The Unseen

I have never been brave. But that day, something came over me. A fresh wave of courage stirred in my chest, a feeling I was so unfamiliar with that it took me a while to recognize what it was.

The bus ride was as long as ever. He looked as cute and as sad as ever. A strange urge to approach him, to erase all the sorrow from his eyes that his angry expression tried to hide, was almost more powerful than I could handle.

Every day I saw this guy on the bus. He was always standing in the farthest corner, as far away from other people as the bus’s small size allowed.

The expression on his face never altered. It was always a deadly scowl. So, it was no wonder that no one ever approached him, that everyone behaved as if he didn’t exist.

After all, we all try to avoid conflict as much as possible, and approaching a guy who had that expression etched on his face was asking for trouble. However, no matter how terrifying he tried to appear, there was no denying that he was cute. Another fact I noticed, something that I ventured to guess he didn’t want anyone to know, was the deep sadness in his eyes.

I have been furtively watching him for almost a year now. Pretending to look through the window while actually looking at his reflection. The never-changing cold mask on such a beautiful face intrigued me beyond comprehension.

He never said anything to anyone. All he did was stand there and stare ahead as if nothing happening around him mattered, like he didn’t really care. Yet, I could tell there was more to him. Somehow, I saw what I supposed he wanted to stay unseen.

Never having been a brave person, I was more shocked than anyone when on this particular day, my feet carried me towards him of their own volition. It was like walking in a dream. I didn’t feel like I had any conscious control of it. I was drawn to him by an inexplicable feeling that I needed to know more about him. That I needed to get closer.

“Hi,” I said when I was so close to him that it was barely appropriate.

His face stayed completely impassive like it wasn’t him I was addressing. As if he couldn’t imagine someone like me, a tall, hunched-over girl with crazy hair, could be talking to him, the dark and brooding handsome guy. It made my cheeks burn in anger as it took all the courage that I had to walk up to him and say that one word. And he dared ignore me.

I cleared my throat and tried again.

“I said hi,” I stated assertively, my hand squeezing the handrail in a deadly grip.

For the first time, something in the guy’s expression changed. Just a tiny flicker in his eyes. However, having studied him for days, I noticed. It was the smallest of reactions, but I was prepared to accept anything as it was better than the embarrassment of being completely ignored when I mustered up the courage to make the first move, something they keep saying girls should do more in modern society.

“Are you talking to me?” the guy asked, his voice gravelly from disuse.

I nodded my head vigorously, looking like one of those bobblehead figures, utterly annoyed at my inability to form coherent thoughts, let alone sentences. It was partly because of what I was doing, approaching an attractive guy, and partly because I felt some powerful energy radiating from him that I had never felt before. It was intoxicating, to say the least.

His face turned dark as he responded: “You shouldn’t be able to see me.”

I, Angela Cifarelli Agosti, was prepared for anything from cruel rejection to being laughed at, but what he said caught me off-guard, making me unconsciously loosen the grip I had on the handrail. Although he always looked troubled, I didn’t expect him to be crazy. So, what he said made me reevaluate my intuition and my skills in judging people.

Before I could say anything else, the bus stopped so abruptly that I lurched forward, losing the grip on the handrail that I was barely holding onto to begin with, confused as I was by the quirky guy. I was already mentally preparing myself for the pain, closing my eyes and hoping at least my hands would do their job and break the fall, yet, the pain never came.

There were only the sounds of crashing, people screaming, and sirens blaring. It was an assault on one’s ears, but the inevitable agony that was supposed to come with what I assumed to be a bus crash never came.

Carefully I pried my eyes open little by little, squinting at my surroundings. I was terrified of seeing horrible injuries, my bones sticking out of my body, and people on the nearby seats bleeding and scared.

Thus, it took me a while to realize I wasn’t even on the bus anymore.

I was sure when the crash happened, I was right there in the middle of it all. Yet, suddenly I was on the sidewalk a safe distance away from the now burning bus as the rescuers did their best to save the people in the front which was engulfed in flames while at the back of the bus, people started pouring out, limping and hurt.

The confusion and the panic were so great that no one paid attention to me, just lying on the sidewalk in a daze. I could feel I was physically okay, but I was starting to worry about my mental state because nothing made sense anymore.

Clearly, I was on the bus during the crash. Yet, out of nowhere, I was away from all the panic and mayhem. In a place where clearly there were no lurking dangers nor many passersby to see my miraculous escape.

The question remained, though. How did I escape?

Was I even on the bus, or was it just my imagination? Did I faint on the street and dream that I was on the bus, taking the initiative for the first time in my life?

Clearly, that had to have been a dream. No other rational explanation worked, and I was terrified to think of all the impossible ones even for a second.

As I gathered myself up from the ground, dusting off my plain-looking jeans and my ridiculous yet favored unicorn T-shirt, deciding I was merely feeling faint, I saw him lurking around the bus. It was the best word to describe what he was doing because he didn’t seem to interact with anyone or help in any way. It was the strangest thing ever, and yet no one questioned it.

Could it be... Was he...invisible?

But I quickly dispelled the idea. He must have been messing with me when he asked me that question, trying some weird new way to reject me even before I could ask him for his phone number or something. I wasn’t even sure what my plan was if I was honest.

I was berating myself for being an idiot and approaching a random guy on the bus when I saw something that made me pause. My crush was standing over a dead person talking to him.

At first, I thought he was saying a prayer over his body or something. However, then a strange shimmering light rose from the person’s body and started hovering over them. It looked very much like a young man, like a ghost of a young man, but I couldn’t tell from the distance I was at.

The next thing seemed even more improbable. The two, a man who looked as solid and as real as one could get, and a ghostly apparition that seemed transparent, disappeared in the swirl of air as if they were never there.

I stood in shock for quite some time, my mouth wide open and my eyes staring unblinkingly at where there was now just a dead body of a young man covered by a black tarp.

What in the world was happening to me?