The Window Seat

I always pick the window seat on the bus.

It's kind of my thing, I guess. Ever since the start of seventh grade, when I first had to ride this dumb yellow thing to school because mom started her new job and couldn't drive me anymore. Back then, I was shorter, quieter, and still pretending I liked the same cartoons my little brother watched. Now, I'm in ninth grade, taller (barely), and I pretend to like other things - like boys I don't actually like and music I only half understand.

But the window seat? That's still real.

I like watching the world blur by. I like pretending I'm in a music video, especially when I've got my earbuds in and the sky's all moody and dramatic. Sometimes I even pretend I'm not me, that I'm someone way cooler, someone people don't forget after talking to them once. A girl with good eyeliner and mysterious problems.

Today's one of those days where everything just feels... off. you know the kind? I woke up late, forgot to charge my chromebook, and my hair decided to rebel. Then at lunch, my best friend Kaia barely looked at me. She said she was "tired," but I know what that means. I saw her laughing with Brooke at the vending machines. Brooke. The girl who once told me I looked like a drowned cat when I wore my hair natural. Nice.

So yeah, I sat my myself under the staircase like a movie character who's about to have some sort of breakthrough moment. Spoiler alert: I didn't. I just ate my sandwich and stared at a crack in the wall for fifteen minutes.

Now I'm here, on the bus, heading home. The sky's gray and kind of pretty, and the trees look like they're dancing in slow motion. I lean my head against the cold glass and sigh, not dramatically but like... a little dramatically. Just in case someone's watching. (No one is.)

The bus turns onto my street and I feel that little pang of relief. Not because I like home that much, but because I get to stop pretending for a bit. At home, I can put on my oversized hoodie, sit in my room, and be weird and messy without worrying if someone's gonna screenshot it.

When the bus stops, I don't get up right away. I wait until the last second. The driver gives me a little nod like always, and I mumble "thank you" even though he never replies. I step off and breathe in that chilly, almost-spring air. It smells like wet dirt and someone grilling burgers a few houses down.

"Lina!"

I turn and see Aaron jogging up from the sidewalk. Great. Aaron lives down the street and is in my English class. He's one of those guys who's weirdly good at everything but doesn't act like it. He's nice, I guess. The kind of nice that makes me suspicious. Like, what your motive, dude?

"Hey," I say, not stopping. "You dropped this." He holds out my math notebook. Oh. I must've left it on the bus seat.

"Oh-thanks," I say, taking it quickly. My fingers brush his for like half a second, and I instantly feel my face heat up. Ugh. I hate being a tomato.

"No problem." He gives me a half-smile. "You okay? You looked kind of sad on the bus."

What do you even say to that?

"I just-uh-bad day." I mumble.

He nods like he gets it. "Yeah. I have those too."

I kind of want to ask him what his bad days look like. Like, do perfect people also feel like they're fading into the background sometimes? But instead I just say, "Yeah."

"Well, I hope it gets better," he says, then starts walking away. But then he turns around and adds, "You're good at writing, by the way. That short story you read in class last week? It stuck with me."

And then he's gone.

I just stand there for a second, holding my math notebook like it's some kind of treasure. He remembered my story? I didn't even think anyone was paying attention. It was about a girl who turns into a tree when people forget about her. I thought it was too weird. I almost didn't read it out loud.

The wind picks up, rustling the bare trees. I look up at the sky, and it's still gray, but softer now. Like maybe it's not so mad anymore.

I close the door behind me. toss my backpack onto the floor, and sit on my bed. My little brother's yelling at his Xbox in the living room, and moms on a Zoom call in the kitchen. Same as always.

I close my eyes for a second and just breathe. That thing Aaron said keeps replaying in my head.

"It stuck with me."

I don't know why those four words hit so hard. Maybe because I'm used to going unnoticed. I mean, I exist, sure. I'm in the group chats. I answer when people talk to me. I show up. But it's like I'm... background. Like I'm part of the scenery, not the scene.

But if someone remembered my story... maybe that means I don't just blend in.

I grab my notebook from my desk-the real one, not the math one. The one I write in when I'm feeling too much and can't say any of it out loud. It's purple with a bunch of stickers on it: a little frog with a knife (don't ask), a sun that says "you got this," and one that just says "meh."

I open to a blank page and just start writing. Not even thinking. The words just fall out:

Today I felt like I wasn't invisible. Just for a second. It was weird. Good-weird.

It made me think maybe I don't need to be someone else to be seen. Maybe being the girl who picks the window seat and writes stories about weird tree-girls is enough.

I stop there and smile a little to myself. It's small, but it feels like something.

I grab my phone and scroll through my camera roll until I find a picture I took from the bus a few weeks ago-just a blurry short of trees through a rainy window. I post it to my story with the caption: "There's something kinda beautiful about being quiet and still being heard."

I don't even care if no one replies. For once, I didn't post it to get attention. I posted it because it felt true.

I plug in my chromebook, toss my hair into a messy bun, and pull on my favorite hoodie. Outside the window, the sky is still gray, but it's that calm kind of gray. The kind that says the storm already passed.

Maybe things aren't perfect. Kaia's still distant, Brooke's still annoying, and I'll probably mess up my math quiz tomorrow. But maybe-just maybe-I'm figuring out who I am, one window seat and weird story at a time.