'Teardrop'

I was a child again, playing in the rain, with my brother and sister when the bus drivers wouldn't let us beg on the buses because we were dripping wet. There was a moment when a bus was leaving the cracked and potholed asphalt lot and we were so engrossed in our game that one of us was nearly knocked down.

I was the bus driver expressing my disdain over what I saw. One of the buses had almost hit one of them, and yet they went on playing, chasing and kicking puddles at each other in the rain as if nothing else had meant anything to them. I held up my hand and warned them not to come into my bus when they approached. They would have added to the mess on the bus floor. In spite of that, the oldest among them defiantly came up on the steps and stared at me, as if comprehending the situation a little too slowly.

I was the ticket checker who scared away the kids. They left the moment they saw me, and when I got on, the bus driver was telling me how one of them was nearly killed by a bus which was leaving the area. Fucking kids I said in reaction. I folded my umbrella and left it at the driver's side and started to tear each of the passenger's ticket, beginning the collection at the front and ending with the back.

I was the passenger, and after passing the ticket checker's portion of the ticket, I folded what I had left in my hand in half and pocketed it into my shirt pocket. I was sitting next to an Indian man, who was in his fifties I presumed. He started to open a little book of names, addresses and numbers; flipping and stopping, flipping and stopping. I looked out again; the children were gone but it was still raining.

( _")