My Day - Chapter 2: The Bus Ride

This is continued from my last post, My Day - Chapter one: After School

“Oh my god!” Shouted April.
“What’s wrong?” everyone asked.
“I left my keys in my dad’s car when he dropped me off!” April exclaimed.
“Asked for it?” I suggested.
“No he left, and he’ll be home around 6 or 7.” April Replied.
“Awe what do we do?” Grace asked.
“You could just leave it open, I don’t lock my doors.” Krysta suggested.
“No, I think you should just stay, you could finish you music homework.” Patrick said.
“yea, you’re right. Ok, well have fun walking home then!” April said as she went back inside.

Everyone started walking home. We all live pretty close to each other, except for Grace. She lives on the other side of the school, but today she was coming to my apartment to hang. Kirsty, Grace, and I were planning on taking the bus to Pickering Mall. I had an assignment a few weeks ago and it involved in going to the movie theatre and seeing the movie. Sure, we could have gone some where closer like the Whitby AMC theatre, but we wanted to shop at the mall too. If they didn’t take out the Famous Player theatre in the Oshawa Centre, we would have gone there instead.

At the Taunton Street and Thickson Street, Justin headed home while others waited for the light to go another way. After Justin reached across the other side of the road, Grace blew him a kiss and he shook his head in terror. The light turned green, and the gang minus Justin headed for home.

“See you guys!” called out Kirsty as she walked towards her apartment. I live across the street from her, in the other small apartment full of old retired people or people with disabilities. “Bye!” Grace, Krysta and I Replied. I suppose Kirsty was still hungry and she was going home to eat something and drop her school stuff off. (What happened to Patrick? I suppose he just disappeared since he’s not important.)

Grace, Krysta and I crossed another street. We talked a little about the Sunday school Krysta’s taking to learn mandarin. In grade nine, I took the exact same course, so it was interesting to find out what the class was like now. Back then, the teacher hated me for being too smart (seriously). After a while, Krysta decided to go to the park and play.
Grace and I headed to my place. We planned on going with Kirsty to the Pickering Mall to go shopping, and catch the newly released movie 17 Again.

“I’ll check the bus route and map online.” I said.
“Yeah. Okay.” Replied Grace, “and check the movie times too!”

We found that the bus we should take was Route 915 Taunton East & West at 6:15pm, and the movie starts at 7:10pm. We decided to phone Kirsty for her opinion of this. Kirsty picked up the phone but at the same time she said “hi” to me on msn.

“Oops! Grace told me to call you, but you can hang up the phone. We’ll talk on msn.” I told her.
After chatting for half an hour, a conclusion came in place. We decided to meet at Pickering Mall’s food court because she wanted to finish some homework. I was worried about not being able to find each other. Grace agreed but also thought there’d be no time to shop if we waited. So we set out to catch the bus.

As we approached the Tauton bus stop, a bus was already there. We waved for the bus driver to wait for us because we weren’t there yet. The bus driver just smiled evilly and stepped on the gas pedal as soon as the light turned green. Evil, I thought. Pure Evil.

Grace laughed, “We have bad luck with buses!”
“Yea, remember last time? That bus driver saw us and drove right past us. Maybe it was because of the bikes we had with us.” I said in a sad voice.

Luckily, the next bus came within five seconds after we arrived at the bus stop. We got on quite successfully, paid, sat down comfortably, and started chatting about boys.

“You know that cute Asian guy with highlighted hair from grade nine?” I asked.
“Yeah, didn’t he disappear?” Grace replied.
The conversation carried on, surprises were revealed, people were named, Grace gasped and guys were evaluated.

Grace continued gasping. Then the bus arrived at a Go station, we got off naturally and headed towards the mall automatically. We continued talking about guys: from high school days to our puppy loves of kindergarten, and time flew by.

“Where’s the mall? I swear there was a bridge, and we’d be there by now.” Grace asked questionably.
“You’re right,” I replied, “I don’t see the mall at all, or the large parking lot.”
“Let’s go ask that gas station over there.” said Grace as she started off towards the gas station. I followed.

“Excuse me, where’s the Pickering mall?” I asked the man at the counter.
“Oh. Just go way down this street and turn right at Liverpool.” He told us confidently.
“Okay, thank-you!” we said happily. Feeling grateful for the help, we set out towards the mall again.

We walked on the side of the road, because there were no sidewalks. There were lots of bugs though; they came at us from everywhere. One of them almost went into my mouth and another almost hit Grace’s eye. They even followed us when we tried to run away.

Another peculiar thing happened as we walked on the rocky ground with pebbles. Cars kept on honking at Grace and me. I don’t understand why. Grace was in a t-shirt and sweatpants, still carrying her backpack with books and a sweater inside. I was in a loose t-shirt and jean capris, carrying a smaller backpack with my wallet and camera inside. I know the phrase honk if you’re horny is used commonly describing horny guys honking at hot girls, but Grace and me? We were not even coming close to being a tease, yet the honking continued.

“That’s the 5th honk! 6th if you include that one car that honked at us because we were blocking the road.” Grace exclaimed.
“Why is this happening? Are we not suppose to walk here or something?” I questioned.
“Because we’re hot!” Grace laughed.
“I really doubt that…” I said in a suspicious tone, still trying to figure out why. “Hey how come we walked all this way and we still don’t see the darn mall?” I asked again, “Look at all this hay! I feel like we’re in some kind of desert or something!”
“Yeah, do you think we’re in another city?” Grace questioned further.
There was a pause of silence, then my eyes widened. “We’re in Ajax!” I shouted, “We got off at the wrong Go Station!”
Grace also increased the size of her eyes, staring at me blankly for a few second. “Uhhm, I think you’re right!” Grace agreed, “I knew it was too fast! The bus ride was too short, it usually takes like 20 minutes to get to Pickering Go Station.”
“Mmhmm, and we just stopped at on station, that would only mean we got off at the Ajax Go station.” I continued in a tired and depressed tone.

Not much was said after we found out we were in a different city. I guess Grace feel the same as I do, down, tired, hungry, and worst of all, lost. We continue to walk along the path, since there were no bus stops, pay phones, or even a building in sight. It was just bugs and us. We often randomly run for a while, to rid those pesky flies, and then walk again when the bugs seemed to have dispersed.
“Look!” shouted Grace, as she pointed towards something ahead of us, “It’s a train track!”
“What?” I said in shock, but then I realized it must be the train tracks leading from the Ajax Go Station to the Pickering Go Station. We were on the right path!
“Don’t you see? The train tracks! They’re so cool, take a picture of me!” Grace demanded.
“Alright, but you got to take a picture of me too!” I negotiated.
“Deal.” Grace agreed.

This is a video i took while walking.
For some reason we thought it'd be a good idea to dedicate
the video to our friend April because
she wanted to walk and explore with us.

Thanks to Grace who helped me type and think of the details when writing this chapter.