Ending Point

            This day was one of the rainy, chilly, sad-looking days which we seemed to get a lot of here. This particular one and the days following affected me greatly as a person. It was the first day of November and the first day I would be going to this school because of the fact that we had recently moved. I rode the bus that morning which wasn’t all too bad.  There were very few kids in the vehicle even after we had picked up everyone up so we each got our own seats and didn’t have to share with anyone.

The entire ride there I didn’t really look at the rest of the students very much. I spent most of my time on the bus that morning watching the cold droplets of rain roll down the window next to my seat until finally we abruptly stopped and the driver pulled the lever that allowed the doors to open. Everyone slowly stepped off the bus with melancholic expressions on their faces that indicated that they would rather be somewhere else like their nice, warm bed.

 I could begin telling you more about that day but this story isn’t really about me so I’ve decided to skip those details. After the last period of the day, the bell rang and the children scattered to wherever their mode of transportation was located. Being in the age range of eleven to fourteen, the halls weren’t really walked through in an orderly fashion so on my way to the bus I got pushed and shoved and I almost missed it. I climb up the four steps to get onto the bus and there was a slightly larger amount of kids than there was that morning but I still managed to find an empty seat.

 Since my mind was more awake than it had been during my first ride on the bus I had made the decision to start observing the other passengers that I would be here with for the rest of the school year. At the first stop three kids got off. Two of them appeared to be twins but they might have just been siblings. The other had dark hair and bright blue eyes which I had rarely ever encountered before.

The next time that the bus came to a halt was the one that caught my attention. A small, blonde haired boy got off the bus and sprinted to his house so fast that I couldn’t get a good look at his face. In the midst of running the boy tripped over a hose running horizontal to the sidewalk. Almost everyone on the bus boomed with laughter and the only ones who hadn’t at least chuckled were me and this kid who had fallen asleep. When the laughter died down I looked around the bus at all the students and examined each one. I just remember thinking to myself can a bunch of twelve year olds actually be this mean?

The answer to that question of course was yes. The next day as the kid ran off the bus and into his front yard, watching for the hose this time, the other children on the bus erupted in a fit of giggles once more. The only thing that you could hear besides the laughter was the bus driver hollering at the frantic boy that running on the bus is against the rules. I couldn’t help feeling bad for the kid. I mean, it was peculiar that he would run home every day as if he doesn’t have the patience to slow his speed a little bit. However, that didn’t give the others the right to affront him in this manner.

About a week and a half later I had gotten on the bus and decided to take the seat beside this blonde haired boy. I was hesitant at first because I doubted that he actually wanted someone to sit there but I plopped down onto the seat anyway. I introduced myself and he turned around slowly, staring at me with wide eyes for a while before responding.

“My name’s Caleb,” he had muttered so low that I almost didn’t understand him.

We talked for a few minutes but he soon had to get off the bus. He ran straight his house like he did the day before that and like he would the day after that. What I found interesting was that he didn’t ever run onto the bus, just off of it. What I didn’t really find interesting but quite strange was how the other kids on the bus still continued to chuckle when the saw him running down the sidewalk even though he had already done it 8 times since I had been there.

I continued to sit next to him on the bus and I found out more about him like his interests and hobbies but he never seemed to mention his family. We got pretty close but when I suggested that I come over to his house he refused. He was nice about it, though. The two of us never seemed to run out of things to say whenever we were talking to each other. I only ever saw him for the 10 or 15 minutes a day that we got in the bus, I never even passed by him in the halls, so we always had plenty to say. Soon I had finally worked up the courage to ask him why he would bolt home every day.

He waited a while so I didn’t think he was going to answer but when he finally did he looked down and said, “It’s my sister.”

I stared blankly at him and he knew that I needed more of an explanation than that so he added, “she’s tried to kill herself a few times and I need to get home as fast as I can to make sure she’s alright.”

Those were the words that broke my heart. Those were the words that have stuck with me to this point and will stick with me for the rest of my life. I tried to comfort him by saying loaded things like that I was sorry and that everything would be okay when in reality I had no authority to say whether things would be ‘okay’ or not. I knew I wasn’t good at comforting people or advice so I just kept apologizing and he stopped replying. He stood up a few minutes later, got off the bus, and began his ritualistic run home followed by giggles in the back of the bus. Considering how bad that hurt me, I couldn’t imagine how it made him feel.

A few days had passed and since he told me about his sister and we continued to talk but the conversation was dry and the lake of topics that we usually swam in had run dry so we just made small talk. Then came a day where he missed school. It wasn’t too abnormal; students are absent all the time for various reasons. It only started to get strange after he missed an entire week of school.

He returned on a Monday and when I tried to talk to him he didn’t say a word as if he was angry with me but that wasn’t the case. Since I could tell that he didn’t really want to speak I figured it would be rude to ask him what was wrong seeing that I didn’t want to pry; I barely knew the kid. The time came for Caleb’s bus stop but this time he stood up from his seat, walked down the bus steps and trudged his way home. The kids that would normally taunt the boy with their laughter were silent and had slightly surprised look on their face but within a few seconds went back to their previous activity and forgot all about it. I looked around and was appalled by the lack of expression on the other children’s faces but then I remembered. The boy had stopped running and I was the only one who knew why.