This website involves two people; one takes photos from the top of a London bus and the other writes stories to go with the pictures. They have decided to open it up to other writers and this is a double first - the first competition they have run and the first one I have entered. Wish us all luck!
The Boy.
The first time
that Lynn noticed him was the day after her exam. It felt like a little piece
of luxury to look out of the bus window rather than down at her revision
papers. The fact that it was damp and drizzly and the colour spectrum was
selected from grays did not detract from the pleasurable sense of time on her hands.
It was the splash of blue against the brickwork that caught her eye and the
slight movement as he glanced furtively over his shoulder. He looked for all
the world as if he was having a surreptitious wee in the corner – he'd probably
describe it as 'having a slash'. She smiled to herself. By the look of him,
undernourished, with more than a little of the rat about him, in an oversized
anorak, it was unlikely that his street cred was that high. She saw him again
the next day. Same time, as the bus slowed down to join the main road, same
place, same anorak and same posture. She frowned slightly. Being caught out
once was a bit embarrassing, if he did that in the same place every day surely
someone would be on his case. Perhaps he was hiding from someone. Perhaps the
furtive glance over his shoulder was a self-protective gesture. She looked
around as the bus edged towards the junction but couldn't see any other signs
of life in the traffic-grimed hedging or at the blank faces of the windows
above him. By the end of the week Lynn was almost looking forward to seeing
him. Although she'd forget him by the time she got to work, the mystery of why
he was there and what he might be doing occupied the last ten minutes of what
could be a long, slow and rather tedious journey. She wondered if perhaps he
was waiting for a lift to school, or for his mum to come out of the block of
flats with a pushchair and possibly a couple of toddlers in tow. Perhaps he was
a runner for a local drugs gang, waiting for someone to show up so he could
pass on the goods. Maybe his dog was buried in the corner and he still shared a
bit of his day with his former friend. As the days went by and the
possibilities for new stories waned, the boy became just another part of the
landscape. Occasionally she'd still notice him, on the few bright sunny days
there were, standing there waiting, still in his anorak, hood round his face
until just before Christmas he wasn't there. It was the space he'd occupied
that caught her attention just briefly and she assumed that it was end of term
and he'd be back in January. But by then she'd forgotten he was ever there. Her
new Kindle fulfilled her need for stories and she rarely lifted her head until
she reached her stop.
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