The Clock

"If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?"

She lay, curled in his arms, watching as the illuminated green clock on her wrist flicked between numbers. It was 2am, and he was asleep on the couch, but she couldn't seem to find rest despite how much she wanted to. Her stomach churned with anxiety like an unsettled nerve demanding to be scratched. She wanted to sleep so she could silence this uneasy feeling of guilt that crawled its way up her her throat every time she allowed her thoughts to wander. 0000:05:14:32. Five hours and fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds. She would probably be on the bus heading to the university. For a moment, just for a very brief moment, she allowed her eyes to glance toward the wrist of the boy she was resting on. 000:00:00:00. She regretted it the moment she did it because it made it even harder. It made it harder to want to breathe, to want to exist. She wanted to melt away and never have to make the decision she would have to make on the bus in five hours.

However, five hours came, and she still had not slept. She woke him around 6:30am so that they could get ready for the day, and she took her time, mostly because she was terrified of the morning that would unfold, but also because she wanted to look nice for whomever it was she was destined to meet in the next hour.

He noticed. On the way out the door, she was cut off by him, and he pulled her in for a very passionate kiss. She let him only out of guilt. She'd always been driven by guilt, and she hated it.

She held his hand on the way to the bus, to satisfy him more than anything. To give him his last moments. And she kept glancing at her wrist. 0000:00:2:27. Two and a half minutes. That was it. Then she would have to choose.

She couldn't imagine breaking the heart of a random boy who just so happened to be destined for her soul and her soul alone, but she couldn't imagine tearing away from the boy whom she had gotten to know over the course of the last two years. She closed her eyes as they walked, reminiscing, holding on to good memories for the last two minutes before everything changed.

The girl remembered the moment when she had met him. Her clock, at the time, still had around two years left on it, but her wrists had been covered by the long sleeves she was wearing, so when he bumped into her the moment his clock had hit 0000:00:00:01, he had assumed she was the one - the very one for him, his very soul mate for the rest of his existence. And in that moment, all of his loyalties and all of his trust and all of his very being was hers - even though it actually wasn't.

The girl didn't want to hurt his feelings, and so out of guilt, she had pretended. All this time, she covered up her wrists, with watches or bracelets or long sleeves. And he had no idea. Not one clue.

She didn't know why his clock struck zero when he bumped into her when her own clock still had two years to go. She wondered about that sometimes; whose life is also in disarray because she happened to be in the very wrong place at the very wrong time?

She was going to leave him. The universe give people soul mates for a reason, and she had messed that up once already; she wasn't going to do it again.

The girl hesitated outside of the bus, and the boy looked at her with raised eyebrows. "You okay?" he asked, and she just nodded.

"Go ahead and go on and save me a seat. I need to check something real quick. I'll be there soon." I leaned in, giving him a final kiss.

0000:00:00:15. She needed to prepare herself for what was to come. So she held her breath for ten seconds, counting down to herself, and then she climbed up onto the bus. Each second passed with each slow step she took.

Generally the same people took the same bus at around the same times. But occasionally, a stranger found their way inside in moments when they needed it. And today, that stranger happened to be the bus driver himself.

She could see it. The way he was earnestly looking at her as she stepped on, and the way his face was flushed and the way he was discreetly rubbing his sweaty palms on his pants. She stopped at the top of the stairs and smiled at him. She could see her boy over in his seat, watching her with furrowed eyebrows, wondering what was going on, but she refused to look at him.

"Hello," the bus driver said, and she chuckled halfheartedly to herself. He had to be around her same age, which was odd for the bus drivers around here. Usually they were much older. She could feel it - the entire universe compelling her to greet him back and to tell him her name and to ask if he was her soul mate even though she already knew he was. And she took a small step towards him with every intention to do just that. Then a rush of anxiety and the possibilities and the consequences pulsed through her veins, and without a word she turned and rushed back to her seat beside her boy.

A week passed. Intentionally or not, she didn't ever end up on the same bus that her soul mate had been driving. This was relieving in a sense, because she did not want to put up with the consequences of officially meeting him - like what her boy would think, but even more than that, what she would do. She recalled the feeling of the universe trying to goad her into speaking to the bus driver, and she knew that would just happen over and over again until they were finally and officially together.

She thought this through one night while flipping channels with her boy, when she was suddenly captivated by certain words big and bold on the screen.

MAN DRIVES BUS INTO LAKE, DROWNING 14 AND HIMSELF.

Her heart sank in her chest and she suddenly felt as though she couldn't breathe. Her boy, with his arm around her, scoffed.

"Crazy man," he muttered, half to himself and half to her. "Those poor people on the bus, and their poor families. They didn't deserve that."

All she could manage in breathlessly mumble was, "Yeah. They really didn't deserve that."