Flowers for Cathryn

One

The sounds of spring were undoubtedly the most joyous in comparison to any of the other seasons. The chirping birds, having returned from their winter-long hiding, seemed to signal a communal hello, instead of the communal goodbye the tinted leaves gave at the end of fall. That's the thing about seasons: when one starts, another begins. It's a continuous cycle. But, somehow, spring always felt like an accumulation of goodbyes translated into an accumulation of hellos; spring was what felt like the real, true beginning, a fresh start.

The scenery also came in handy for lengthy bus rides. Because while the elderly men snored in their seats, the frantic workaholics used every ounce of self-control they possessed to refrain from pacing in impatience, and goers-nowhere twiddled their thumbs and hummed soft melodies, at least there was some sort of natural distraction provided. It was easy – enjoyable, even – to stare out and watch the budding trees pass by in a hurried blur, or the flowers that popped out of sidewalk cracks, and the rolling, white clouds amidst a sky painted so intensely blue it was almost a question of imagination.

Around this particular time of day, there were only a few people on the bus. Every day, noon came just after we'd passed the bookstore on the edge of town. It was like clockwork – literally; every day the same schedule, every day the same places, same sights, same faces.

Except for today, it seemed.

Today, there was significance besides the prospect of no longer having to wear sweaters to class. Today, there was someone new on the bus.

I spotted him almost as soon as I took my first breath after sitting down. I'd never seen him before, and his presence demanded my attention. Charlotte was a quaint little town – everybody knew everybody, and everybody's mothers had tea together on Tuesday afternoons, gossiping and bragging about their growing, high-achieving children. The boy was sitting directly in front of me, so that when he slouched in his seat it creaked and knocked against my kneecaps. He'd done it three times already, like he couldn't help himself from sinking down further, like he wanted to disappear from sight all together. And I might have let him do it in some other world, if I were some other person, but I wasn't. I was the person that was too curious to let it pass.

You see, nothing ever happened here. When I said nothing, the word that had to be the most boring of all the words known to mankind, I truly meant it. Charlotte was like a clock. You could count on it being three at three o'clock the same way you could count on the mail being delivered at exactly nine-twenty-five every single morning, save Sundays. (Even our exceptions, our no's, were consistently the same.) You could rely on the punctuality of Mrs. Barry, who walked her french poodle with its perfectly trimmed nails and perfectly pampered fluff the moment she finished having her morning tea. And you couldn't ever question whether or not my mother would be sitting cross-legged on the couch, reading one of her novels, when I got home in the afternoon, (which was the same time every day, too) and whether or not she would proceed to stand up and straighten out the collar of my shirt, telling me to change into my clothes for dinner, "we're having a very nice meal tonight." Everything here was so exact, so... always. It was like clockwork, I tell you; always always.

I could only see the back of the boy's head, which was covered in ash-blonde hair that curled ever so slightly at the nape of his neck. He was wearing an olive-y colored windbreaker, and his head was bent, as if he were staring at something in his lap. His one shoulder kept bobbing up and down. I wondered why. I wanted to know, the way I wanted to know anything that was not really any of my business. I couldn't help it, though, truly. I had tried, and I had failed, to ignore this inclination my whole life. It was just instinct.

Instead of resuming my tree watching, I studied the back of his head for the next few minutes. I wasn't sure why, since it wasn't all that interesting. I kept feeling like maybe it'd tell me something about him, other than the fact that he needed to shave his neck.