I expected, as I got onto the bus for this school trip, that I was going to spend the entire time wishing we were there already.

It’d be too loud to read, and I wasn’t sure if I was even allowed my phone with me. We were going to a museum, so I was at least going to have a fun time there.

But what I wasn’t expecting was the girl already sitting in the window seat beside mine. She was chatting with the girl sitting across the row, whose name I couldn’t remember, and she looked blissfully unaware of me standing and waiting for her to stop.

I had to clear my throat, and when she looked up, her face fell, mouth open in an ‘o’. I sighed, but sat down. Surprisingly, she didn’t argue with me. I was grateful for it. I didn’t know if she decided not to because the sky was still dark outside, or if she chose mercy today. She just wrapped up her conversation, and then started staring out the window.

I asked a few times if she wanted to swap to the aisle seat, but she said that she was content, and I wasn’t going to argue with her. I always felt too claustrophobic in window seats anyways.

As I look over at her now, she’s blinking away tears, staring down at her book like it personally insulted her. That, or it ripped her heart from her chest, spat and stepped on it, and put it in a blender, not having gotten to the part where she had it super-glued back together and stuffed back into the empty cavity that was her chest.

She’s asleep.

It was a long drive there, and the sun finally began to rise. I didn’t notice her lolling head, at first, and then it came to rest on my shoulder and I knew she was asleep because she’d never willingly touch me.

For a while, it was easy to pay her no mind, I tried to forget about her head on my shoulder as I continued to read, but then she moved again, and I was forced to think about it because now she was curled up, her head in my lap.

The weirdest bit? I was stroking her hair. It began mindless, but quickly became a habit.