Traffic jams are fairly common on large highways. Every so often a blue sedan or black SUV will be a little slow merging into the passing lane, or a fly on a dashboard will produce just enough fear to warrant a quick stop, or some other minute insignificance will cause a chain reaction of swerving, breaking and profanity until the world itself churns to a crawl. It’s proof that driving is an act of trust, that each stranger on the road has a subtle authority over life and death. This Friday the highway stands still about a half hour outside Philadelphia, close enough to where the evening sun reflecting off the Comcast Building gives the whole city a tangerine tint.

            A school bus sits in the middle of this particular traffic jam, sporting the usual school bus colors, an array of squeaky voices ratting away despite it all. Classmates packed two to a seat yap about the day’s provided lunch, the smack of mint chewing gum is muffled by pop hits blasting through off-brand wireless earbuds, and those perched above tire guards are granted a reprieve as their neighbors hoist themselves to the middle to catch up with someone two rows back. Snacks are opened, gossip is spilled, boredom is imminent.

            In the third row on the driver’s side, two boys are locked in a heated duel of I Spy. The one by the window holds his backpack in his lap with both hands, shifting its weight back and forth every few minutes, while the one by the aisle’s knees sink into the seat as he guesses at random while staring at a girl eight rows back. He wonders if she’s thinking about the note he left in her locker that morning, after the first bell had rung and the slapping of shoes against linoleum had begun to die down. Fearing discovery he turns back to the front, slouches forward and snorts.

            “I don’t know, dude” he says, cracking his knuckles like someone with nothing to hide. “I give up.” He agreed to play to take his mind off things, but he doubted anything could at this point; a meteor or alien spaceship could appear five feet away and it would barely register.

            “C’mon Ray, I know you aren’t paying attention.” The other boy, Charlie, is attempting to highjack Ray’s avoidant gaze with his own. “There’s a world outside this bus, you know. Hint hint,” he adds sarcastically.

            “Just thought you were looking back there when you started” he replies. Charlie hates when Ray metagames, hates his mocking jokes and hates his inability to keep Kacey out of his mind and enjoy the company of a friend like a normal person (that last one is an educated guess). In protest of all three, then, he climbs back on the seat and makes an exaggerated sweeping motion with his hand to his forehead, a salute to their fellow students. “I spy… with my… little eye...”

            “I get it, I get it!” Charlie interjects, laughing.

            “Something… blue!” Ray takes one last greedy glance at the eleventh row, but its inhabitant looks up and for an moment they lock eyes. He sits back down.

            “Very funny. C’mon, one more guess and I’ll tell you” Charlie says.

            “Fine. Is it the car next to us?”

            “It is! I’m surprised you got it, since you were busy making heart eyes at Kacey.” Ray blushes. “Your hint was way too obvious,” he says, clearing his throat and pointing at the beetle that’s had its turn signal on for the past five minutes. “Sometimes I think you don’t want me to figure it out on my own. I’m bored, dude, no more.”

            They sit in silence for a few moments, Ray suddenly feeling awkward in his collared shirt and cargo shorts. Behind them the bus only gets more disorderly as people file out from their seats, eager to forfeit their alphabetically assigned prison, prompting the unibrowed bus monitor to pull out a whistle and attempt to corral a group of boys double her size. They argue by the emergency exit while everyone else rearranges themselves as they see fit.

            “How about Chopsticks?” Charlie says confidently.

            “I just want to sit right now.”

            “Hangman?”

            “I said no, dude. Take a hint.”

            “C’mon, please? Look outside” he says, peering out the window, his face tilted up as if snooping over a low wall. “We haven’t moved. I’m bored too, you know.”

            “I’m not bored, I just-” A breath. “I’m gonna go talk to her. I mean, I should, right?”

            Charlie shoots him a concerned look.

            “I said, I’m gonna go talk to Kacey. I can’t take it anymore, I have to know if she read my note.”

            “Wasn’t the point of the note that you wouldn’t have to talk to her? Then, under his breath, “you could at least tell me what it says.”

