In Continuum.

The Agitated Girl

You meet a stranger on a bus, a train, a lift. You glance at them with the corner of your eyes, and some of them catches your attention and some of them comes and goes like the scenery outside the window. There is this man on the train that I meet every once in a while on my way to school, with his unkempt facial hair and untidy clothes. He looks like a person that has been in the office for way too long, with his straight black hair reaching his shoulders, the underside of his chin covered predominantly with unshaven facial hair. He hangs his glasses in between the second and the third button of his crumpled shirt, and he nods his head on the train whenever he takes his short naps dangerously above the shoulders of the passengers sitting next to him. The coffee cup suspended from a plastic bag would dangle from his curved fingers, always a centimeter or two away from giving in to gravity. It is a wonder how his manager accepts the way he looks at the office, but I guess not everybody is as particular about the way your employees dress as others. Of course, that is under the assumption that he works at an office in the first place.

There is that woman who falls asleep while she is standing on a train as well, always falling onto fellow passengers standing around her to cushion her fall. She arms herself with a dark brown umbrella most of the time, not to shield herself from the forces of nature but the pull of gravity. She uses it as a cane, leaning against it while she sleeps with the other hand gripping the plastic rings above. Most of the time, the train would be so crowded that she wouldn't even need to grab hold of anything. People that stands around her would be the cushion for her to fall on, and I've seen her fall on a dozen different passengers. There were times when I thought that she must have some kind of disease, the kind that shuts down your system and knocks you out without warnings. But I have come to a conclusion that she is just a very gifted commuter on the train that has the ability to fall asleep while she is standing up. The Sudoku puzzles can hardly keep her awake most of the time, and she always reminds me of a child tumbling around in bed, unwilling to crawl out of her sheets to face the music of the day.

These are the kind of people I meet on my way to school and back. You meet a stranger, you fall for a stranger, your love affair lasts as long as the bus ride lasts. Your stop comes, you pray that she gets off at the same stop as you, or stays in the same estate as you. More often than now, she is probably not living in the same vicinity as you, and is just glad that you left the seat for her to occupy for the rest of the journey. That is probably the mentality of most commuters, and even I am guilty of such a claim. However, there are times whereby I do wish to have some kind of understanding with these strangers that I meet, a little random conversation or two out of the blues. I have mentioned it before, the way I've been wanting to strike up a conversation with somebody on the train, just to keep me company on our rare meetings. This Monday was such a day, and the incident that happened may eventually translate to something so much more.

Mondays are my short days, with school ending at fifteen minutes to two. But I'd stay on in school for a while, hanging out with my friends just to make the long dreadful trip to school worthwhile. After the lunch break with my friends outside our secret hideout known as "The Temple", I was ready to head home at four in the afternoon, with none other but myself as company. I was armed with the music from Royksopp, and the heavy eyelids to provide me with the darkness I would need for the nap on the trip home. That was how it went on throughout the trip on 151 as well as 105, until I woke up with a startle as the bus pulls in slowly to the bus I was supposed to get off. Somebody followed me down the bus then that I did not notice, as I was frantically reaching into my back pocket for the wallet. Everybody was waiting for me to scan the card, and I could feel their eyes on me like a long queue of impatient shoppers outside a fitting room. The wallet was being stubborn, and the line behind me sure didn't help in trying to sooth my racing mind.

Stepping down from the bus, the doors folded and I was home. The air still smelled of wet mud and steel, with the scent of concrete in the air as well, and perhaps the last trace of the day's warmth lingering in the wind. I regained by posture at the temporary bus stop, and there I was in the middle of it all with a school girl that got off the bus with me. She must have been one of those eager passengers that lined themselves up behind me impatiently, the remnants of my embarrassing admission. She must have been thinking to herself just how clumsy that guy with the strangely styled hair was, trying to hook his wallet out of his back pocket like a complete idiot. I must have looked like a person who was trying to wipe his ass with a single piece of toilet paper then, in front of everybody on the bus with my pants on. I wanted to run home in the opposite direction then, hide my face from the rest of the world until the next set of single-serving friends and lovers come along to replace this one. But there she was in front of me, carrying her books in her arms and heading towards the same direction as I was down the edge of the dirt road and back home. I've never seen her around in my estate before, and I was sure as hell that I wanted things to remain that way from today onwards.

I remained three meters behind her, keeping my distance like a stray dog would from a stranger human. Walking in front of her wasn't an option, since that'd only increase the chance of being recognized as the guy who wiped his ass through his pants only moments ago. She minded her business most of the time, threading the narrow path along the dirt road carefully with every step. Her white shoes were stained on the edge, the books that rested on her arms seemed to weigh a hundred times heavier than usual. She was crumbling under the weight of the books and the world, and her steps were particularly heavy for some reason, oblivious to my presence behind her. I've never seen her in my estate before, but then it's not like I take note of every resident there anyway. My estate is known to be filled with only three types of living things: The Old, the Young, the Dogs. Aside from Kimberly who lives seventeen floors below me, not to mention Shuling that stays in the terrace houses acros the streets, I have never seen anybody else around my age. So to see this stranger walking before me was a pleasant surprise - at least on my part.

I fished for the key to the back gate from my back, once again resembling a person trying to wipe his ass in public. Coming to the gate, I was just about to insert the key when the girl started pounding her hands on the metal gate, trying to push it open with her bare hands. I stared wide-mouthed like a person who has just witnessed a plane crash, or a five year old boy killing a pigeon with a hammer. There she was, the quiet girl that got off the bus with me, pounding on the gates like a disturbed maniac. Her oblivion to my existence was taken to the next level when she unleashed the beast inside her, trying to tear the gates down with her hands. It took her a few times to notice that I was standing there with the keys in my hands, and she turned away embarrassed. "Hey, calm down" I said. "The key is here."

The both of us shared an awkward walk to the elevator together. On her part, there was that awkward feeling of being seen in the midst of an embarrassing act. It's like being caught by your parents while you made out in the park, or undressed in your room with half your estate staring through the windows. She was behind me when we came through the gates, but I could feel that intense sense of embarrassment, which was in turn making me feel embarrassed. On my part, I felt like what a father would feel if he catches his son masturbating or something. We shared the lift together, and she lives on the eighteenth floor while I on the nineteenth. We spoke little as the hydraulic-powered lift moved at a crawling speed up the shaft. OK, it isn't actually a hydraulic powered lift, but the time spent in the confined space with her was definitely the longest elevator ride ever. She must have felt the same as well, which was why she said the following when I took off my earphones.

Agitated Girl," Excuse me..."
Me," Oh, yeah?"
Agitated Girl," Yeah, I wasn't agitated back there or anything."
Me," Oh?"
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Yeah. If you push the gate hard enough, it will open by itself."
Me," Really?"
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Really."
Me," Well, you scared me there."
Not-So-Agitated Girl," Haha, yeah. Sorry."
Me," Better not let the construction workers find out then."

I realized my mistake, and that she wasn't really this maniac with a personal vendetta against the back gate. I guess she just had a funny way of showing off the secret to the back door. It's strange how she lives one floor below me, and I have never seen her before. Either she has been very skillfully avoiding my detection for the past sixteen years, or she must have found another secret back door somewhere. Whatever it may be, I got to ask her to show me just how you open those back gates with your bare hands the next time I meet her on the bus again. Who knows, we may open more than just one door, but a whole lot more afterwards. It's wistful thinking, but I guess I have the right to have such childish thoughts nowadays.