Waiting
Her phone dies, leaving her to wait alone.
She glares at the fat, silvery drops drip-drip-dripping from the bus stop’s overhang. The one time she tries to study on a weekend, it pours. Must be a sign; she was not put on this earth to be diligent.
The rain used to fill everything with colour back then too. The dusty, grey road would be washed black. The half-dead trees would come alive, green again, as the muck they’d collected flowed away. She used to watch it with nothing else to do, waiting for Mom after school, too young to walk home alone in the rain. Mom would always come an hour past sunset, washed-out, with tired eyes.
A soft frump brings her back. There’s a gangly boy under the shelter now, closing his umbrella. It’s the diligent kid from school, isn’t it? He notices her and looks away when she smirks, fumbling for his phone. She strolls over and holds out her box of tic-tacs.
He eyes the offering dubiously. “I told you already. I won’t do your homework.”
She clicks her tongue, shoving it back into her pocket. “You made that clear, brat. I’m not bribing you, okay?”
He sneaks a glance at her, bemused. “Then what?”
She huffs. “Thought I’d give you company. You look pretty alone and pathetic by yourself. But I guess I’m beneath you, huh?”
She turns on her heel, plops back down on the creaky bench, and glowers at the ivy across the road. It’s obnoxiously green against the grey sky and the red brick of the building it’s clinging to. The jet-black asphalt road, the stupid, silver drops– It’s like they’re mocking her lonely, colourless wait under the stop’s harsh white LED lights.
The bench creaks. The diligent kid sits down beside her. He asks her which bus she’s waiting for, and it turns out they’re there for the same one. “I’ll wait with you,” he says matter-of-factly.
“So you’re lonely enough to talk to me after all?” she snarks, ignoring the way something warily unwinds in her, just a little.
His eyes narrow slightly. It’s too knowing a look, like he’s seeing how colourless she is under her ugly blue uniform, orange raincoat, pink backpack. “I think we could both use company.” A pause. “Don’t you like how colours pop brighter on rainy days?”
“I think it sucks,” she lies, like she isn’t envious of the colour they seem to suck out of her life. “Makes us feel like we barely exist. Transparent.”
He scoffs, a quiet glint in his eyes. “In these?” he asks, pointing at his own disgustingly vivid blue uniform’s collar. “I wish. They’re painfully impossible to miss.”
A laugh slips out of her before she can catch it. They are rather colourful despite being ugly, aren’t they?
She holds out the tic-tacs again, and he takes two. They wait together. And when their bus pulls up, glistening red and white in the rain, they get in together.
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