I find my seat, on what would be considered the passenger side of the bus, three rows back. I've ridden on this bus route since I was ten years old. We've driven the same route every morning and every evening, five days a week since then. I know it like the back of my hand, as the cliché goes.

I sit on the dark brown seats, full of melted holes from lighters, patches over tears, and pen marks. The familiar smell brings me comfort in an unlikely place, but the hum of the engine and the constant sea of talking children and teenagers serve only as a sleep machine’s white noise. The last four months of the previous year, I had a brief relationship with a girl I met on this bus. I say brief in the sense of time and how short we were given, but it was profound in terms of lifelong impact.

We always sat in this spot and listened to her MP3 player, read together, and shared our dreams—she wanted to be a writer, and I knew she’d be the best there ever was. Sometimes, we would talk about the books we really enjoyed, which was my favorite because nobody else I knew shared my passion for reading like she did. We could talk about nothing and everything, endlessly.

It was kind of funny how we met: I was sitting alone, reading, and kids kept throwing food at the back of my head, as usual, when this lanky girl with a unilateral eyelid droop sat down beside me and announced that her name was Sarah. She was pretty, but she always kept her hair over her drooping eyelid, which covered half of her face. I don't know what caused her condition, whether it was from birth or something that occurred later, but it didn't matter—it gave her already stunning face character and beauty, and I hated to see her cover it.

At first, I was annoyed; I liked to sit alone and be left alone. But she didn't speak much, and people seemed to stop throwing things at me when she sat there, so I took the good with the bad. She often offered one of her earbuds and told me about the songs she liked. One particularly amusing song was something called "Witch Doctor," with its mess of nonsensical words and sounds, along with her all-time favorite at the time, "Nine in the Afternoon."

She started to sit with her other friends instead of me, and I missed the company, so I took the time to make her friends my friends. But like her, they got off the bus at other schools or transfer buses at stops before mine. The ride I used to think was so long started feeling far too short. It was all the time I got to spend with them, with her, so I included myself in the group of people who sat together with her, just so we could keep talking. It was like that for a long time.

One day, we were dating. I'm not sure how, but it happened. I was never allowed out of the house on weekends or after school, and neither of us were allowed to date, so the bus relationship worked for us, though I dreamed of taking her to movies and dinners. I wanted to spend late weekend evenings and early mornings with her. Sometimes, I would think she was beside me when I was half asleep, so as I reached across to put my arms around her, I ended up face down on the cold side of the bed.

I felt something I had never felt before. More than just an ability to put up with a person for long periods, which is what I usually felt for people I knew whom I didn't completely distrust. No, this was something else, a closeness I had never felt. It almost drove me crazy to be away from her, like I was going to lose her if I couldn't get to her soon. It was a kind of panic that could only be cured by holding her hand in mine. Every minute we spent together felt too short. For most, this may not seem like a big deal, but this was completely foreign to me, and I wasn't too sure if I liked it too much.

Though I am not a social creature, I absolutely hated to be embarrassed, with an absolute passion. Yet when she embarrassed me worse than I had ever been embarrassed up to that point in my life, I could only think of her and whether she was OK. I look back and think of how funny it is now. You see, she was sitting next to me, and the distance between our shoulders was a little too far for my liking, so I gently pulled her hand, already woven into mine, towards me. I closed the gap, but being completely oblivious, I didn't realize I was pulling our hands in the general direction of my crotch. She yelled “NO” so loud the driver almost hit the brakes. I might even be bold enough to say my ear hurt.

As soon as I understood what was happening, I quickly whispered an explanation into her ear, and her face turned redder than a raspberry. Every person on the bus was staring at us at this point, and the bus driver was giving me looks like I had just dropped napalm on an orphanage full of deaf, blind toddlers knitting scarves for breast cancer patients. All I could think of doing was apologizing and making sure she was OK. I didn't care that I looked like a fool. I panicked for days making sure she wasn't mad and believed that I wasn't being a weird pervert. But everything carried on normally, like it never happened. I was so glad.

