Stranger at the Bus Stop
『 RIING! RIING! RIING!』
The morning alarm rang inside a house. A brown skinned boy reached out from under the bedsheets and turned off the alarm on the bed stand. He was rubbing his eyes, reached for his glasses to put on, and he looked at the time.
6:01 AM it read.
He lazily got up from bed, still half dazed, and grabbed a random change of clothes. Walking into the bathroom, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. To be precise, he looked at his hair.
He had a bad case of bed hair. It went all over the place. Left right and all tangled up. Nothing a good shower can't fix, he thought. Looking closer he saw the bags under his eyes from playing games too late at night.
The day before that happened to be the last day of summer break. He had stayed up late at night playing Rainbow 6 Siege with his friends. He even managed to get an Ace in the last round. Now that school is starting up again, there was going to be less time for fun and games and more time spent on doing homework.
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, he checked up on his sister, who was a year younger than him, to see if she was awake. He opened her door and peered inside.
"Hey. You awake?" he called out. The covers of the bed moved and she got up.
"Now I am." she said getting up with a tired yawn. "Now can you get out of my room so I can change?" Rafael quickly left and heard a *Click* behind him from the door being locked. Going back to his room he decided to go online since it was 6:22 and he had plenty of time.
He booted up his computer and got onto Discord. His online name came up; "RufflesRalphRG" It was the name he usually put for any game he played. It was a combination of different things that he related to. Ruffles were for his favorite chips as of now, Ralph was a nickname used by some people and RG were his initials Rafael Guzman, plus it all rolled together pretty smoothly.
He scrolled through the posts of his friends. GenericThing, Killer, and Soups to name a few. Most, if not all, of the posts were pretty funny memes or hilarious videos.
Looking back at his watch, he saw it was 6:40. The usual pick up time for the bus was 6:51 so he still had a few more minutes to laze around. Luckily, he had already packed everything into his backpack so all he had to do is grab and go.
A few minutes later his sister knocked on his door. "It's almost time to go."
"Yeah Yeah, I'll be out in a minute." Rafael grabbed his signature orange and black checkered sweater from the closet, which he almost always wears unless it was being washed. He picked his backpack from the floor which was considerably heavy from all the textbooks and supplies.
After that, he grabbed his wallet, ID, and his house keys. Sadly, he didn't have a phone because his parents thought it was too early for him to get one. He said goodbye to his mom who was in the kitchen making breakfast. Seeing Rafael leave without eating breakfast she yelled.
"Vas a desayunar algo!?"(Are you going to eat something!?).
"Voy a agarrar algo para comer en la escuela!"(I'll grab something to eat at school) he responded making his way towards the door. Then he said goodbye to his three younger brothers who were watching cartoons in the living room.
The first day of school was a Tuesday, and luckily it was a sunny day. Although it was a sunny and positive day, all the kids hated the first day back to school. Especially getting up early to catch the bus. On the other hand, Rafael was used to getting up early and sometimes got up at 5:30 in the morning; making him an early bird. They do say: 'the early bird gets the worm'.
Walking towards the bus stop, which was at the end of the block, Rafael could hear the happy chirps of birds in the air. Jenny, his sister, wasn't much of a talker and stayed quiet and to herself most of the time, so there wasn't a lot of conversation between the two.
Near the bus stop, there were already 4 people standing there. Three of them were students he recognized from last year, but the other was noticeably different. He was taller than the rest around. He was young and most likely worked out due to his toned body.
He looked to be around 25 years old, black sweatpants, gray shirt, but most noticeably was his fiery pinkish hair and reddish eyes. Rafael scanned him up and down. He could believe if he dyed his hair a pinkish color as he has seen some girls at school do this, but he has never seen anyone with reddish eyes.
Could it be contacts? Rafael thought. Maybe he's somebody's brother?
He asked one of the kids if he knew who he was. The kid looked back.
"Who are you talking about?" he said looking around confused. "There's no one there." he said, turning back to Rafael while giving him a weird look. Rafael looked back to the guy who was only a few feet behind them. He was still there looking back at him with great interest.
The strange man looked at Rafael did『 Shh』motion with his finger and said one phrase:
"Interesting."
The man looked at Rafael up and down and slowly started disappearing into thin air as if he was never there to begin with.
Rafael rubbed his eyes and looked again at the spot the man was standing in, but no one was there. He stood there dazed until he heard the bus pull up behind him.