Amelia

By Natalie LaRowe
Chicago always became a sea of black umbrellas every time it rained. Everyone was too
busy going to the places they needed to go to break off from the ever-flowing current and enjoy
the skys tears. Everyone had somewhere to be, and that was all. No time for chatting or going
slightly out of ones way to splash in a small, dirty puddle. Besides, that would ruin the polished
shoes and neatly ironed slacks that seemingly everyone in the umbrella sea wore. The streets
became chaotic during storms as well. Windows were fogged on the inside and windshield
wipers waved fiercely on the outside, doing their best to improve the visual capabilities of their
drivers while the tears from the sky beat fiercely down upon them. Every time a car horn was
honked, the remaining cars in the city responded, creating a ripple effect much like the ones from
the raindrops in the puddles. Red and yellow beams from headlights cut through the rain, and
everything was hectic. The only static thing in the city at that moment was Amelia. Amelia sat
patiently on the corner of G Street and Hugh Avenue, unmoving amidst the consistent motion of
the city. She was eleven years old. She wore red, the kind of red that Christmas dresses worn by
little girls Amelias age were. She had just recently been repainted, for no eleven-year-old bus
has a red so brilliant as a Christmas dress without having been repainted. However, if you looked
closely, you could see her slowly starting to fall apart. This was similar to the rest of the city; if
you looked close enough at the people, past the new coats of paint and new renovations, you
could see them falling apart as well.
First to board Amelia was a twenty-year-old woman. She, much like the rest of Chicago,
carried a plain black umbrella and wore business attire. Her emerald eyes held the memory of a
glimmer, but now looked blank and emotionless. She sat in the window seat on the left side of
the fourth row and sighed, gazing out the window. Her umbrella rested on her knees and her
purse resided next to her feet. Stealing a glance at the empty seat next to her, she remembered
how it felt a decade ago, having her father in the seat next to her. He always allowed her the
window seat, especially on rainy days where the windows were fogged, for she loved to draw
butterflies and hearts onto the window with her small, dirty-fingernailed, nine-year-old
fingertips. She quickly looked out the window again, shifting her focus onto her work that
needed to be done when she got off the bus. She was used to focusing on work instead of old
memories, for thats what she had been doing for the past decade since her father had died in a
car wreck. The only nostalgia she allowed herself was sitting in that seat every day on the way to
work - the seat that held the best memories of her childhood.
Immediately after the woman sat down, another woman slowly inched up the steps onto
Amelias platform, and made her way to the last row, using the hand rails to guide her, finally
turning and sitting down in the seat on the back right corner of the bus. She took a moment to
catch her breath before looking at the empty bus around her. He would have loved this, she
thought, he always loved things most when they were empty. It had been twenty-eight years since
she last saw the man she loved. Almost three decades since he left her for a vacation in Florida
and never came home. Almost three decades of attempting to contact him, and never receiving
answers to what had happened to him, or why he had never returned. She still loved him,
however, and wished she could be closer to him. For that reason, and that reason only, she chose
to sit in the most difficult seat for her to get to on the bus every day for the past twenty-eight
years. Yes, she sat in the back right corner every day because it was closer to Florida. It was
closer to him.
A few minutes passed after the elderly womans entrance before a young, beautiful
woman stepped gracefully onto the bus, followed by a tall young man smiling at her. He held her
hand as she walked up the steps, and they paused to pay the bus fare. A smile was overtaking her
face, from the dimples in her soft, fair cheeks to the crinkles at the edges of her eyes from
squinting. It was the kind of smile that comes from laughing too hard. They sat in the same seats
that they sat in on the bus to school during their junior high and high school years, the third row
on the right side. They whispered to each other, the girl telling a story. Her eyes lit up as she
spoke, and her hands waved all around as she was a very expressive storyteller. The man smiled
and listened intently, gently taking her hand in his and holding it in his lap so that she wouldnt
accidentally hit something. She told about what her thoughts were on that first day, the day when
she was new to the town and had to go to a new school in the middle of the year. She talked
about how scared she was when she first stepped on the bus, how she wrung her hands as she
scanned the bus for empty seats and a friendly face, and how kind the boys smile looked when
he moved his backpack for her to sit next to him in the third row on the right side. He laughed
with her as they reminisced about how awkward she was those first few weeks she attended
eighth grade with him, but smiled when she told him that he had been her best friend, and still
was. A beam from the overhead lights on the bus caught the sparkle on her left hand ring finger
as the man played with the engagement ring it was emanating from. She concluded her story
with a joke, one that nobody would laugh at but herself, and rested her head on his shoulder.
