This bus smells like stale coffee and peanut butter, mixed with the familiar odors of exhaust and urine that have seeped into the plastic upholstery of every bus I’ve ever been on. I have a window seat, which is the way I like it. I watch the houses flicker by and imagine the lives of the people who live in them. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends. I try to guess who is lonely and who wishes they were, based on only a glimpse:
