The Bus Ride To Happiness

• Stella Morgan, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2021

Jules sits in the back seat of the 998 bus, leaning against the cool glass and gazing at the hazy blur of the passing traffic. Images and words flutter through her mind from the night before, the smiles of her friends, the words he said, the photos he sent.

Jules is okay.

The bus slows down as it approaches the lights. A young girl and a young boy skip across the crossing, with their massive school bags like turtle shells on their backs. Jules subconsciously smiles until she catches herself in the reflection of her screen. She unlocks her phone and loses herself in the chaos of Snapchat. The snaps are either meaningless photos of walls, ceilings, sections of faces, or photos with text. Jules visibly crumples every time she reads a message a man sends her. A notification pings loudly, interrupting her time ‘wasted’ on social media. She jumps and fumbles to turn her phone onto silent before shoving it deep into her jacket pocket.

Jules is okay.

As the bus slowly gets passed by the train gliding along the tracks, she remembers the notification. She pulls her phone out of her pocked and hastily swipes right to clear seven messages from the same person. The notification ‘study for maths test tmr’ reminds her of the pile of work she needs to do. Reluctantly, she pulls her worn exercise book out of the bag that lies at her feet. She flicks through the pages covered with more bored doodles than schoolwork, until she reaches a fresh piece of paper. She titles the page “to-do list” and begins to note down the comparatively meaningless tasks she needs to complete for school. The list seems so daunting that she scribbles down “make to-do list” at the bottom of the page, just so that she can gain some form of satisfaction by drawing a line through it.

Jules is okay.

The morning sun illuminates the bus. Jules turns over the page and writes the heading of “chapter 16a” in the scratchy black pen that is slowly running out of ink. After staring blankly at the 35 empty lines on the page for a few moments, she sighs and slots the book back into its spot in her bag. Leaning back onto the plush Transperth seat, her internal autopilot takes over and she finds herself several minutes later scrolling through her endless Instagram feed. A loud male voice breaks her out of the Instagram trance, and she flinches at the yelling as the four men enter the bus.

Jules is okay.

The men sit down in the seats three rows in front of her and continue to yell and harass each other as the bus pulls away from the bus stop. Jules automatically pulls her phone out of her pocket and pretends to type on her phone. The yelling eventually subsides, and Jules relaxes again, clicking on Snapchat once again. Still anxious from the yelling a few minutes prior, Jules’s finger slips and she accidentally opens the photo from him. As she reads the message, fear shrouds her. Her heart is racing, body trembling, head spinning. As the bus pulls up to her stop, she scrambles down the steps, flinging her bag onto her shoulders and hurries off the bus.

Jules is okay.

The bus passes Jules as she walks towards her school. As she walks through the school gates, the bell rings and she trudges to her first period class. The first 10 minutes of class are torture. The towering male teacher is droning on about empirical formula, but Jules’s head is still spinning, her heart still racing and her hands still trembling. Jules cannot take it any longer and asks the teacher if she can go to the toilet. Instead of going to the toilet, she walks down the wide hallways of the maths building to the school chaplain’s small office. Jules bursts inside the room without knocking and startles the friendly lady inside. When asked whether she is alright, she admits for the first time that she is not.

Jules is not okay.

As the bus slows to a stop, Jules steps on with a newfound spring in her step. She nods at the bus driver and sits in the seat second from the front of the bus. She looks out the window and sees a group of happy children and smiles. Even as she opens Snapchat and blocks him, she smiles.

Jules will be okay.