*Buzz*

*Buzz*

My finger was already swiping the receive button before the third ring. Half a second passed before the call connected fully and Tim’s bored voice could be heard.

“Yo. Door.”

“Wait a bit.”

Without a reply, the line went dead.

The rather rude and brief contact over, I put my phone down and grabbed the keys. My door opened and closed softly to avoid disturbing my family, I made my way down towards the gates from my room on the first floor.

Upon arrival at the ground floor, I stuck my head in the living room to make a quick check.

The sunlight spilling in through the curtains were revealing plenty of dust both resting on the floor and floating over it. This will obviously spark my mother to begin nagging me into cleaning.

Though given the upcoming trip with the guys, or guy, the cleaning will fall on my sister instead. But then things might just pile up for me later when I get back.

Shaking myself out of the internal debate of whether the immediate escape from chores is good or bad, I continued on my rather familiar trek towards the gates, keys jingling all the way.

I reached the iron gates about a minute later and raised the keys towards the padlock. With an audible click, it came off and I grasp the horizontal latch.

The noise from the lock’s opening and the squeak of a rusty latch was obviously enough to notify my friend on the other side as I can hear feet shuffling. With a final squeak of the latch, the right side of the gates opened with a rusty sound of its own.

Entrance to the house given, the front end of Tim’s bike was already inching towards the ramp up into my front yard, its owner looking up from his phone. As he began to sit up fully, the unzipped burgundy red jacket parted to reveal a grey T-shirt with a silly cat DJ print in the middle.

Eyebrows raised, I gestured in his direction and asked.

“What is that?”

My mock disapproval received an immediate response from Tim with a finger pointed towards my shirt.

“What? You too good for cat shirts huh. Mister I-wear-faded-Obey-shirts. Do you even know what the brand means man?”

I saw no point in continuing the ribbing and tried to close the conversation.

“Nope. I don’t know and I don’t care. Just get your bike in here.”

“Alright. Move, so I can get in.”

Saying thus, he got off of the bike and, with a slight exertion, moved the bike over the ramp and into my yard. Tim got his bike halfway across the yard before he called out.

“Do I just leave it in the yard or should I push it all the way into the garage.”

“Just keep it out. We’re using it later.”

“Ok. Thought you wanted to use your bike.”

“I want to try and ride something new.”

“Cool.”

He set the bike down on the kickstand and took off his helmet. The dark and rather unkempt mess of hair was adjusted a bit by hand before he turned to me.

“Catch,” he said before chucking his keys towards me. He paused a bit to make sure I caught the keys before moving past me. Shoes kicked off and socks still on, Tim entered the house and I followed after locking the gates again.

Closing the door behind me, I can hear Tim making his way deeper into the house in a beeline towards the kitchen. He was out again before I got to the stairs, pocketing something brightly colored that looked a lot like a pack of gum.

He looked at me standing on the stairs and asked.

“Mind if I take some gum?”

“Sure. No one in my house eats the stuff anyways.”

“Why do you have so much of the stuff then. Lots of variety too. Last time it was normal mint and now I have. Uh,” he pulled out the packet to check, “Cinnamon.”

I just shrugged and moved back up into my room. Tim followed me. After a bit of walking, I can hear him ask.

“Where’s Lucky?”

“I don’t know. Could be in my sister’s room.”

“Aw. I wanted to pet the cat before we left the thing for a few days.”

I just shrugged and continued inside for my bags while Tim meandered around downstairs.

I got down with the bags and my laptop a few minutes later, and we started towards the bus station.

“So how is that new job of yours going?”

“It’s going like it did last week, Tim. Got any better conversation starters?”

“I probably don’t,” spoke Tim with levity, ”boring guy that I am right now. Plus thinking too hard while giving you a ride is pretty iffy man.”

“Al~right~. I’ll ask then, How is your work going?” I ribbed him, fully intent on poking the fact that the guy refuses to take part-time work since he got into college.

“Pretty decent actually, the kid I am tutoring is not too much of a brat and actually picks things up at a pace I accept.”

“Wait. You got a job. This is not how it’s supposed to go.”

“Uh Huh. I knew what you were getting at ya bastard,” He even pulled the lame accent to add more salt.

Not one to go down easily, I fell back on the good old trump card.