They sat in silence for a while, both just thinking about how much they enjoyed each other and
how thrilled they were to be spending the rest of their lives together, until finally he kissed her
forehead and rested his head on hers. She smiled, glancing up at him, and finally closed her eyes
and fell asleep.
Every morning, Amelias driver would purchase a newspaper and leave it in the eighth
row on the left side, in the window seat. And every morning, without fail, a man in his late
sixties would board the bus, pen in hand, and sit in the aisle seat of the eighth row on the left
side. On this particular morning, he wore a fedora and a polka-dotted bowtie, the kind that you
would expect a man his age to enjoy wearing. He excitedly picked up the newspaper, never once
questioning its origin, turned to page four, and folded it back up with the bottom half of page
four on top. Feathered pink pen in hand, he began reading the crossword clues, and as he pressed
the tip of his pen to the paper, the top of the pen lit up, giving off a dim glow. The pen used to
glow much more vibrantly in its first year of being utilized, back when the old mans
granddaughter originally purchased it and used it to help him with the crossword puzzles in the
newspaper. He remembered how thrilled she had been when she first got the pen, how she had
run up to him, waving it in the air and yelling his name happily, and how they had boarded the
bus, hand in hand, and sat in these exact seats with her pink pen in one of her hands and a
newspaper in one of his. Twirling the pen between his fingers, he took a break from the
crossword and looked out the window at the stormy day around him. He wondered if his
granddaughter was doing alright, if it was this stormy at her campus and near her dorms, and if
she had bought a new light-up feather-decorated pen since she had left this one with him.
Sometime in between the old man boarding the bus and sitting down in his seat, a
flustered, hurried, stressed teenage girl boarded the bus and waited impatiently for the old man to
pass so that she could sit in her normal seat, the second row on the left side of the bus, in the
window seat. She always preferred the aisle seat better, for that way she didnt have to see the
polluted, disgusting city outside. However, she had terrible motion sickness so she was forced to
sit near the window and her books got the coveted aisle seat. She wore a crisp white dress shirt, a
freshly ironed plaid pleated skirt and black over-the-knee socks, which she itched at most of the
day, every day. She had begged her parents to not force her to wear the dreadfully uncomfortable
uniform every day, but she knew as well as they did that she did not have a choice; if she wanted
to attend the prestigious private school, she had to endure the treacherously irrational rules,
including the one that required pleated skirts and knee socks. As she reached her seat, she
dropped her books onto it, causing some of them to fall onto the ground, papers full of notes
flying out of them. Groaning as if this day could not get any worse, she dropped to her hands and
knees to pick up her loose papers. Normally, she would be too tired, lazy, and irritated to pick
them up from under her feet immediately, but she needed to study for her Latin final on the bus
on the way to school today. She hated finals week. She felt that it was an entirely inaccurate way
of gauging someones learning capabilities, or even of telling if a teacher is good or not. It was a
week where students were irrationally pressured and rationally stressed because of it, and no one,
not even teachers, liked it. However, it was required, just like the unreasonable requirement of
knee socks, and she needed to do her best. Sitting back in her seat, she leaned over and held her
head in her hands. She lectured herself about how she needed to focus and stop stressing herself
out. She knew that the only chance she would get to study for these finals were on the bus, so it
was important that she utilized every second, meaning no time for dropping notes or scratching
at socks. Taking a deep breath, she began reading over her notes again and trying to ignore the
sobbing sky outside.