She was the first person I ever told about what my life was like at home, and she shared with me bits and pieces of her life. It didn't sound any easier than mine. Then came the day she handed me a small piece of paper, all folded up. I held onto that stupid thing for years. It was all I had from her. But like all things I held dear, my adoptive parents managed to throw it out.

When Sarah handed me the paper, she asked me not to open it till I got off the bus. We sat in silence the entire bus ride home; she seemed sad. I was worried. Then just before I got off, she kissed me on the cheek. It wasn't much, but from her, it was worth a hundred of any other. Maybe when I read the note, over the years, I built up what we had in my head, far beyond what it was, trying to avoid the hurt. Or maybe it was everything I daydreamed it was. Who knows?

When I read the note, about how she was moving to another town, as well as the terrible circumstance she and her family were in, I lost all hope for a very long time. I felt terrible for being so selfish, wishing and wanting her to stay, but my heart hurt. It felt like the only way to fix it was to find her and rescue her. But I knew I couldn't. Worst of all, I let somebody in for the first time, and they left me—just like my real parents, all the foster parents, teachers, and friends. I never blamed her for it, but I vowed to never let it happen again. Unfortunately, once I knew that feeling of companionship, I thrived on looking for it, as though it kind of filled the terrible empty hole inside me. I never saw Sarah again, but even now, as an adult, I miss her sometimes and am foolish enough to believe things would have worked out.

My mental illness didn't even start to take a turn for the better until I was about sixteen years old. The long road to recovery took me right into my twenties. As a stable, well-adjusted, emotionally whole adult, I can safely say that things work out just the way they do. No amount of dreaming and wishing will make it different. I doubt the impact my presence had on her life was anything close to the impact it had on mine, but that's OK. I was just glad somebody was there when I needed a companion the most.

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This whole experience started to restart my ability to have and handle emotions in a healthy way. I sat in that same seat every day right up until grade eleven when I moved out and had to start taking city transit to school. My brothers and I were the third stop along the line in the rural area of Mission, B.C., and it was about an hour-and-a-half-long bus ride. The bus driver, a kind French man with a thick accent, often talked to me while the bus was under-crowded before we had picked up many other students. We discussed things, often no particular subject, just shooting the shit, as many would say. It’s funny how a person I've spent so many years speaking to for only ten or fifteen minutes a day could register such a familiarity with me.

Today, I don't speak. I see him looking into the mirror frequently, watching with well-practiced eyes, keeping an eye on the more rowdy students, commanding the road while keeping cool control over his bus and surroundings. I don't think he noticed as I stealthily sipped from the straw inside my bottle. I shudder as it goes down. I hold my arm and listen to my own laborious breathing as I stare out the window, feeling the vibration in my brain as I press my head against the glass. I try to read, but I can't focus. The feeling of the liquor coming into my face along with the pain in my head makes it impossible. I go back to looking out the window, watching the town pass by.

When we finally pull up to Skid Secondary, kids are fighting to get off the bus, pushing, climbing over seats. I just sit and wait for the morons to pass until a steady stream of single-file students are walking off the bus like normal human beings before I attempt to merge into the line. The driver grabs my arm, and I make a sound like a cat being run over by a semi-truck as pain shoots up my arm: I don't flinch. He quickly lets go and says he needs to speak to me. I wait in the front seat until the students behind me have all exited the bus. He turns to look at me with furrowed eyebrows.

He asks if everything is OK at home. I give him a simple, "Yeah, it's great." I lie through a smile that God himself couldn't tell was fake and start to leave.

"Well, get that arm looked at," he suggests. "It looks bad."

I give him a dismissive wave and tell him it will be fine, just have to be more careful when I climb trees. He laughs, a sad kind of laugh. I know he knows. I try to hide my limp as I walk to the front entrance. Whether it's 100 yards or 100 miles, it was grueling all the same. I sit in the hall, on an old chair bolted to the ground, with uncomfortable red plastic cushions, waiting for first period class to start.

Applied studies in sewing is my first rotation, a grade eight course, because I failed all of them the year before. I think back on grade eight, all the skipping and drinking, wasting an entire year, only passing English and social studies. It's ridiculous for somebody with such a literal mind. I'm looking forward to the next rotation in this block, which is metal shop, but that's in three more weeks, so it will have to wait patiently. My thoughts run from one thing to another, always landing back on the emptiness. I try to shake the feeling.

