the boy on the greyhound bus

2008. sunshine coast. british columbia, canada.

 

i am fourteen years old. i am on an overnight bus home from the sunshine coast, after ‘social justice summer camp’. it is dark, and the AC on the bus is set to a particularly frigid kind of cold. i lug my little purple suitcase onto the bus, past all sorts of shadowy characters… i go to the back, where i can be alone, and my body shivers in the sharp chill of the fan above me. 

 

i wish i brought a coat, or a sweater, or god, anything at all, but i only packed for summer, not this. i wear a thin black tee with spaghetti straps, and my favorite pair of baggy aladdin pants… cozy clothes for sleeping, which i was hoping to do, save the bitter chill i couldn’t escape. 

 

‘hey,’ says a deep voice. i turn my head. my eyes blink twice in the dark. two seats down, and across the way, there is a dark-haired boy staring at me.  

 

‘you cold?’ he asks. he’s in a thick, oversized camouflage coat. i nod, a bit sheepishly. 

 

he stands up, and walks right over to me. he is tall, and rugged… he looks like someone who fights wild beasts. he strips his coat for me. 

 

‘wear this,’ he commands, and i willingly obey. the warmth makes my body sigh in relief… he grins at me — damn that grin! — and walks back to his seat... where he then proceeds to quietly interrogate me. 

 

we talk for two hours, in our separate seats, the conversation rich and flowing… i learn that he is seventeen, on his way to join the military, and all sorts of interesting tidbits about him. 

 

he doesn’t have a mother, or father, at all… he lives with his aunt, who despises him… his parents had been killed rather early on, and i didn’t learn the details until later. 

 

he was funny, he made me laugh, and he had the muscular grace that reminded me of a dark prowling jaguar. 

 

his world was so different from mine… and that fascinated me. 

 

he told me his story, i told him mine. 

 

then, he tells me, he is cold too. ‘would you like your coat back?’ i ask him, quizzically. ‘nah,’ he says, and hops into my seat. ‘it’s a big coat… we can share it, together.’ 

 

sure enough, the giant coat fit over the both of us, snuggled tight as two peas in a pod. 

 

he felt… comforting. familiar. exhilarating. dark, powerful, and wild. i had never had an experience quite like this before… and i sat here, tucked into a stranger on a bus, a little girl on her way back home. 

 

and we talked, and we talked, as if we were soulmates, long-lost, devouring each thing the other said. 

 

then, he took his hands — his massive hands — and started to stroke my thighs, which quivered, beneath his touch. 

 

i wasn’t sure what was happening, and i didn’t know if it was okay, but the sensations felt so luscious in my body. no one had ever touched me like this before… long, slow strokes, up the length of my body… and he stroked me like this, over my clothes, for a very long time. 

 

i ripened, and surrendered my little body to his touch, and gave little sighs as i opened to him. 

 

his hands lingered at my waist… caressing the soft exposed flesh between my tank top and the band of my gypsy pants… and then, in a flash, they were under. 

 

i had never felt the sensations i felt that night, before. he was masterful with his hands on me.

 

he pulls out his fingers, dripping in my sex, and places them at my lips.

 

i intuitively suckle on his fingers. 

 

they are delicious… sweet like honey. 

 

mm, i say, and he gets this wild sort of look in his eyes. 

 

‘go to the bathroom,’ he commands me. 

 

i do as he tells me, my heart racing. 

 

it is a tiny, pristine space, and in a few moments, he is in the bathroom with me. 

 

he locks the door. he stares at me, like a wolf ready to devour me. there is a deep hunger in his eyes, a primal kind of longing— he is a hunter, and i am willing prey. 

 

he slips my clothing off of me. i stand there, bare, allowing him to see me. 

 

he gazes at me for the longest time. 

 

‘damn,’ he says, ever so softly. he fondles my perky little breasts, my tiny pink nipples rock hard. he looks me up and down. ‘damn,’ he says again. ‘you have the perfect body.’ 

 

i blush, unsure of what to say. 

 

he runs his fingers over the curves of my lithe little body, the sensations electrifying me. 

 

he turns me around in a 360° rotation so he can see every inch of me. 

 

‘you’re hot as hell,’ he says again, his arousal overtaking him. 

 

i bashfully cover myself with my arms. he takes them, and pins them over my head. now i am pressed against the door of the greyhound bathroom, and there is nothing i can do about it. 

 

he kisses me, gently at first, and then with growing need, and i can feel him getting drunk off of me. 

 

his breath gets hot and fast and heavy, and he orders me to my knees. 

 

i obey, willingly. 

 

he unzips his jeans, revealing his thick, hard member, and in that moment — 

 

BANG! BANG! BANG! — there is chaos, at the door — followed by WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING IN THERE?

 

the lock turns from the outside, he shoves his cock back in his pants, and the door whips open to expose me, fully naked, on my knees. 

 

i scramble to my feet, hiding myself, desperately wishing for the floor to swallow me. 

 

it is the driver, at the door, and i’ve never seen someone so infuriatingly red in my life.  

 

the driver screams at us, GET THE FUCK OFF THIS BUS! and who the fuck do we think we are? there are people waiting for the bathroom, he screams and screams, and he had to stop the bus to deal with this bullshit. he’s on a schedule! what idiots we are! get the fuck off this bus, NOW! 