The final people to board the bus that day were a couple from California. The woman
nearly tripped while walking up the steps to board the bus, due to a map in her hands, twice the
size of her, blocking her view. Her husband gently grabbed her arm and led her through the bus
to an empty pair of seats and prompted her to sit down. She was babbling on and on about all the
things they still needed to see, and that they only had one day left to see them, and her face was
still blocked by the huge map. She began stumbling over her words and not being able to
pronounce things correctly, a habit that arose only when she was overwhelmed or stressed.
Recognizing this, her husband laid a gentle hand on her arm, easing it downward and causing her
to eventually lower the map and look at him. She began to protest, but he just smiled, kissed her
cheek, and gently took the map out of her hands. After three unsuccessful attempts to fold it
correctly, he finally won his battle with the map, folding it on its pre-creased lines, and tucked it
under his arm. He then turned to his wife, gingerly taking her hand in his, and began to quietly
point out small details about the city that would not be found in any tour book or on any map.
Gradually relaxing, his wife smiled and nodded, devoting her attention to anything his finger
pointed towards or his soft voice mentioned. Although neither of them said anything about it in
that moment, they both thought about how grateful they were for one another, and how they
could never imagine spending their lives apart from one another.
Amelia typically ran slightly later than schedule requested, but today, due to the storm, it
did not seem like anyone else was going to board, so Amelias driver closed the accordion glass
doors and began driving. Passing G Street, the twenty-year-old woman lifted a long, slender
finger to the window and slowly drew a tall, narrow heart much like the ones she had drawn in
the same window so many years before. Halfway between F Street and E Street, the old woman
said a prayer for her lost love, wishing that he would come home and that he was safe. At the
stop sign on the corner of Hugh Avenue and E Street, the engaged young man gave his fiances
hand a gentle, loving squeeze and began to doze off, one arm around the woman he loved and his
other hand in hers. He could not have been any happier in that moment. Turning the corner onto
C Street, the old man pressed his pen to his newspaper, writing in the answer for 4 down. The
pen lit up, barely, but lit up nevertheless. The teenage girl scribbled notes about paradigms and
conjugations as the bus sped down C Street in the rain, and the couple from California let
themselves just enjoy the ride and noticed small details about the city, like the murals on the
sides of the buildings or the way that some buildings were built out of brick and some out of
stone. They could enjoy landmarks and tourist traps all they wanted when they were off the bus,
they decided, but for now they were just going to enjoy each other and the city in the world
outside of their little section of the bus. Past 32nd Street the bus sped, past 31st, 30th, 29th, 28th,
and as the bus swerved onto 27th Street, everything froze.
Pieces of shattered glass covered the street on the corner of C and 27th, one of the broken
pieces being completely fogged over except the corner of a heart that had been erased into the
moisture on the window. A letter found that day in the mail slot of the old womans house,
addressed from Florida, would never be placed into her hands, never be opened, and the mystery
of her lost love would never reach her ears. A glittering diamond engagement ring was found in
the street, never to be exchanged for a wedding ring, and its owner never woken up from her
pleasant nap with the man she was about to commit the rest of her life to - til death do they part.
An unfinished crossword puzzle in a newspaper and a pink light-up pen, the feathers scattered
throughout the street and the pen no longer glowing when the tip was pressed, were among the
objects to be found in the street that gloomy, stormy day. Latin notes and shreds of a Chicago
map were found blowing through the wind, being beaten down by the rain. The Latin final was
never taken, and the landmarks of Chicago never explored by those two pairs of wondrous eyes
that had a love for adventure and discovery but an even greater love for each other. Amelia
would never move again, and neither would her passengers. Yet, the sea of black umbrellas
continued flowing through the city, the sky crying harder than before, the wind howling louder
and blowing faster and stronger. A city falling apart, beneath the renovations and new coats of
paint, just as Amelia and her passengers had been.