Looking up, I'm a little surprised to see the group of kids that always hang out in this spot every morning and every lunch. I almost thought I was alone. I'd say they were my friends; I knew all of them on a first-name basis. Some had even been around in elementary school with me, but I wouldn't want to imply that I liked any of them, and my toleration of their company was more for the safety-in-numbers rule I lived by.

I meet the eyes of my old acquaintance, Jared, who is having a deeply meaningful conversation about a role-playing game that uses dice with Erin, my long-time companion, I guess. Erin was a silly girl, she had a big heart, but always seemed to have a quiet, reserved sadness that I connected well with. We had been dating on and off for years but ended things on the note that a friendship would be more comfortable instead of a relationship.

I was filled with a massive jealousy, if that's what you call it—maybe contempt—when she started dating an older bisexual guy with an eggplant-shaped head, but not for the reason you might think. He had asked me only moments after the mutual breakup if it was OK for him to ask her out without affecting our friendship, and I told him, no it was not OK, though I did not tell him there was no friendship to affect. Still, what does he do? Yeah, that's right: they were dating the next day. So disrespectful, but who was I to complain? I didn't really care for her anyway, she was merely easy to manipulate, and it couldn't really have been any more rude than me calling him eggplant head behind his back.

The warning bell rings, and there is a scatter of movement as students, younger and older, make their last-minute locker dashes and quick half-cooked lunch plans with their friends. I simply stand and walk across the hall. I nod to my teacher, sit down, gingerly place my arm on the oversized desk, put my head down and fall into a kind of half sleep.

I had already finished my entire year's project list in the first weeks. Sewing was easy for me, and I enjoyed working at the machines, but today, I am going to do nothing. I didn't really feel up to it anyway, and I doubted I was coherent enough to thread a needle, let alone operate the machine. What a great class to have, first thing in the morning.

My nap was blissfully short-lived when crowds of girls start to sit around me, chattering like small, colorful birds. Being the only boy in the class had its disadvantages, but as annoying as birds are to listen to, they sure are pretty. I try to ignore them, to no avail. I catch tidbits of the conversation: “New girl.” “What a whore.” “Dating Kevin.” “Only thirteen.”

I sit up suddenly and look across to Carly, an extremely unintelligent blonde (who would have thought!), more worried about the size of her thigh gap than her studies. It makes me sick to look at her. All skin and bone. Through a big, fake, friendly, dumb old-fashioned smile, I ask what she was just talking about. She informs me that Kevin (not his real name) was dating a seventh-grade elementary school student last year, and now she's in high school, and they are still together. People are making a fuss because “what kind of whore would date a guy so much older than herself?”

That swell of anger pushes at my veins, but I force it down. I would ask myself what kind of man would date such a young girl, but I know Kevin, and I don't have to ask. It makes me sad, a disappointed kind of feeling, in the acts of my fellow humans. Kevin, being two years older than me, had been in my karate class, and to be polite and use an acceptable term, he was a bully. I always had a few choice thoughts about that loser, but there was little I could do about his behavior.

You see, it wasn't younger kids, special needs, or minorities that Kevin liked to hurt. He didn't like to torture animals that I know of, and he wasn't cruel in the way that I was. He did things you couldn't pay me to do. I didn't find out until a few years later, but Kevin liked to hurt young girls, beat them, sexually abuse them, get them pregnant, and break their confidence. I didn't know at the time, but he was a real monster in the making. Just like me, maybe a different kind of monster, but a monster all the same.

With thoughts of contempt in my mind, I place my head back down and sleep lightly till the ear-piercing screech of the bell dismisses us to proceed to the second block of the day. I gingerly step out of my seat, shoulder my bag on the good side, and limp away. My leg is going stiff now, but my shoulder isn't searing so badly. The alcohol is wearing off, and sitting through a long English class seems too much to handle sober.

A quick trip to the bathroom fixes that problem. I rinse the bits of dried dirt and blood off my hand and wrist, pop a piece of extra minty alcohol-masking gum into my mouth, and stumble on to my next period, towards the rest of my life.