Short Story Morning Commute

Zoe Zachko,

Tenafly High School Short Story

It's morning. You wake up to the sound of your alarm, a sound reminiscent of high school fire alarms, war movies, and ambulances. It's, without a doubt, the sound you hate most.

But you've tried other sounds, other alarms, and they just don't work. You get up (albeit two snooze buttons and a solid twenty minutes later), brush your teeth, comb your hair, maybe even put in a little gel. Anything to distract your coworkers from your eye bags the size of suitcases and your empty, dead-tired gaze.

It's Monday, the week has just started, and God do you hate work. It's pitch-black out as you shuffle your way to the bus stop. Once again, the point of Daylight Savings is pondered by you and the lack of a decent pair of gloves is cursed by you.

Winter mornings are hard, but your boss makes sure that the mornings you miss the 9 A.M. briefs are the hardest. So you push on.

At the bus stop are the usual crew–people you've seen the faces of for the past ten years without fail–but you've yet to find the desire to learn their names. Blonde with the Red Wool Coat got divorced last month, and the settlement money must've been good, because she's been wearing a different outfit every day for the past week. Bald and Tall–at least six feet but you've yet to ask for his exact height–has a son who used to come with him to work all the time. Cute kid with rosy cheeks, very un-cute fiery temper tantrums.

A tall teenager with the same rosy cheeks stands next to him. Huh. Time flies fast.

The bus pulls into the stop, nearly taking out Short

Brunette who always stands at the curb and holds her thumb out even though the bus river has yet to miss this stop and the ten other habitual riders who have waited here for the last ten years. And still after these ten years, Short Brunette always manages to look more shocked and more frightened as the large, swaying toaster on wheels almost careens right into her. Some things never change.

You get on the bus and walk down the narrow aisle, purposefully not looking down, lest you see something that makes you want to push aside the line of passengers behind you–already grumbling about your average walking pace–and unload your meager breakfast onto the curb.

You find a seat (at least two rows behind the middle seat; anything before that is where the smelly, elderly, or tourists sit) and you gracefully dive into it as the bus driver swerves back into the road and takes off at the speed of light, only to slam to a halt at the stoplight fifty meters away. You're lucky today; the seat next to you is empty, and it stays that way for the next few stops.

The bus goes from small suburban town number one to small suburban town number two, three, and four. Speeding to screeching. More people come onto the bus, all wearing the same business casual uniform. Mostly blacks, grays, respectable muted blues and maroons.

You see Blond with the Red Wool Coat sitting in the handicap seat. She stands out like a sweet potato fry in a basket of regular potato fries. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

You see a pair of tourists get onto the bus and sit in the very first row. Those are the true infiltrators; they are the cauliflower bites that have supplanted your side of mac and cheese due to the blunder of an overworked waitress.

Eureka! The bus has pulled out of the residential area and onto the freeway and the seat next to you is still empty. Monday blessings are few and far between, so this one you savor like a glass of red wine you paid twenty dollars for at a restaurant even though you know you could've bought the whole bottle for fifteen at the store.

You pull your laptop out of your bag to get a headstart on work for the day. But really, you're scrolling through Facebook to see if any of your past classmates are doing anything worth being jealous over. You notice a slew of emails from work that have been streaming in since 7:15. It's your Corporate V.P. George accidentally sending out his kids' soccer practice schedule to the wrong email list. Again.

You hear a groan, high and whiny, accompanied by a loud whoosh of air and anunpleasant squelching sound.

Is that you?

No, it's the bus that has just blown a tire and pulled up alongside the road.

A long line of business-casual uniformed prisoners shuffle out of the vehicle, most are grumbling, a few are groaning, some are too tired to care. You are of the latter. Short Brunette is on the verge of tears, probably worried about being late to her early morning meeting. You should probably be worried too. But standing there on the side of the freeway, your hands cold, seeing cars go by, lined up

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alongside the bourgeoisie of the corporate workplace, you feel nothing.

You see a crushed up water bottle fly out of the window of a silver Prius. You see a Tesla that's white, shiny, and toy-like make a (probably) heavily calculated movement to ever so slightly change the trajectory of the car as to narrowly avoid hitting the piece of litter that would leave a speck of unwanted germs on the tire. The water bottle remains in the middle of the road, strangely picturesque. Smooth, lightly-tinted blue, reflecting a rainbow of colors along the backdrop of the black asphalt. Unknown, unnoticed, but sure to be trampled and swept aside in the sea of gasoline-fueled predators. Crumpled beyond recognition.

Not thinking, not feeling, you walk to pick up that water bottle. From behind, you hear the grumbling, the groaning, the silence from those too tired to care, and the tears of a Short Brunette that may or may not be meant for you. You reach down to pick up the useless, crumpled, dejected water bottle when you hear a honk that's loud, ferocious, and desperate.

Is that you?

No, it's a black Jeep, going ninety-five in a sixty, coming straight at you.

This driver is not the bus driver who can slam to halt in 5 meters or the Tesla that does a million calculations a second to precisely swerve out of the way. This is a normal human being on their way to work, a breakfast sandwich in hand, ketchup on their lips, and fear in their eyes. But you are too tired to care. So you are pushed down.

It is said that right before you die, a life review flashes before your eyes. That is, the entirety of your life history is relieved in the seven minutes of brain activity after your spine has snapped and the connection between mind and body is severed. You are a spectator of the movie of your life. If it was a real movie, critics would've hated it and it would've tanked in the box office.

Second week of third grade. It was show-and-tell day, and you brought in a picture book full of your favorite paintings. It was full of blues, reds, yellows, and greens. Your friends brought in footballs and T-shirts signed by NBA stars. You told your teacher you forgot to bring it in, but you were going to bring in a baseball signed by the Roger Clemens. It was a family heirloom.

Whose picture book is this?

Not yours, you had said. Maybe it's Cindy Miller's?

Second semester of freshman year. You had wanted to take that honors painting class. You had sat down with your guidance counselor to talk about courses. Math class, science class (Maybe two?), social studies, English–for your elective, maybe try computer science? Colleges love that. Painting? But you've already done your art requirement. You backed out and chose economics. It was the worst class you took in high school and every day you looked at the paintings hung in the hallways, imagining what you could have put up there.

College graduation. A painfully cheerful ceremony, full of parents (father and mother: father now dead, mother retired in Florida) and friends. You had a job already lined up, at an almost-decent company starting at an almostdecent salary. Business wasn't really your passion but you hadn't held a paintbrush in years. You wore square glasses, had a degree in management, and a suit. Your parents were proud; your soul was subdued, and you stepped into that office with the perpetually broken air conditioner and squeaky chairs, never to be seen again.

Today. 6:30 in the morning, an alarm clock that sounded like an ambulance speeding along the parkway after an accident on I-95. You woke up from your life as an artist and into your nightmare as an office worker with a nine-to-five and an exacting boss. You got on your bus–same one every day for ten years–and headed to the gray office with the gray chairs and the gray desks and the gray people.

Except the bus never got there. And you were dead tired.

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