**Observation #779: Bus People
In front of us: a lady with gray hair & a long skirt. She has a backpack & two grocery bags. Kind of reminds me of Mrs. Spater.
Next to us: a young guy with pasty white skin, black hair, black beanie, black pants, black jacket & a ring through his nose. He has headphones on & a skateboard. There’s also a Shasta Cupcake Company box on the seat next to him.
Behind us: a woman with 2 small kids, smaller than Birdie. She spoke softly to them in Spanish, hugging them tight, and then fell asleep before the bus even left. One kid fell asleep too. The other stared at Birdie.
Right here: a brother & sister (who might look like a mom and daughter or maybe two sisters), bags full of Honey Bunny Buns, water, clothes, books, colored pencils. They’re just trying to get home.
• • •
“Medford, Oregon. This is Medford, Oregon,” says a crackling radio voice.
I sit up and look around. The sun glares through the windows. We’ve been driving for more than two hours. I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping.
Birdie leans over to me, closing his Book of Fabulous. “I reeeeally have to go.”
“I told you this would happen,” I say. “The bus driver said there’s a stop coming up. You can go then.”
I’m not keen on getting off the bus. But Birdie is too nervous about the bad smell coming from the bus toilet and starts squirming and I realize that maybe a bathroom break is exactly what we need if I don’t want a scene.
“Put everything back in your backpack,” I say.
As everyone gets ready to stretch their legs, I spot the Alexander McQueen book in one of Birdie’s bags. “Birdie, that’s a library book. You shouldn’t have brought it along.”
“Mrs. Spater will help me mail it back.”
He looks embarrassed and quickly zips up his bag and I feel bad for snapping at him. Who cares about one library book? And then I think of Ms. Perkins and feel kind of horrible that I won’t ever see her again. But I shove that feeling down and stand up.
We file off the bus with some of the other passengers.
When I come out of the bathroom, Birdie’s standing there with a wrinkled forehead. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I didn’t go.”
“Why not? We have to get back on the bus.” I look over at the bus, which is right where we left it.
“There are two guys in there and they are arguing.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are fighting about the little dog that one of them has. About whether it’s a purebred.”
“In the bathroom?” I ask. I glance again at the bus.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be going in the boys’ bathroom anyway,” I say, thinking of Birdie’s outfit. Bathrooms are sometimes tricky things for him, but most of the time the boys’ bathroom isn’t much of a problem. I guess that’s also because Birdie usually holds it and goes at home.
Just then I hear shouting and then barking. I say, “It’s now or never.”
He hands me his bag and marches into the girls’ restroom. As soon as he does, the door to the boys’ bursts open and the little dog is barking its head off and the guy holding it yells, “Well who asked you anyway? Dogs have a keen sense of smell and Stella here smells ignorance all over you!”
Then he turns and walks away, but the other guy follows him and yells, “It’s not my fault your dog is an idiot!”
And that’s when the dog, which is wearing little pink shoes and a pink rhinestone collar, jumps out of the owner’s arms and runs toward the other guy and starts nipping at his ankles. Both of the guys shriek and the owner yells “Stella! Stella! Stell-ahhh!” over and over again while the other man jumps onto a bench with his bags.
“She’s crazy!” the man on the bench yells. He holds up his bags like he’s trying to keep them out of water.
The owner picks Stella up and holds her close. “Purebred Chihuahuas are known to be sensitive.”
“She’s not purebred! How many times can I say that?” Suddenly, he looks over at me and I guess he realizes how silly he looks standing on a bench, holding his arms out, yelling at a tiny dog with shoes. “What are you looking at, kid?”
I’m in the middle of thinking that Mama would have fallen over laughing at the tiny pink shoes and would have wanted to get a dog just so she could have it wear tiny sneakers. But when the guy calls me kid, all at once I remember we are very far from home and no matter what my ticket stub says, I’m not an actual adult.
Birdie comes out of the bathroom and I grab his arm and start walking toward the buses.
“What’s wrong?” asks Birdie.
“Nothing, come on.”
We try to board the bus, but we’re stopped by the driver. A woman bus driver.
“Excuse me,” she says. “Are you kids on this bus?”
I look up at her, and then up at the bus. Number 457. Wrong bus.
“Sorry,” I say, and pull Birdie away.
We look and look, but there are only three buses and none of them are number 331.
“I don’t see it, Jackie,” says Birdie as he holds on to the sleeve of my jacket. “I don’t see number three thirty-one.”
I pinch my cheeks, and then rub my eyes and I hope purple eye shadow isn’t smeared across my face.
“Did the bus leave?” asks Birdie, his voice a little higher.
“I don’t know,” I say, even though I know it must have. The station is only one tiny building.
The sun goes behind a cloud and the temperature drops.
I only have five dollars and twenty-one cents in my bag.
“Jackie?”
“Let me think, Birdie.” I take his hand, and we walk back to the benches.
The dog
