Sam

I felt the bus moving beneath me, a lurching, bumpy ride down a State Highway. I saw the driver smile at me from the rearview mirror, youthful blue eyes contrasting with aged brown skin. I smelled grass and crops, the open window beside me letting my imagination run wild with ideas of fields and meadows and streams. I heard the engine sputter and the soft music coming from the dash and even the birds just beyond the bus window. I tasted the jelly bean that moments ago rested on my tongue, a wonderful fruity taste that sadly couldn't last.

Life was pretty damn good. I would never go so far as to say it was perfect (I never say anything is perfect), but I was content as Oregon's rural lands passed by, taking with it my inhibitions. I wasn't relaxed per say, but comfortable.

I was however, for the first time in years, excited. To meet people who don't know me, to climb places always out of reach, to escape from what was probably the hardest year of my life…

I'm being over dramatic. I was fifteen, not even old enough yet to drive. My knowledge of the world was pretty limited, limited to my neighborhood, my school, and the internet (whenever it worked. I never seemed to find connections…)

I gazed out the window, popping another jelly bean in my mouth. Ugh. Licorice. I spat the little demon out the window, earning a chuckle from the driver. I sent him my best 'good child' smile which only seemed to further the ridiculosity of the situation: here we were on a warm Sunday afternoon, an old Native American man and a fifteen-year-old girl, driving down a two-lane highway in an otherwise empty bus in the first week of June to a place that one knew and the other had no clue as to what it was let alone where it was. Yet the one who was going to be staying at said place (who also happened to spit a piece of candy out the window) was the one who was clueless to the place at hand. That person, too young to drive whose parents refused to drive her, had called upon the aid of the (previously mentioned) location's very own bus, which had to cross two and a half states to get to her. And was now driving back. And yet the two strangers, who weren't that strange to each other anymore, had stopped not only to get gas on the way, but to get breakfast and then later lunch. In doing so, they grew to know and respect one another, and had established a bantering familiarity.

People tell me I should write poetry, but to that I'd probably say, "nah… I'm good."

I leaned back, allowing the soft guitar music to wash over me. "... feel like should run, but where are you to hide? In the water, oh oh ohh. Against the tide we struggle, to keep our heads above the deep, our hearts above the light. Above the light…"

I woke up to the sound of "Oh here's to you, Mrs. Robinson…" many hours later. I could tell because the sun was beginning its descent from peak. That, and my phone I grabbed from my pocket said 4:37pm. I groaned, sitting up in my seat. I looked around the bus when my eyes landed on something in the aisle across from me. John (the driver) chuckled we he saw my face, my brain struggling in its half unconscious state to make connections. Finally, something clicked.

There was another girl sitting across from me.

Heyyy. Hope you enjoyed Chapter 1. Leave any criticism, complements, or spam down below. Cheers!

~O. S. Gnome