Strangers at the Bus Stop

Written by Robin Ellison

When I was a little girl, stranger danger was only just becoming a topic taught in school. It had become a subject so prominent in the world that it warranted dedicated lessons and PSA videos that scared the living hell out of us. Don’t get into a stranger’s car, don’t follow someone who offers you sweets. Don’t do this, don’t do that. It made the world seem so frightening. Now as adults we get into taxis and follow men who buy us drinks. My mother always told me to never take the bus at night. She had told me that hours ago, when I left home.

I would’ve listened to her at one point in my life, I would’ve taken this advice so seriously that I might’ve risked getting mugged or dragged down an alleyway by an opportunist instead of taking the option of the bus. Now able to weigh up my own pros and cons to anything, I choose to ignore that advice.

I was a good little girl. I always listened to my parents; I tidied my room and ate my vegetables without much fuss or protest. My mum’s friend would often joke that I was too good of a child and that she was just waiting for me to have my first temper tantrum. It never really came, at least not in the loud sense. My rebellion had been quiet, covert, guerilla. It started off as small things, the littlest acts of rebellion that could easily be disregarded. I would answer back under my breath and put off picking my clothes up from the floor for days at a time. I then stopped going to school and I started to lie about things big and small, significant and insignificant.

It is those circumstances that I am sure have led me to where I am now. The streets always look so different when the sun goes down; barren and dark. No one walks down them unless they have a purpose or a means to an end. Everyone is a stranger at night.

I have just left my boyfriend; my now ex-boyfriend and I am not crying anymore but my legs still tremble with every step I take down the uneven pavement. He isn’t my first but still, it has the very same impact that it did when I was a teenager.

My first real boyfriend was far too old and far too mean. He would burn a cigarette into my skin and tell me it made me his. Of course, I stayed with him out of my own stubborn pride and feeble attempt at rebellion. He had once been a stranger to me, a dangerous one. A part of me now likes to believe that I was making up for the terrible twos I never had. I look at the burn that is now a pale circle of healed skin and realise self-destruction has to be the most infantile way I have ever acted. I was punishing myself for nothing in particular, other than for what I was doing to myself. It can be addictive, acting out like that.

I reflect on this time frequently. I do so as I walk down the street that seems far more familiar in the daylight. I wonder what the younger me would think if she saw me now. Teenage me would probably think I look cool with my dress barely hanging from my shoulders and my tights ripped at the knees. A version of me even younger than that, I am sure wouldn’t recognise me one bit and I doubt I would recognise her either. I am not cool; I am a stranger to myself and I am hurting because of another stranger. I bet she never thought she would end up like this.

The yellow light of a street lamp illuminates my journey and the rain that falls from the darkening sky. It had been light when I left home and I said I would be home at a time that has long passed. I have been walking for an hour now. An hour before that he had told me not to go and that staying the night would be much better. I can’t help but wonder who for. How many other girls had he said that to? Was I the first? I probably won’t be the last. I wonder if it made them feel special. I wonder if they believed he only did it because he loved them so much. I can’t be the only girl to ever be in this situation but I feel as though I am, cold and alone, makeup so carefully applied now ruined beyond any salvation. At this point, I can’t help but feel as if I am beyond salvation.

My approach to the bus stop is halted just as I am about to cross the street. Underneath the shelter sits a figure of a girl, hunched over with her head in her hands. Crying, she looks like she is crying but I can’t see her clearly through the rain and the dullness of the bus shelter’s faltering fluorescents. Sitting there, she reminds me so much of myself. I have been in that very same position before; I am certain of it. It is a familiarity that all women have, an unspoken kinship born from being female and possessing a biological need for a connection with another human being. I realise, I am not the only girl to go through this.

I met him through a friend of a friend after so many times dating apps fell flat. I would abandon the conversation the moment the suggestion to meet up was made. Strangers swiping left and right on other strangers. Instead, I believed the old-fashioned way had to be the way to go but now I’m not so sure.