“I didn’t. New job’s got to land you a girlfriend now right?” I’m sorry what

“Hah. Hah. Very funny. Gonna head into heavier traffic now so no more talking.”

Tim took the avoidance approach this time, something I did not expect. He would usually just brush these off, but today was unfortunately one of the worse days for that particular wound. Still, I expected the bad days to be less present with high school so far away now.

Inside the station, our tickets were taken out to find our bus. I sighed a bit when I realised we walked past our bus.

A bit of backtracking later and we were settling into our seats at the back of the bus. Tim’s eyes were already closed as he slipped into slumber to avoid the discomfort he will be experiencing. I just stared out into the window, rummaging around in my bag to find my own earbuds. Music playing, I leaned back into the backrest and just watched the other passengers getting on.

A few elderlies were sitting in the front and were presenting a rare sight of talking rather animatedly about changing times.

Just getting in and already bothering the old bones with noisy chatter were four highschool students, two boys and two girls. One boy was leading the conversation and gesturing wildly to make some sort of point. His audience was only one nerdy looking girl though, as the other two were far too interested in each other to care. They moved all the way down to the back of the bus, probably intent on getting the whole back row to themselves, only to stop in their tracks at the sight of me and a snoring Tim. They paused to consider, concluded that it was too awkward just squeezing four in with us and just sat down on the seats in front of us.

People watching failed to keep me occupied and I moved to just look outside the bus. That endeavour proved to be a bit difficult when a child started to point at me and laugh. His parents were quick to take him away, but the slight to my honor was already inflicted and Tim was making an honest effort in taking the boy’s place with laughters of his own.

I clicked my tongue and moved back to watching the insides of the bus while Tim settled down with his earbuds for the trip to come.

The engine and traffic noise made my viewing experience of the passengers a muted one, or at least one with horrendous audio.

I tried to remedy things by doing the whole imagining what they were talking thing, but that got weird and boring about a minute in. I looked back out into the windows.

The town was passing by and we were going to be hitting the highway really soon. The city scape will be replaced with open space and I will hopefully end up with scenery that was nice to watch.

In the meantime, I got my earbuds out too to join the snooze fest Tim was in.

After a brief attempt at staying still, I felt like somebody was shining a light right in my face and opened my eyes to exactly that.

The highschool kids were glowing, quite intensely if I might add.

I, as a normal person, immediately did a double take and added a bit of eye rubbing for good measure.

The students themselves were clearly as confused as I was as well. The driver decided to join in on the shocked-by-glowing-people club as well and spat out his coffee. The elderlies won the interesting response award when they all started taking out their rosaries and praying.

And amidst all of this pandemonium, Tim was still sleeping soundly.

The light show reached a crescendo and ended as the four students popped out of existence with a great big flash and a lingering field of light. As the spots cleared from my vision, I noticed that a bit of the glow was still sticking to me, if that was even possible.

The seconds that followed me turning my eyes up were rather intense. The driver was desperately trying to veer his way out of the path of a speeding truck, something he missed when he turned around.

The parents were jumping out of their seats to cover their children. Every passenger jumped a little as they saw the incoming threat. As another second passed, I was starting to hate the rather competent-while-under-pressure driver.

He managed to somehow steer the bus away from the oncoming truck. But he did not steer it enough. The truck still managed to clip the end portion of the bus. a section that would have had six passengers, if divine intervention has not taken four away. As it was, I got a nice view of a panicking truck driver’s face when the impact began. The window broke first. Then came the sides of the bus. The silver lining of it all was the fact that a shard of glass was very accurate. A painless death was nice.

For a final thought, that was not bad. Until I realised it was not a final thought.

Finding some sense of consciousness after death was a bit jarring if I were to be honest. Things did not feel right without a body to actually feel. I could perceive myself within space yet not have any same senses as I did when my head was glass free. The whole experience was very similar to tasting the color purple. My own musing on the new sensations was cut off as a force started emanating from a familiar spot.

They may say not to go to the light when you were dying, but the feeling of suction coming from the light source brooked no argument.

As I was dragged into it, I felt something else come along with me.

With the situation as I remembered it, this was most likely Tim. A little comfort was had. Wherever I was going, I was not going alone.

Though the possible knowledge of company did not ease the pain of knowing my hard-earned laptop was probably scrap now.