The Wrong Bus Girl
by Joel Willans

So there she is on the wrong bus, staring at me with a trace of a smile, and here I am at the bus stop, frozen. Two parallel worlds of thoughts and feelings, separated by a pane of scratched glass. I look at the wrong bus queue. It's a shuffling dozen long.

The old man last in the line nudges me and speaks loudly through a tobacco-tinted moustache.

“That girl's giving you the right eye, son.

"She's really beautiful isn’t she?"

"What a lovely smile.”

There are five people left to get on the bus. If I follow them I will be hideously late and if I am late, I’ll miss my interview. The job I’ve been craving for the last six months will grow wings and fly away to someone who is not me.

The old man nudges me. "Is she your missus?"

Voices reach us from up front. The driver is arguing with a passenger.

"Afraid not," I sigh.

"Say what, son?" He cups his hand to his ear.

I stare at her and speak very slowly, pronouncing each word with great care in the hope she can read my lips. "She's not my missus, but I wish she were."

The argument at the front has stopped. The shuffling has resumed. There are two people still to pay. The old man is one. He walks two steps forward. I follow then take one step back.

"Why so down in the mouth, son?"

"It’s not fair, is it?"

"Speak up, lad."

"This. Her and me. So close. Maybe meant for each other, maybe even brought together by fate and the bus going the wrong bloody way…”

Then it hits me. And it’s so amazingly obvious that I start to laugh. I wrench open my bag and throw stuff out, handfuls of it. The old man stares as he gets on the bus.

"Please, can you give her this?" I say, holding my business card out “To the girl.
My missus who’s not my missus, can you give it to her?"

"What?" he shouts. “What did you say?”

I bellow my instructions at him and hand over the card. He takes it and shakes his head. "Do I look like I’m in the market for life insurance, son?"

"No, I just work in insurance. I’m not selling it. Just give the card to the girl, the pretty girl. Understand?"

When he winks, I want to hug him.

The bus driver snarls at me. "Getting on or not?"

I catch a glimpse of the girl, my girl, and smile. She smiles back. A big, proper smile, and I want to punch the sky. Then I see the right bus, the number 48, pulling up. The queue for it is only three long. I have no time to loiter.

The wrong bus driver revs his engine and asks me again if I’m getting on. I grin and shake my head. "No, thanks. You’re going in the wrong direction.”

The bus pulls away and I wave goodbye to her. I actually wave. As if we’re friends already. And she does the same. I point at the old man who has taken the seat in front of her and I mouth the words say hello. She shrugs and smiles as the bus moves into the traffic. And for a couple of seconds, I’m filled with such a feeling of joy that I want to sing. Then, just before the bus turns the corner, I see the old man pull open the window and toss out a small white card. It flutters and spins and twirls, until it is sucked beneath a passing car. I stare at the bus turning away. I stare at the space where the bus was, where my card was, and where the girl was. I stare at the space for so long, that when the number 48 leaves, I’m not on it.

British-born, Joel Willans has lived in Canada, Finland and Peru. He currently works as a copywriter for a Helsinki ad agency. When not writing slogans, he writes fiction. His work has been published in more than twenty-five magazines like Brand, Southword and Penumbra as well as several anthologies, including The Remarkable Everyday by Legend Press and Route Compendium by ID Publishing. This year he won the Yeovil Literary Prize and has achieved success in more than a dozen other competitions.

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