She awaits anxiously, when will the bus come? It seems so long she has been sitting there, first patient, now unsettled, bored and tired. Constantly stepping up to see if the bus was in sight but every time she would resignedly go back to her seat with a more urgent need to be somewhere else.

"It should have been here ten minutes ago, like the time table said, unreliable bus service." She stood up and thought 'I'll give it one last pathetic attempt,' her eyes opened with surprise, the bus had arrived at last. A feeling of relief and happiness filled her and she picked up her school bag ready to approach the bus to get on. The bus had no blinker light on and her face dropped, "You'd better not drive past", she threatened the driver with a dark glare. She waved her hands and called out to stop, but the driver took no notice and did not hesitate to drive past. Throwing her bag on the ground she cursed to herself, 'you bastard' and in the midst of anger she imagined kicking the bus, such a stupid thought.

Tired eyes, blank in a stare, though she does not see what she looks at, the gutter with its dirty appearance, no she is in deep thought. She sits at the bus stop alone, thinking about a world of selfish individuals, when really she tells herself she should direct her concentration on more basic and present issues, such as when will the bus come again. Her mind is elsewhere, she argues to life's injustices, "Stupid driver! Who does he think he is? I know he saw me! Who couldn't? I was making enough noise!"

Slowly her mind drifted further and deeper, believing nothing was fair and nobody got what they deserved. I will not agree in simple explanations of the lucky, I will not believe in such ridiculous things as 'karma'. She thought about all the suffering in the word, surely the human kind did not deserve such horrors and sadness. What made the suffering seem so unfair was the greedy, who somehow always benefited from their love of power and money. So many living in misery, hardly if ever the result of their own decisions, the people with power in most circumstances caused the pain and anguish. This all came down to the selfish world of individuals she lived in, all out for themselves not bothering to look up from the closed world and feel others pain.

Her school bag was so heavy upon her shoulders, she had mistaken it for the world. Her sad and tired face was a reflection of her thoughts, so many useless questions to ask for nobody would answer and ease her mind. She thought it was ironic, the closed minds of so many she knew, why did they not think of others, the pain and horrors of the world. It seemed so ironic that until the world fell from her shoulder and smashed into small pieces, no one noticed its existence, its beauty, its horrors.

Why was she thinking like no other, feeling almost loathing for the lucky who did not bother about others misfortune. Carry on with your petty problems, that only revolve around yourself. Don't dare look up, for you may see her tired face staring at the concrete, her back arched from the heavy bag upon her back.

As she cursed the world one last time, she noticed the bus was approaching. This reminded her why she was sitting there and why she had started to feel so depressed. The bus she had missed was long forgotten and instead the worries of the world had engulfed her mind. Standing up she approached the bus with its open doors. The bus driver smiled and said "How are you?," amazingly I replied "O.K. thanks," and suddenly my bag didn't feel so heavy after all. The smile upon his face made me realise things were not as bad as they had seemed such a short time ago.

This story is a project of Banksia Secondary College 1997