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Write a SHOWSTOPPING story

Bus Boy


Ever since the start of high school, I’ve been catching the same bus. Too many days in a year is an understatement. Although, one comes to enjoy the methodical routine of doing the same thing every day. As for someone with a pleasant disposition like me, this quotidian activity has been coupled with a few interesting, maybe even life changing events. Like when that old lady with the mustard dress almost fell out of the window the other day from attempting to catch her hat which had decided to elope with the wind. Or when that boorish primary school ruffian stuck a chewing gum on a business man who’s already ruffled from being late to his 9am meeting.

Being Asian, my parents have imposed a sort of curfew. So basically, my life revolves around the journey from the patch of grass bus stop 200 metres from my home, and the bus stand in front of a sophisticated café brimming with those artsy types. Thankfully they have provided me with a state of the art laptop, despite their “penny wise, pound – even wiser” ideals, to assist me with my studies. I have spent the last five years, locked up in my room, playing situational, strategic games that will, no doubt, feed me with relevant information pertaining to life’s journey. With only their own gullibility to blame, my parents vaingloriously boast to their study orientated Asian friends about the intransigent diligence of their only son. True, to some extent. Just not towards my studies

Due to my absence from the social scene during the last five years, I have not made any friends. Breaks and lunches were spent undisturbed under the tree in the unnoticed quadrangle, behind the rumoured haunted laboratory. During my more junior and less informed years, some year seven girls might come around to threaten me for my lunch money. Subsequently, I’ve learnt my lesson, and dyed my hair a fashionable sunset-orange, despite the disgusted horrors of my Asian parents. Those prepubescent girls never bothered me again.

Unfortunately, as a result of my life enriching and benefiting RPGs*, I have become a creature of the night. School has become a fleeting blur. To me, it is six hours of precious time, catching up on sleep crucial to any adolescent boy.

But somehow, I cannot bring myself to sleep on the bus. Every morning at eight fifteen a-m, she gets on my bus. Her shoes, impeccably polished without fail, make a beautiful, musical resonance on the metal of the step, comparable to Pachelbel’s Canon. Her shiny, smooth peroxide-blonde hair glistens in the light reflected by the glasses of the blind man sitting in front of the bus. As she glides down the aisle, the voices of angels reverberate in my ears, and the world seems like a much better place.

But today is the day. As she takes her seat in her usual spot, I mean throne, at the back, I inconspicuously shift to the spot next to her. Feeling more and more subhuman in comparison, I steal a glance at her and utter nervously the fatal word, “Hi”.

She turns, exhibits half a sign of minimal contemplation, and wrinkles her nose. Then, looking like she has just stepped on unidentified goo, her translucent angel-like face becomes uncharacteristically contorted. She shoots me a look that cut into the neurons in my brains, sending chills down my spine. Then, she gracefully slides her bottom away from me, and longingly stares out the window, fluttering her mascara coated eyelashes at the world below.

What. Was. That.

I am simply a good-natured god-fearing teenage boy who just couldn’t be bothered to understand the world around him. Heck, it’s just because I’m Asian. Although I look like a wannabe gangster, I am actually capable of comprehensible speech in the English language.

Defeated, I trudge back to my seat, behind the old lady with the mustard dress. Hm, she even smells like mustard. But this unforeseen event has indeed taught me a well learnt life-lesson. Never again shall I venture outside my world of WoW and DotA**. Never again.

* RPGs = role play games
**WoW and DotA are RPGs

Posted by Ky, major in narrative writing.

DUDE. IT'S MY WORK. So don't steal =(

Shittttt meant to be writing my REAL journey story ...