Dating is difficult when you realise stranger danger applies as an adult too.

We met for a drink and at the end of the night he held my chin, kissed me, and called me a good girl. Finally, validation I hadn’t heard since childhood. He was really good at that, telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. He would get into my head, every compliment and every excuse he gave seemed to come from my own brain as if he had them prepared before the thought even entered my mind. I put it down to him knowing me better than I knew myself. I had started to become a stranger to my own identity. A couple of days ago I looked in the mirror for the first time in what felt like forever. The girl who looked back at me wasn’t who I remembered months before. I came to the realisation; I was disappearing entirely from my sense of self.

His words started to sound foreign and wouldn’t settle in my mind the way they had before. I questioned him and the answers I had been given in response, answers that had worked so many times before, I knew were not the truth. This man that I had said I had loved, who I had trusted, had started to become a stranger again too. Though I admit now, one nowhere near as charming.

If a stranger tries to persuade you into doing something, you are told to run. As a kid that meant running when a strange man tried to get me into his car but tonight that strange man had tried to persuade me to stay the night. In the past he had been so naturally convincing that I would’ve stayed behind, but tonight I ran. I ran and ran and ran down the stairs, the street, only stopping opposite the bus stop.

A car passes by and sends a splash of water to soak my shoes but my feet are too numb to feel it. Everything feels numb and I think it’s because of the cold but even that I don’t exactly feel. I step off of the pavement and across the road towards the bus stop, towards the girl that sits on the blue plastic bench under the shelter, with shaking shoulders and a puddle of tears at her feet. I know they are tears, a puddle of them holds much more sorrow than one made of raindrops. As a child, I would say the sky was crying every time it rained. What does the sky ever have to be sad about?

Now closer, I can see the girl clearer. She seems familiar, oddly so, but I can’t recall knowing any other redheads in my life apart from myself. My mother is a redhead underneath the dark dye but this girl is far too young to be her and my mother never takes the bus. My feet come to a standstill in front of her and when I look down, I see we are wearing the same pair of beaten-up heels. She must’ve dressed up to break up with her boyfriend too, like it is a celebration, a special occasion – a funeral. They are soaked too, and so is the hem of her dress that falls at her knees like mine does. We are two drowned rats.

Even though I am stood before her, she doesn’t lift her head. I figure she is too caught up in her grief to notice me.

There is a simultaneous buzz and it earns a reaction from the both of us. At the exact same time we place our hands in our pockets to retrieve our phones. It is the first time she lifts her head and I can see it now, her face. It is a face I have seen so many times in photos, in my mother and father, in my sister, in the mirror.

We both put our phones away after we disregard a pleading text from him, the same old apology. I check the time and she cranes her neck to see if the bus is coming but there is still no sign. An hour, I don’t realise we have been waiting that long, I have only just caught up with time, with myself. I can see now the look on her face, the same as the one on my face. Our face. Smudged makeup, wet cheeks and wetter eyes, I am looking at myself for the first time in a long time and seeing a girl I used to know so well before any stranger.

I step back and to the side where I lower myself down onto the cold plastic bench next to the girl that is me. I know she can’t see me but still I reach out, my hand settling on hers that grips and bunches the fabric of her dress in a ripple of red. She relaxes, wipes her cheek with her other hand and I do the same to my own. I don’t remember starting to cry.

The bus eventually comes. It hisses as it stops and opens its doors. We step onto the bus and take our seat side by side. She looks out of the window as the raindrops travel down the glass. Two run in tandem, never outpacing one another and stopping when the other needs to catch up. She lifts herself and for the first time turns to look at me. I have found her, she has found me. We smile as the bus begins its journey.

I have been searching for her for so long, this stranger of myself. I don’t know her and I don’t think she remembers me. It’ll take time, but I am ready to get to know this stranger again.

Edited by Nico Horton