Another stressful school day, another two bus rides in awkward silence while the other kids talk obnoxiously; one bus early in the morning to get to school, a different bus to get back home to do homework. This situation called the “bus ride” happens ten times a week and each one is almost identical to each other. I stare out the window daily, always too tired to carry on a conversation with the younger kids and too stupid to talk to the older ones. One day the kids who sit in the front of the afternoon bus were getting on my nerves so I got the great idea to move to the back of the bus. To my surprise there is a small yet chubby boy sitting there who I never really noticed.
He was hunched over playing on his camo-colored DS, his dark brown highlights spilling onto his forehead. I had a DS too, so maybe this kid could hook me up with a few game recommendations. I sat down next to him and looked sideways to see what game he was playing but just spent a few minutes of staring at the screen, unable to figure out what the game was. I decided to end this by coming out and asking: “What’s that game?” He closed his DS out of surprise because he just noticed my presence, and then stared at me as if I was the dumbest person in the world. “You seriously don’t know what game this is?” the kid asked while he opened up the DS again. “Why would I ask if I knew?” I shot back at him. He handed me the DS and introduced me to Pokémon, a cool little game where there are these monsters with cool powers that you collect and then ally yourself in battle. We became good friends when I “evolved” his Pokémon, which was apparently a good thing (keep in mind that at the time I was new to the game). I constantly smuggled my DS into the bus after I got the game so that we could compete against each other.

Then one day, he was not sitting in the same place as usual. I scanned around the bus but had to sit down quickly because the bus had to move. The next day I found him sitting in one of the single seats. He did not even look up when I tried to talk to him from across the aisle. I just thought He must just be tired of me for now, he’ll get bored and start to hang out with me in a week or so. Instead of what I expected, he avoided me for a lot longer than just a week. After a while I got rather upset about the whole thing so I would purse him to wherever he sat; desperately trying to reestablish the friendship. It got so intense, my desperate friendliness and his indifference, that the bus overseer had to stop us and ask us what the matter was. I unhappily told the older person “He keeps on avoiding me and I don’t know why!” When the overseer asked my old friend the reason for his actions he said “Bella beat me in Pokémon and then did not give me back the Poke dollars like we agreed!” Is this all that this was over? I did not get to give them to him because I had to go! I did not mean it! Just as I thought those lines out I saw in his eyes that his reasons go deeper than that. I politely apologized as the overseer instructed and then sat down at my old seat, the seat that I sat at before I ever met him. As positioned myself to look outside the window I thought: One can lose a friend for the strangest reasons.