Chapter 6

She didn’t have to walk today, she could’ve caught the bus from the same set of stops that she got off at but plans change, even when they are spontaneous at best and know there’s time for her to walk up the road to a different stop, and even a bit of shopping if she wants. Time can be limitless sometimes. She doesn’t have to be at uni for another forty minutes and it would only take her ten on the bus. So she ambled down the street, past the homeless men and the shops and soon enough she’s reached the stops and decides to wait. She doesn’t mind getting to uni a bit early, she’ll just sit somewhere near her lecture hall and wait for the horde of students to be let in. It really is a horde she sometimes thinks, with so many people trying to squeeze through such a small door and she wonders every time how the biggest lecture hall in the uni can have such small doors. It does though have pretty comfy seats.

When the bus comes she’s lucky to get the seat to herself. There aren’t many empty seats on the bus and it may fill up quickly after but she has the window seat and that’s all she wants. She liked not having to worry about when the person next to her wants to get off, instead they can worry about her. She doesn’t mind buses at all, but this bus isn’t her favourite. The bus is continually stopping and starting and whilst normally she would pull out a book she felt this was too nerdy to do on a bus occupied by several students. Reading notes would be appropriate but reading a book wouldn’t. So she sits and sees the same yoghurt shop and clothes shop with the same posters and the book shop that’s always closing down. She sees it all now and she’ll see it all again on her way home and then again on the next day. This is when she zones out, and unlike the lady who is only refined to talking about the weather and wishes to talk about so much more this is something that is not wished to be discussed. Not because it is bad, or holds some terribly truth but because it is something so close to her, something that is so much only hers, it will be traitorous to tell of. It is for her and her alone and whilst it started with her it will die with her.

The bus goes past the uni and stops, letting the people off. The first time she caught the bus home from school she didn’t realise the button needed to be pressed for the bus to stop. She was grateful though that her sisters were there and there was a girl who lived up the road who showed them how. That girl went on to be school captain. The school bus was perhaps only ever full of twenty people. Two buses came to the school, two people got on one, that would already be full of kids from another school and then the rest would get on another that would only be full of their school. The twenty or so primary school kids would run around the oval, or when it was raining stand under the little sliver of cover on the hall entrance and when one saw the bus round the corner they would shout of “Bus!” and the kids would go rushing to their bags and whip out their bus passes. Then they would say goodbye to the teacher on bus duty and head onto the bus scrambling for a seat. It’s odd the friendships made. Anyone on the bus was friends with anyone, they’d talk and play and laugh, regardless of how often or not they didn’t talk when they were in school. At that age kids just want to have friends and so whoever was there was a friend.

She now finds herself fond of buses, she grew up with them practically. When she enters her first classes at uni and meets someone a common question is “So where do you live?” And when tells them they screw up their face and say “How hard, no trains.” But the fact that to get around her area she has to catch a bus doesn’t bother her at all. She finds it funny how inconvenient people think they are, how unreliable, hot, slow they are and she does suppose they can. But they’re her friend. By now she knows the best place to sit on any of the types of buses, she can predict how much it will cost to get from there to here, she knows how to plan for the bus being late. It doesn’t bother her.