The rain fell thick and hard from smudged pencil clouds to the scrambled asphalt at my bus stop, where I stood as my rain boots filled with water. I glowered inconspicuously but meaningfully at Madison Mattioli’s car, which sat next to me at the bus stop. Madison was a nice girl, & we had a couple mutual friends, but for whatever reason she didn’t invite me into her car. The car in question was some gray Honda SUV, probably a couple years old, which was in devastating need of a car wash. It would have blended into the wretched, wet landscape had the windows not been glowing with a warm light, causing the car to practically radiate heat. Didn’t Madison know that bus stop etiquette dictated she invite into her car? In all fairness, there was a possibility that she didn’t see me as I was leaning against a large rock which was directly in between me & Madison Mattioli’s cat.

Just as I was pondering the likelihood of hypothermia, the bus pulled up. Lemme tell you: that giant, yellow, gas guzzling monstrosity of an automobile had never seemed more inviting than when I was considering throwing my rain boots’ worth of water at Madison Mattioli’s car as a revenge plot. I stepped on the bus and surveyed my surroundings. Rows of miserable people sat in seats the color of dirty spit listening to miserable music. The rain cast a gray light on the inside of the bus, making everything seem even more miserable than it already was. Behind me, Madison Mattioli sprinted from her bright, warm car onto the bus. She barely got wet.

I slid in a seat towards the back next to the great Mash.

“Hey, Daria.” A typical Mash greeting.

“What’s up, Jane Lane?” The nicknames came from 6th grade, when Mash and I would go to her house every day to pirate Daria from shady websites. We felt like such rebels, not because of the pirating, but due to the fact we were clearly not the target demographic for Daria. That day Mash’s auburn pixie cut stuck to her head and dripped onto her black raincoat.

“By the way...how are you?”

“What?” Asking how I was was atypical Mash behavior.

“Just…” She looked at the floor. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, I guess?” I said, still confused.