Fragile Heart

Meeting Rory

The bus ride took the entire lunch hours. Once they got out of the city limits, the scenery was the way Alex liked it. Trees lined both sides of the highway instead of tall buildings. No people were coming and going. She could see more sky. 

It was probably the closest to peace she thought was possible.

Since there was heavy traffic, the trip to Hartford, Connecticut, took over three hours. To keep her stomach from grumbling too much since she was missing lunch and hadn't eaten breakfast, Alex munched on the cereal she brought with her and tried to occupy the time by playing with her action figures. Though, just watching the scenery outside her window was enough for a while.

When she dumped out her school stuff, Alex had left the book she was reading. Thankfully, it wasn't a library book. Just a book she had gotten from the bookstore. At the moment, she was really into reading the Goosebumps series, having already read the first five so far. This was the sixth one and Alex was still enjoying it. That was an issue Alex and her teachers thought she had. Well, pretty sure they didn't understand why, but it made her question herself as well. To her, if Alex couldn't get interested in the characters and story, reading through it was a chore and nothing would stick.

The teachers only thought it was laziness when Alex couldn't read something. Whenever she was called on to read a section, Alex would be snapped back to reality from a daydream. Unfortunately, the books her teachers normally choose drove her to daydream a lot, with a few occasional books she did like. That was probably where they concluded Alex was being lazy, because when there was interest, Alex excelled and didn't need to be brought back out of a daydream to read.

Alex got through a couple of chapters during the bus ride. She kept getting distracted to see if they had arrived yet. But she was fully occupied in the book enough that Alex missed the sign that said, "Hartford." So when she looked up again, there were buildings around her again.

Alex excitedly put her book and personal CD player away in her backpack and looked out the window for the rest of the trip until the bus pulled into the station.

Alex slipped in with the others, so it didn't seem like she was a kid alone in a strange city without adult supervision until she jumped down from the bottom step. She then looked around for an information center before starting her search. Near the ticket area, there was a rack of brochures and magazines for tourists visiting Connecticut. 

Alex grabbed a bus book, so she knew what local bus to catch, and grabbed a bottle of water from the vending machine to break the five-dollar bill to get some change back. She then hurried outside to a nearby seating area and skimmed through the book to map out the next phase of the trip. It took a moment to find the route that went through Stars Hollow, the town where her uncle lived and apparently where her mom grew up with him as kids. Thankfully, there had been a stray pencil at the bottom of her backpack, so she could make notes. Why couldn't school be this exciting?

Once Alex had a plan, she grabbed the book and water and headed for the first bus stop. It was a ten-minute wait until the next bus arrived. Once aboard, she slipped a few quarters into the change machine and grabbed a seat near the back doors.

The Hartford buses looked similar to the buses in New York, with the same similar kinds of people. Alex briefly looked around at her surroundings, but remained alert for her next stop. It was a relief nobody had any strong smells.

This time, it was only fifteen minutes before Alex reached up to pull the cord to signal for the next bus stop and hopped off through the back doors once the driver slowed to a stop. She hurried to the intersection where she pressed the button several times even though that never ever worked. The stop lights only changed after a specific time.