The bus is ten minutes late. I spend the first couple of minutes picking at the toes of my sneakers where the rubber’s starting to peel a little, and the next few after that watching people cross the street. There’s a man in a pressed suit with a pocket square and everything, carrying a briefcase and looking important, and a woman pushing a stroller with two kids in it, both wailing and throwing cheerios onto the pavement. Before I can wonder where they might be going, they’re gone, and someone new is rushing over the crosswalk, going somewhere else.
I’m alone for a while. I usually am at this bus stop, at this time of day. Sometimes a nice woman with a heavy accent sits next to me. She has a box of cleaning supplies and is on her way to her job. She doesn’t speak a lot of English, I think, but she always smiles at me and asks how I’m doing. Other days, there’s a man with a dirty coat who fidgets a lot, mumbling to himself, tapping his hand on his knee, that kind of stuff. When the bus arrives, the driver always kicks him off because he doesn’t have the money. But I see him here a few times a week anyway, waiting.
Today, it’s neither. The boy who sits next to me is long-limbed and messy-haired. He has young eyes, but there are dark circles beneath them, and his face looks worn. He could be sixteen or twenty-five. You never can tell with some people.
Anyway, he sits down next to me and crosses one leg over the other and leans back in the bench and asks me, “Hey, you got a cigarette I can borrow?” He says ‘borrow’ like he’s gonna give it back when he’s done or something.
“Yeah,” I say, fumbling around in my backpack. No one’s asked me for a cigarette before, and for some reason, I feel like I have something to prove by giving him one. “You need a lighter?”
He laughs, but it’s more like a snort, comes out through his nose. “No, I’ve got a lighter.”
He retrieves it from the pocket of his coat and turns it over in his hands a few times, considering it, then he takes one from the pack I’m holding out to him.
He doesn’t say thank you. Instead, he says, “You shouldn’t smoke,” as he lights the cigarette between his lips. “You’ve got nice skin, you know.”
I must have looked taken aback or something because the corners of his mouth turn down a little and he says, “It was a compliment. It’s not like I said I wanted to wear it or something. Jesus, kids these days.”
Something about his tone offends me, I guess, because I hear myself ask, “are you even twenty yet?” without thinking much about it. Which is weird because I’m not the type to speak without thinking. I’m also not the type to talk to strangers at the bus stop. It’s a day of firsts.
“Nineteen,” he admits. He’s not angry anymore. He blows a smoke ring, and I watch it dissolve into thin grey wisps until it’s gone, going somewhere else. “What’s it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” I shrug. “I’m seventeen.” I don’t know why I told him that; it just felt like the thing to say.
“High school?” he asks.
I nod. “College?”
He laughs, brushing his bangs away from his eyes. Green. He blows another smoke ring.
“Dropped out,” he replies. “I had a scholarship. UNLV. Took a few writing classes for a semester, and then I stopped.”
“Oh,” is all I can manage in way of a reply. I want to ask why he dropped out, but I decide against it. It’s not my business. It’s strange how giving a guy a cigarette makes you want to know more about him than you should.
“Yeah,” he says. “Guess I just wanted to give my dad one more disappointment to remember me by.”
Maybe borrowing a cigarette from a guy makes you want to tell him more than you should, too.
“Oh,” I repeat. “Is he…?”
“Dead?” he finishes, the word clipped and too casual. He shakes his head. “No. Almost, but not yet.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second or two, and I don’t know what to say anymore, so we sit in quiet. I consider lighting up a cigarette, too, but I don’t want to come home smelling like it. My mom will kill me if she knows I’m smoking again. You’re only allowed to make that mistake once, I think.
“I’m on my way to visit him,” he continues, suddenly. “He’s all hooked up at the hospital. Liver failure, you know.”
He doesn’t have to say anything else.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, and I mean it. Usually, when people’s relatives are dying or whatever, I say sorry because I’m supposed to. I know that sounds terrible. But I mean it, when I say it now.
He shrugs. “S’alright. No one’s fault but his.”
I nod, solemn. Ahead, I can see the bus turn the street corner, pull up to the curb, and brake with a low creak. The air smells like diesel exhaust. The doors open.
“That’s my ride,” I say, standing up and swinging my backpack over my shoulder. I kinda feel bad, leaving him, but he smiles crookedly up at me and holds out his arm. Something about that surprises me. I’m not usually in the type of situation that would warrant a handshake, but I shake his. I’m acutely aware of how firmly I’m squeezing, if my palms are sweaty.
“Thanks for the cigarette.”
“You’re welcome.”
I want to say something like ‘good luck with your dad,’ but the words don’t come out, and then I’m turning away from him and stepping aboard the bus. The doors close behind me. I hand the driver my pass and take a seat. As the bus pulls away, I watch him through the smudges on the windows.
***
I don’t see him again until weeks later. The bus is eight minutes late. He got a haircut.
