely cleared the roads and the near-freezing temperature kept everything in a state of flux. The girl passed by the front of the subway station and saw the fare collector reading a newspaper. She cut down the side street and looked for any drivers or maintenance people who might be outside having a smoke before they went back to work. Seeing no one, she sneaked across the bus loading area, and stood in the shelter to get out of the wind.
She wore a jean jacket over a black t-shirt, jeans, a ratty old scarf, and black Converse running shoes. She had one glove with the fingers cut out of it. She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets and tried to will herself to not shiver. She could feel in her pockets all she owned: 75 cents in change, a stick of gum, a lighter, and a button that had come off her jacket pocket.
A bus pulled into the loading area and a few passengers disembarked. She waited for the driver to get off, then entered the bus through the rear doors. The driver turned and watched her as she went to the back and huddled up against the heater. She closed her eyes.
The driver went out into the street for a cigarette, and looked at the girl occasionally. He finished his smoke, talked to the collector for a couple of minutes, then got back onto his bus. He made a deliberate noise as he climbed the bus steps and looked back at the girl. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He smiled at her and she made no reaction to the smile. She pushed herself into the corner again, lifted her knees and hugged them. She tried to be anonymous, pushed up against the heater and tried to get warm and fall asleep, but she shivered and couldn’t stop shivering. She closed her eyes again, trying to cut off the world, trying to tell people she was asleep, but her eyes would occasionally open of their own accord. Finally, she gave up and stared out the window.
The bus driver started his route and looked back at her occasionally.
She looked at the storefronts, the houses, the few people who were still out this late at night. It seemed to her that it wasn’t at all real; it was just a series of images flashing past her as in a dream. But she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Sometimes her mind would cast back, to what had happened to her earlier that night. She’d had a couple of drinks with some guy at his apartment, but even when she said she wasn’t interested in him, he still hassled her, and even though she needed a place to sleep, she left while he was in the bathroom. She shook her head to get rid of that picture. She tried to conjure up others, but there was nothing worth remembering. No friends, no family she could turn to, no one she even knew in this city. Her parents were in another town and probably hadn’t realized yet that she was gone. She remembered, as in a film clip, herself dancing on stage as a teddy bear when she was eight years old. She smiled at that and desperately tried to hang onto that memory. But it dissipated.
Only a few people got on and off the bus. Mostly she was alone there.
The bus driver watched her occasionally. When he got to the end of the line and prepared to come back along the route, he stopped the bus, and walked toward the back, his boots squeaking on the melted ice and echoing through the empty bus.
She jammed her hands into her pockets. With her right hand, she held tightly onto her lighter, her thumb ready to spark a flame. She did her best to glare at him.
He backed off a little. “Are you OK?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You took the bus the whole way down the line. Do you have some place to stay tonight?”
“Whaddya mean by that?”
“Nothing. I’m just asking.”
“I’m fine.”
“OK,” said the driver, and went back to his seat, and set the bus off in motion back down the same street.
She fell asleep for a little while, but was awakened by some drunken kids, who had been yelling on the street, and who now staggered onto the bus. The driver had to ask them to show their student cards.
They laughed and swore and never filtered themselves. They looked back at the girl occasionally, made some crude comments, and laughed at her. She told them to fuck off.
They got off the bus after several blocks and she fell asleep again, but woke again when they got back to the subway station.
The bus driver came down the bus to her. “Are you sure you’re OK? It’s the end of my shift.”
“I told you I was OK.”
“All right,” he said resignedly. “Look after yourself.” He went back to the front of the bus, took his coat off the hook, and took his seat cover with him. He got off the bus and talked to another driver, who had been waiting there, the next driver on shift. Occasionally, they would look at the girl. The first driver shook his head and disappeared into the station.
The new driver got on the bus, hung up his coat, put his seat cover down, adjusted the seat, then got up again, and walked down the bus toward the girl. A couple of times, he stopped to pick up some garbage or newspapers that had been left there. He looked at the girl occasionally but couldn’t catch her eye. She knew he was looking at her.
“Hi, how ya doing?” he said, removing an empty junk food bag from the seat in front of her.
“I’m all right. Why do people keep asking that?”
“Because you’re about 17 years old, it’s 5 in the morning, and you’ve been on the bus for the last 2 hours.”
“That’s my business.”
“OK.” He smiled at her, and went back to his seat. The bus pulled away with only her on board.
A few minutes later, the bus stopped and pulled over to the side of the road. She looked out of the window and saw they were between stops. She looked up and down the poorly lit street. They were in a mainly industrial area; there didn’t seem to be anything going on around there, and there were no people on the street. The bus driver got up, looked at the girl, then got off the bus and disappeared into darkness.
She wondered if she should get off the bus and run. But she didn’t really know where she was and she had no place to go anyway. She felt almost trapped, like an animal who had lived in a cage all its life but whose cage door was now open, and the animal was afraid to leave its prison.
The bus driver re-appeared at the front door, holding a paper bag and what looked like styrofoam coffee cups. He walked down the bus toward her.
He stood in front of her, set the bag and cups on a seat, then reached into the bag. He took out two sandwiches and looked at her.
“You want ham or you want cheese? And a coffee or a hot chocolate? Makes no difference to me.”
She jumped out of her seat and yelled, “Get out of my way! You guys are creeping me out!”
She ran off the bus and disappeared into the cold night.