Yellow Bus

• Samara White, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2017

The room was sombre and cold, the windows shielded by the blankets of fog. She sat there crying, struggling to breathe. Her small frame shook violently as the sound of her muffled sobs filled the gloomy hospital room.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” the pale nurse repeated, but once again, she got no reply.

The young girl looked up at nurse, a waterfall of fresh tears trailing down her rosy cheeks. Her once beautiful and jubilant blue eyes now revealed utter heartbreak.

“You aren’t sorry! You don’t even care!” she yelled before barging out of the hospital.

Her small lanky legs carried her across the snow before collapsing, making her a small bundle of blue material by the road. Tears continued to stream down her face as she reminisced her mother’s last healthy days. She remembered the beautiful orange sun rays shining through the tree tops and the autumn leaves falling in the park. The autumn leaves that she ran through with her mother.

Then that afternoon. She was twirling around the kitchen like an elegant swan in her pink leotard as her mother hummed a song and cooked Grace’s favourite dish, spaghetti. Everything after that second speedily went by like a bullet shot out of a gun. Her mother instantly dropped to the ground, bringing down the hot pot of boiling water down too. Grace slipped and had gotten burned by the water but watched in horror at her mother whose unconscious body lay seemingly lifeless in a pool of boiling hot water. She watched as blood trickled from her mother’s nose and her skin began to blister and bubble. Every time she closed her eyes she saw that horrendous image as if it was tattooed to the insides of her eyelids and within her mind.

“Mamma? I’m sorry. I told you I would stay, for you. I can’t imagine life now that you’re gone. I’m coming to be with you Mamma. I love you,” she mumbled to the grey sky.

She looked out across the busy road in front of her. Vehicles of all colours drove by in a loud bustle. She slowly rose from the ground and stepped forward.

“I’m sorry Mamma,” she whispered.

The large yellow bus was going too fast to stop before hitting the young girl. The hectic beeping from the bus, the screams of bystanders and the screeching tires could be heard from a mile away. But the worst sound of all was the horrific sound of the bus slamming into the girl’s body, causing her body fly and red blood to flood the once grey road.

They say that if you end your own life that you become trapped, roaming the world. No one would ever know if the girl found her mother, or if she was still sitting by that road, invisible, and watching cars pass by daily while constantly regretting her decision to jump in front of that one yellow bus.