“You got a haircut,” I say, and then I wince inwardly at myself. I don’t think I should have said that; maybe it’s weird that I’d notice something like that about a person I only met once, that they cut their hair.
It doesn’t seem to bother him.
“You got a cigarette.” It’s not a question this time.
When he takes out his lighter, I take mine out, too. My mom found a pack of Marlboros under my bed last Tuesday, gave me a real hard time about it. We had “a talk” in the living room, both my parents staring disapprovingly across the coffee table and saying things like “we expect better of you.” It doesn’t matter anymore.
“How’s your dad?” I ask.
When he opens his mouth to answer, blue smoke filters out between his teeth. “Still alive,” he replies. Then, as an afterthought he adds, “more or less. My mom’s going off about how I need to visit him more. She doesn’t think he has much time left or whatever. So, keep your supply up. You might be seeing more of me.”
It’s wrong, but it makes me a happy, somehow. Not that his dad’s doing worse, but that I’ll be seeing more of him. Which I guess is only true because his dad’s doing worse. I know it’s wrong.
“What are your parents like?” he asks. When I look over at him, he’s inspecting the cigarette poised between his fingers. It’s hard to tell by his expression whether or not he asked because he wants to know or because he wants to change the subject.
“They’re alright,” I say. “We don’t agree on a lot of things, but you know.”
“What kind of things?”
I shrug. “I guess, uh, like, school stuff. My grades aren’t as good as they used to be. Religion.”
This seems to catch his attention. He’s not looking at his cigarette anymore when he asks, “Catholic?” eyebrows raised.
“No,” I reply. “Mormon.”
“I went to Catholic school when I was a kid,” he tells me, contemplative. “Hey, don’t Mormons have to go on some mission trip thing?”
I shudder. We got a letter from my brother the other day, from Uganda. My parents couldn’t have been more thrilled as they tore into the envelope. All I could think about was how far that envelope had to go to end up in our mailbox. Across an ocean, in airplanes and trucks. He’s so far away.
“Yeah.” I’m looking at my cigarette now. “Not until we’re nineteen, though. At least. That’s just when you’re eligible for mission call. The boys anyway. You’re gone for two years.”
“And I thought Catholic school was bad.”
I shake my head, eyes fixated on my shoes. The rubber’s still peeling, and one of the laces has started to fray at the end where the plastic part fell off.
“I don’t want to go,” I tell him. I’ve never said that out loud before.
He laughs through his nose again. “Well, I should think not. Two years is a long time.”
My brother asked for a new pair of shoes in the letter he sent. We send him care packages once a month or so. Trivial stuff, like pictures of the family or a book of puzzles, but this month he wants shoes. “Maybe you can get him a pair when you go to replace yours,” my mom said. Her voice was kind. This was before she found the cigarettes. “You should probably do that soon, they’re practically falling apart.” I told her I would, but that was weeks ago. She’s stopped bothering me about it since then.
“I don’t believe in God.” I’ve never said that out loud before either.
I almost have. It’s been on the tip of my tongue, sour and laced with guilt and frustration, every Sunday since I was fourteen, ready to be spit in the face of my parents. Just to see how they’d react if for no other reason. I figure they’d probably kick me out of the house, say something like “if that’s the way you feel, you should find somewhere else to stay.” So, I’ve been saving it for the moment when I really want to leave. I’m not sure where I would go. I guess I could go anywhere. Worse case scenario, I sleep on this bench on this bus stop for a few days and smoke cigarettes. I don’t think I’d mind that too much.
When I look at him, he just blows a smoke ring, looking contemplative. He’s really good at that. Blowing smoke rings and looking contemplative.
“What do you believe in?” he says after a minute. I blink back. No one’s ever asked me, and I don’t have an answer.
“I don’t know,” I confess. I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore; it makes my head heavy. “Hey, how do you do that?”
He blows another smoke ring. “This?”
I nod.
He teaches me, and I practice until the bus comes, and I have to grind my cigarette into the concrete with the toe of my shoe, the rubber peeling.
***
I see him every day for a week. He tells me he’s an only child, that his parents were in the middle of a divorce when his dad got sick, and she sits by his bedside every day like they weren’t yelling over alimony just months earlier. He tells me he plays in a band; they’ve never played a gig, but they have a demo recorded, songs he’s written. He thinks they might really be going somewhere, and I’ve never seen his eyes light up like this before, so I believe him. They’re just looking to replace their guitarist; apparently their other guy has been showing up late to practice. I almost tell him I play guitar, but I don’t. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to invite myself into his life or anything.
Instead, I tell him about my brother in Uganda, my sister and her husband and baby-to-be in Carson City, how I have no idea what I’m going to do after graduation. He assures me that he felt the same way when he was my age as he lights his second cigarette since our conversation started. It doesn’t make me feel any better.
***
I see him every day for a week, and then. One day I don’t.