 

the whole bus hears him, at this midnight hour, and i am certain that all the forest critters have woken, too.  

 

i am fourteen, naked on a greyhound bus, and frozen, and terribly scared. 

 

we have to get off the bus? 

 

in the middle of nowhere? 

 

we are thousands of miles from any kind of town, in the frigid emptiness of the northern tundra. 

 

the highway we are on is called ‘the highway of tears’ running down the middle of british columbia. 

 

it is called this because of the countless indigenous women who are trafficked and murdered and left for dead, here. 

 

i picture myself left dead in a ditch and wonder if my family will ever know what happened. 

 

‘please sir,’ says the boy to the driver. ‘please don’t kick her off.’ 

 

he hands me my clothes, which i quickly slip on. 

 

‘please sir,’ he says, ‘this was all my fault.’ 

 

‘i’ll get off the bus,’ he says. ‘i’ll get off right now. but please, sir— let her stay on.’ 

 

‘i made her do it,’ he says again. ‘she’s innocent. she didn’t mean to do anything wrong.’ 

 

the driver draws a sharp breath. 

 

he looks me up and down. 

 

‘it’s my fault, sir,’ the boy says again. 

 

‘alright,’ the driver grunts. 

he looks at me leerily. 

 

‘she is a pretty little thing.’

 

the boy grins sheepishly at him. 

 

the driver relaxes, and laughs. then he glares at the boy. ‘don’t let me catch you in there, again.’ 

 

‘you won’t, sir.’ the boy promises. 

 

the driver doesn’t kick us off.

 

he walks back up to the front of the bus. 

 

i am burning, in shock, and fear, and admiration, and shame, and the boy leads me back to our seat.

 

‘relax,’ he winks at me. ‘i got this.’ 

 

and i exhale for the first time in god knows how long.

 

and in that moment, i fall head-over-heels for him. 

 

my hero.

 

this boy on the greyhound bus, who — even though he caused it — just saved me from imminent, unforgiving Death. 

 

‘you okay?’ he asks me. 

 

‘i think so,’ i say… my cheeks still burning red from shame. 

 

he starts stroking me, slowly, and gently, again… and my body melts into him. 

 

for the next eight hours, we sit, unmoving, pressed together under that big coat.

 

his fingers play, for eight hours straight, in the gushing rivers of my tiny little pussy. 

 

we make out, and talk, and make out some more, and somehow, i feel… safe, with him. 

 

protected in his embrace. he’s got me, my body says. 

 

and i soften into the sensation of him stroking me so tenderly, willingly obliging to whatever he desires from my body… 

 

he asks me if i have ever been with anyone before. 

 

i tell him, shyly, that i am a virgin, and i am saving myself for marriage. 

 

he gets down on one knee, at 3 o’clock in the morning, on the floor of the greyhound bus. 

 

‘will you marry me?’ he asks, quite earnestly. 

‘no!’ i laugh, and blush even harder. ‘i just met you a few hours ago!’ 

 

‘i’m serious,’ he says. ‘you’re the most beautiful girl i’ve ever met in my life.’ 

 

‘no,’ i say again. ‘don’t be silly. we hardly even know each other.’ 

 

he looks me dead in the eyes: ‘i don’t ever want to be with anyone else, ever again.’ 

 

i laugh again. this ridiculous boy. we don’t even live in the same city. 

 

‘i’ll probably never see you again,’ i say softly to him. 

 

‘i’m gonna come visit you, next christmas, when i’m back from the military.’ he says to me.

 

‘in a year and a half?’ i say to him. 

 

‘i promise,’ he says to me.  

 

the hours pass, and the greyhound bus chugs steadily towards my home. 

 

i am one city away from my arrival gate. 

 

he doesn’t have a phone, or an email, or anything. 

 

‘i will call you from the pay phone,’ he says to me. 

 

i doubt that’s going to happen… but he asks for my number again, so i finally give it to him.

 

i have two books in my suitcase: ‘chicken soup for the teenage soul’, and ‘the seven habits of highly effective teens’.

 

i pull them out, and write my phone number in each one. 

 

‘oh… what’s your name?’ i ask him.

 

‘____’ he replies.

 

‘dear ____,’ i write on the first page of one book.

 

‘thank you for saving my life. 

i hope you have a wonderful time in the military.

please don’t die. 

 

love,

sufey’

 

then i autograph both books, and give them to him. 

 

‘you need these books more than me, anyways.’ i tease him. 

 

‘i’m never gonna forget you,’ he says back to me. 

 

the bus dings. i’ve reached my stop. he carries my purple suitcase off the bus for me. 

 

he gets back on the bus. the bus leaves. 

 

i sit there, on the bus bench, silently. 

 

the first glimmers of sunrise meander across the sky… a shimmering array of pink and golden light. 

 

soon, my father arrives. 

 

‘how was your trip?’ he asks me. 

 

‘it was good, daddy,’ i reply.

 

‘were you able to sleep?’ my father inquires. 

 

‘yes, i slept great,’ i say. 

 

i tell him about summer camp and what we learned there, and about all the new friends i made. 

 

i do not tell him about the boy on the greyhound bus — a memory that i am sure will soon fade.