A teenage boy with acne, a scowl and a walkman sits sullenly against a window. His eyes follow the white lines in the middle of the road. He feels intoxicated by angst and indifference, feels the afternoon wasted. The glimpse of the couple a few seats ahead stirs jealously and longing into the mixture swirling in his head. The dead driver keeps flicking into his head, much like the white lines keep flicking out ahead. Nobody on this bus could feel how he does, he thinks. No one can have reacted as he did, or as quietly. He is alone in this shitty world, in his shitty world. He kicks his school bag out from his feet and angrily jams it back. Back and forth, back and forth.The repetitive motion fixes his attention and he drifts senselessly into a stupor. He cries softly, stricken with incredible loss. Loss of self, of life; of a frustration that held him tall, more so than his own spine.What does life lend itself in a moment, he asks? Only minutes before that man died, he had been worrying …