I’ve sat by myself at this bus stop one hundred times, but I’ve never felt so lonely doing it before. I watch people cross the street. I hope to see the nice woman with the cleaning supplies. I even hope to see the man with the dirty coat. He wouldn’t talk to me, but he’d talk to himself. It’s better than nothing.
The next time I see him, it’s been another week. I bought new shoes. The one’s for my brother are probably halfway to Africa by now. His hair’s getting long again, starting to cover his eyes.
When I walk to the bus stop, he’s already there. Waiting.
“Where have you been?” I ask. I don’t bother to think that it’s not my business. I’ve been worried about him.
“I got into a fight with my mom,” he explains, reaching into his pocket. He brought his own cigarettes today. “I told her I never wanted to see her or my dad ever again. Then, I left.”
The circles under his eyes are deep purple. They look like bruises.
“Oh,” I say, quiet. “You’re going back today though?”
He looks past me, towards the street. There’s a man walking, a pretty young looking guy, and he’s got a kid with him, a hand resting paternally on his shoulder as they half-jog over the crosswalk.
“They’re shutting off the machines today,” he says. “My mom called. She thinks I should say goodbye. So.”
“So,” I repeat. I’m trying to get a good look at his face, read his expression, but his hair makes it hard to see. I can’t imagine how he must be feeling, what it would be like to accept something like that, to brush your teeth and get dressed and walked to the bus stop and go say goodbye to your dad.
I haven’t encountered a lot of death in my life. It’s a strange thought. My grandma, my dad’s mom, is dead but I was just a kid when it happened. I had no concept of what it meant, but I remember going to our church for the funeral and seeing my dad cry for the first time. The only time.
I guess she had cancer or something. We don’t talk about her much anymore.
So, I’m looking at his face and trying to imagine it. I really am. I haven’t always been very good at empathizing. I’m pretty sensitive for a guy, I think, but it’s hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes like that.
He saw this coming. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, when it all comes down to it.
I say, “I’m sorry,” because it’s the best thing I can come up with. It feels trivial, incomplete.
“No one’s fault but his.”
He looks down at his cigarette, then he looks straight at me. He brushes his bangs away from his eyes. Green. Red and blurry around the edges.
“Is it---” he starts, choking on the words, looking away again. He’s crying. I watch the first tear slide down his cheek, off his chin, hit the bench between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it hypocritical for me to feel bad about it?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t know how.
“I mean, I wanted him dead. I really did. I wanted him dead,” he laughs, a wry, hollow sound. We both know nothing is funny. “Now I’m on my way to watch him die. And I’m crying about it to this kid at a bus stop.” He lifts his hand and rubs at his eyes with his sleeve, shaking his head.
“I think...I think that’s okay,” I say. It’s unconvincing, I’ll admit, but I’ve never been very good at comforting people. I think maybe I’m supposed to touch him or something, so I inch my hand across the bench until our fingers are overlapped. He doesn’t move away, so I stay still. I don’t even breathe for a second or two; I just sit there, my hand over his, holding my breath.
“I’ve really liked talking to you,” he tells me, once the air between us has gone silent. “I mean, you’re a good kid. You’re a really good kid.”
Ahead, I can see the bus turn the street corner. Right on time.
“Thanks.”
He sniffs, and he must notice the bus, too, because he says, “I guess that’s my ride.”
The bus pulls up to the curb. He smiles at me. He’s smiling and crying at the same time. I feel like crying, too, suddenly, the way you always feel like crying when someone is crying in front of you.
He slides his hand out from beneath mine and stands up. He’s leaving. I’ll probably never see him again. It’s a big city, there’s lot of faces in the crowd and everything moves so fast. I’ll never see him again.
“Hey,” I hear myself say, and I’m standing, too. We’re both just standing, looking at each other. “Do you think...do you think after you die, you’re born somewhere else? And before you were here, you were...someone else?”
“You mean like past lives?” he says. I nod. “Sure, yeah, that’s one theory.”
“I think, I mean. I believe…” I stop myself. “It’s going to sound stupid. Nevermind.”
He blinks expectantly. Listening.
I’m never going to see him again. It doesn’t matter what I say now.
“I think maybe...maybe we knew each other. In a past life,” I say. I want to cry, but I only sniffle and keep rambling off words as the knot in my throat constricts. “I know it sounds stupid. But I feel like I’ve met you before. Somewhere else. Sometime else. You know what I mean?”
He doesn’t say anything. Not at first. I figure I must sound crazy, saying a thing like that to a stranger at the bus stop. We don’t even know each other.
Then, his lips tick upwards at the corners. Just slightly. “Maybe I’ll see you in the next one.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
The doors open, and I just stand there, watching as he turns. We don’t say goodbye. I watch him as flicks his cigarette onto the sidewalk and steps aboard, as he hands the driver his pass and navigates between the seats, through the people. He sits down next to the window and I watch him watch me through the cloudied glass.