Snowed Out

In my grade eleven year, there was a surprise snow storm in the middle of February, and not one of us was prepared for it. The morning had started out cold, and it looked as though it were about to rain, but there was no sign of snow. By the time our classes started that morning, the snow had started, and it didn't let up until later that night. Naturally, the school bus drivers spent the day preparing themselves to get to the schools in the afternoon to drive the students home...all of the drivers except for ours.

The thirty or so kids that got onto our bus at the end of the day were all waiting on the curb. We watched as the other buses came and left, watched as all of our peers disappeared one by one, and we were left standing out in the cold. When the bus was about a half hour late, we started to wonder whether it was coming at all, so we headed back inside the school and waited patiently at the door, watching the empty space where the bus should have been in the hope that it would materialize before us.

After waiting another ten minutes, someone went to the office and started asking about the bus. The office phoned the school board and eventually found the driver who then informed us that he was on the way, but he would still be a long-time coming.

Why it would take our bus so much longer to arrive than any of the others that were coming from the same depot, I will never know. The longer we waited, the more our numbers dwindled. People found other ways of getting to their destinations, whether that was by having someone pick them up, walking, catching a ride with a teacher, whatever they had to do to get out of the school, they were doing. Ophelia and I weren't so lucky, as both of us had dead cellphone batteries, and anyone we knew that had cars wouldn't have been willing to come and get us.

The small group that was left was waiting in one of the counselling rooms, staring out the window at the bus stop. One of my acquaintances, Sophie, had contacted their mother, as she had an appointment to go to in town, and when she saw her mom pull up out front (having left the town after the bus, but arriving at the school before it) and got herself ready to leave. Sophie then asked if I wanted a ride to town, since there would be an extra seat in the car.

"If you don't mind asking, that'd be great!" I said, following her outside. I waited by the doors and watched as she toddled over to the car and peeked inside. There was a moment where I saw her talking, and then she turned and waved me over. As I started at a run, I heard my name being called behind me, and did an about-face so fast that I almost landed on my ass.

"Is the bus here?" Ophelia asked me, gripping the door as the other students started scrambling up behind her. "No," I told her, "but I've gotta go."

"What? Where are you going?" Ophelia had now followed me outside to stare down Sophie and her mother. I explained that Sophie was giving me a ride into town, and Ophelia asked if there was room for her too, which there wasn't, and this seemed to make Ophelia really mad. "So you're just gonna abandon me, then?" I knew that she was just tugging at my heart-strings for her own purposes, as she was friends with the majority of the people left waiting with us, and I know that she would have had a lot of people to talk to on the bus, but she still made me feel horrible. "I'm just trying to get home," I pleaded, and she just shook her head slowly. "Come home with me," she spoke at just above a whisper, and it was one of those moments that you see in the movies that you think couldn't possibly be effective in real life due to the cheese-factor, but...it got to me.

I told her to hold on a minute and walked over to Sophie's car. I thanked her mother for the offer, but I told them that my friend didn't want to be alone on the bus ride home, and that I would be taking the bus. Had I known at that time that Sophie had had a crush on me, I think I would have handled the entire situation differently, because I think that Sophie felt that she had just lost out to Ophelia in the battle for my heart.

I headed back into the school with Ophelia, who was now hanging off of me and waving to Sophie's car as it drove off into the distance, and we waited for the bus to arrive. We would normally have arrived in town by 2:45, but it was now 3:00 and our transportation still hadn't come for us. Fifteen more minutes passed, and, finally, we saw the bus coming up the hill.

We gathered our things and made our way to the curb...just in time to watch the bus driving away. Apparently, since there were no students waiting for him, the driver assumed that we had found other ways to get home and just planned to continue on his route. Every single one of us took off at a run, screaming as loudly as possible for the bus to stop and let us get on. When he saw us, he slowed to a stop, and made sure that each of us was on the bus before he continued on. He never apologised for his tardiness, nor for his attempt to leave us behind.

Most people just sat down in the first seats they came across due to sheer tiredness, but Ophelia and I sat at the very back of the bus, secluded from everyone else. Everyone was dead quiet and only Ophelia and I were speaking throughout the entire ride into town.

We snuggled together in our seat, Ophelia's head on my shoulder, and we talked about what we were going to do after high school, what we wanted out of life, where we imagined ourselves living once we had our careers, and pretty much everything else that we could have touched upon. It was a really good bonding experience as we divulged our childhood fears, talked about our families, about the snowflakes that were falling outside the bus windows.

There was still so much snow on the roads that the bus was stopped for the greater part of the trip into town. It was 5:00 by the time we got off the bus, and we held hands as we wandered into the downtown area. The streets were virtually empty of cars, everyone having freaked out earlier in the day about the snow and left work early.

I briefly worried that my mother wouldn't be at her office, but, since she had only gotten off of work as my bus got into town, and she was afraid to drive in the snow, I found her standing at her car waiting for my dad to come and get her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Ophelia said, kissing me on the cheek. I watched her walk away and wondered why she and I hadn't hooked up yet. I never would have guessed then that it wouldn't work out for us.