The D Bus 2

2

Brenda was a happy child. She was living with her parents in a four-bedroom house in the wealthier American suburbs. She never had to suffer from famine, like her parents did, she never had to wish for clean water, as her parents prayed for. Since she has been born she lived on the bright side of life, as the saying goes. Her parents were lawyers and had moved into a nicer neighborhood to fully protect their only child some years ago. She grew up without scarcity and developed a fine sense of poetic justice. (…)

She loved reading books and sometimes overindulged into them too easily. Of-times she felt no distance between herself and the main character of the latest book, she absorbed everything completely and felt every single emotion and pain as the protagonist did. In the same time nothing seemed to hurt her in real life. Nobody wanted something bad for her and she was everyone’s darling. Everything was perfectly fine until this day.

As usual Brenda was heading to school, during the long bus ride she was reading a book, which was as always positioned on her lap. It was a hot and humid day. For Brenda was it a very special day since she knew that her 18th birthday will be celebrated tomorrow. She could hear the birds humming when the bus came to a short stop to pick up some new passengers. But some birds made such discordant sounds that Brenda felt interrupted and had to look up. Outside, she saw Western Bluebirds in a throng from which she knows – without hesitation – that they are related to the American Robin. While turning back to her book she saw out of the corner of her eye a person, who aroused immediately interest. Dark brown eyes, black curly hair, tanned and with such a white smile that she was baffled at the first glance.

This day she was not going back to her novel; she was watching her stranger instead in such a delight that she entirely forgot the gripping story in her book. She observed her true, present prey as if she would be in the library silently hunting for new books. She smiled to herself and for the first time in her life she felt that special, strong, and spectacular affection, which are described a hundred times in various novels. Her heart was beating as fast as if she would have run a 100-meter sprint and she could feel the butterflies in her stomach. She asked herself if she would be in heaven. Then she heard a boisterous sound which reminded her of wheel-spinning and finally she encountered a hard bump.

At 8:55 the bus was hit by a truck; simultaneously the bus driver lost control of the vehicle which led to a runaway of the bus into a street light. The entire bus was damaged by this collateral collision; the windows shattered and spread out into new frames. Brenda was dashed to the ground by the mightiness of the impact and the glass fragments found new ground in her face and on her neck. She began to bleed and lost consciousness within seconds.