The Bus Ride Home

part 3

"i can't waste anymore time, plus it is a gamble anyway, i might as well cross the bridge", you thought, as you tried your best to draw the route home from the countless times your parents drove past this vicinity. yet your memory failed you the one time it mattered. you had no choice but to follow that initial intuition.

MyTransportSG informed you that the bus would be "arriving now" at the bus stop across the bridge and from your veteran experience, you knew that that meant one minute to the arrival of the bus. the bus almost always arrived a minute after the designated arrival time. it didn't take much effort to dash up, across, and down the bridge, to the bus stop opposite. 1745 - your phone read, as you witnessed the bus arrive in glorious admiration of your prediction. you squeezed up the bus, just behind a trio of secondary school girls, and made your way to that window seat at rear of the bus you had been eyeing for a while then. as you sat down, your arms remembered to swing your haversack off as the doors of the bus closed with that familiar and mildly annoying tune. off went the bus.

recently, you had developed the habit of reading a novel on bus rides to kill time, but only because that novel was tested for your final exams. hence, you fished out The Great Gatsby from your haversack and tried to focus on the book, but some form of paranoia was teasing you and you shut the book after reading a page. "shit", you thought, as you looked up and out of the window only to discover the bus taking a turn the wrong way you so precisely anticipated. "ah whatever there's nothing i can do about it", was what ran through your mind as you returned your copy of Fitzgerald's literary work of art to where it belonged.

the evening sun was a yolk orange and the clouds cleverly blocked out the glare while allowing the more beautiful golden rays to shine past them. the bus was crowded but the air-con temperature was just right, a rare satisfaction you hardly experienced. you started to calm down when you recognized the condominiums and flats along the bendy route this bus took. traffic lights here and there allowed you to take a little more time to recollect fragments of memories you made in various parts of this town, from various parts of your childhood. when the bulk of the commuters alighted at the town market bus stop, you almost forgot the situation you were in. inevitably, a jolt of uneasiness brought you back to reality when the bus wandered off from familiar grounds to not-so-familiar grounds.