The blue sky and now familiar town flies by. It’s taken months to become accustomed to the way the brick buildings conform to the naturally bland environment surrounding them. My own little slice of the aspired Quad Cities. It’s surprising how Bettendorf has become normal to me compared to how everything was big, scary, and complex just months ago. I remember when I thought I’d always be afraid of getting lost, and now, I could drive absentmindedly by, if I had my license that is. I don’t. I have no intention of getting it soon. I’ve always been happy taking the school bus that ships me everywhere without complaint. I feel tense in my seat, squirming this way and that; it’s an equal amount of teenagers’ idle chatter and the boy who hasn’t talked to me, the boy sitting miles away. He doesn’t ask what’s going on in my wonderwall mind. He’s quiet today, trying to catch a nap, not painfully aware like I am.
Matthew is the closest friendship that I’ve developed at my new school so far. When I still hadn’t found a regular seat, getting pushed by as the rows filled in differently everyday, he was still a part of my routine.
One day spent watching, just another gone by, I saw an elementary bus pull into a nearly vacant parking lot. After it dropped off a little girl with dark-features, I heard a happy voice say, “Hey, there’s my little sister.”
Matthew flew off the bus with a bounce and protectively held her hand, not just when crossing the road, but from the moment they met to after they walked inside of the house together.
Once he left, the rowdy group of big and tall boys sitting behind me said, “Fuck, Matthew!” “Matthew’s the man!” “Haha, look at Matthew!”
Watching people is just one of the quirky habits I’ve picked up having moved so many times. We are coming up to the water that’s framing the town now. Matthew hasn’t stirred this entire time. He’s calm and consistent, like the water. Me, not so much. We don’t pay attention to the loud, chaotic atmosphere of stop and go and god I gotta get home. I guess that’s why I’m still sitting by him in all of this dry silence.
***
I kick my foot. My legs are crossed all through last block. I’m watching the clock. The last 30 minutes. The last 10. The bell rings. I’m sure from the outside I look like I’m walking through the hallway like any other student. However, inside, I’m racing to the seat I hope will be there waiting for me. I get on the bus. I smell rows of teenagers, their heads two to a seat bobbing up and down. My eyes search. I spot the boy I’ve assigned the name “Gangster Caden” peeking up over the blue seat. Breathless, I sit down next to him and start in about my day. Though, in all of the excitement, I fizzle out half way through because I’m tired of the meaningless story I’m telling. It’s about Becky in homeroom, but Matthew and I are sitting 3 inches apart, and we’ve been working up to holding hands for days. That’s what we both really care about, so, almost telepathically, we nestle into the seat, making it our cozy abode. I let him pick at the clay stuck between the creases on my thumb from pottery. This suave, though in reality quite a simple move, suddenly makes me insecure and pull my hand away and rub it on my black jeans.
He laughs a little under his breath and says, “No, the other way.”
I look down and can’t help wondering how silly I look grabbing Matthew’s hand like it’s a bag of apples. I sit there staring at our hands the rest of the bus ride, turning them this way and that. I don’t realize how it was possible to be doing this. And I tell him that.
“I just can’t believe it.”
By this point, I can’t believe this boy is still here. I can’t believe he hasn’t jumped over me and found a new seat on an entirely different bus in an entirely different school district somewhere nice in Colorado maybe. I can’t believe the 10 bone-white fingers I’m seeing aren’t just mine. I can’t believe I’ve done what I fear most at this point in my life. I believe there’s no chance of not leaving a lasting impression.
***
I’m sure that in the back of my mind, I hear the release and clutch of the big bus’s engine. The bus is mostly empty by this point, scattered with kids looking down at their phones. I stand up and push my blue backpack onto the narrow aisle so that Matthew can leave and ignore me from home, too. He gets off, not looking my way once. I can’t help but think he’s running away not from me, but from how much he hates this horrible game of Twister. The gas exhaust, weight on my back, and pounding of pavement firmly beneath my feet pins me back to reality, and the one thing left coursing through my mind is being done with everything until tomorrow from 3:25 to 4 p.m. when the whole thing starts up again. Digging in my bag looking for keys, I accidentally bump my phone. The screen flashes one unread message from Matthew. Curious, I twist the door handle and open a text that says,
“So, how was the bus today?”