            “I told you already. I just asked her to go out on Sunday, to the Roxy. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

            “What? You’ve gushed about her to me for like, forever. You finally do something about it and I’m left in the dust?”

            “I wrote it on this letter paper I found in my mom’s room. It has flowers on it. It’s romantic.”

            “You know that’s not what I said.”

            “Well that’s what you’re getting.”

            Nothing more is said on the matter. Charlie fiddles with a keychain on the side of his bag, Ray stares past him out the window. After half a minute, the former perks up once more. “We don’t have to play a game if you don’t want to. Want to start on the homework?”

            “Why do we always have to be doing something?” Ray replies, a bit louder than he meant. A few heads swing around, but the argument is brief. “Do you have something against Kacey and I? Don’t answer that, actually. I’m going over to her.”

            “I- whatever. Good luck.”

            Ray gets up and squeezes by his chittering classmates blocking the aisle, his grip on the back rests he passes leaving a faint outline in the cracked bus leather. Breathing deeply in time with his steps, he moves through a group of girls passing around a cell phone and laughing, over two students playing a card game on the damp floor and around an arm wrestling match between the unibrowed bus monitor and one of the boys she was arguing with. With sweaty palms yet regained composure he approaches Kacey, who’s complaining about her recent debate meet with her seat partner, a girl in his math class whose name he forgot, neither of whom have moved since the jam began. He calls her name. “Kacey?”

            The other girl looks up and raises her hand in a brief greeting while Kacey stares out the window and continues to talk. “Kacey?” he repeats. She says something about ‘campaigning against her interests’ and ‘the fun of the sport’ and an image flashes through Ray’s mind of him at her competition, holding a big sign and cheering louder than anyone else. She asks a question to her friend who, clearly holding back a laugh, begins to respond and he cuts her off, practically yelling over the din of the bus. “Kacey!”

            She turns towards him and lifts up her face. “Oh- what’s up, Ray?” Their eyes meet, and she holds his gaze. “I was just wondering if you got my letter. The one I left in your locker?” he asks. She pushes up her glasses with a rising palm that covers her mouth for a split second. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see any note. I haven’t been to my locker since lunch.” Her somber tone doesn’t match her pursed lips which barely part as she continues.

            “Can you tell me what it said?”

            At that moment, a complete and total silence befalls the bus and Ray panics, believing his classmates to be hung on his every word. He looks at Kacey, hoping to find solace in those blue eyes which have not left his since he last spoke, but she just stares at him like a monkey at the zoo. He’s trapped in a cage for her amusement. The words Charlie was right come to mind, but he pushes them aside in order to come up with what to say. It occurs to him to simply repeat what he wrote on the note, but he finds he’s forgotten every single word on it.

            “Oh, um, the note. The note says, I meant, I wanted, to know if you wanted to go to the movies on Sunday. To the Roxy. Together.” Somewhere in between Sunday and to the tranquil din returns with a cough and a “it’s so weird when that happens” near the front. Kacey looks surprised, at him or the noise he can’t tell, and after a beat she breaks her gaze to rummage through her bag, taking care to hide whatever she grabbed in her lap. At the same time, the bus begins to move, stuttering at first and then creeping down the highway towards an exit into the city. Ray’s eyes wander towards his reflection in the window, his bedhead, his apple-red cheeks, before returning to her, to the back of her hand covered in doodles.  She blinks, but upon recalling the situation he would swear she batted her eyes.

            “I’m busy on Sunday, sorry Ray.” Crushing dismay, but then “here, take this though.” She pulls out a piece of letter paper embroidered with a trio of roses in the corner, the reds and greens faded from disuse. The whole card embodies a sense of antiquity save for the ten digits inked in glittery teal. “My number’s on that, call me later.” Ray accepts the gift, the stock smooth as silk in his grasp, and they both linger in the exchange until her friend coughs and Kacey releases her grip. He thanks her, though maybe only in his head, before turning to the empty aisle, the beating of his heart drowning out his peers who whisper like the wind as he walks.

            “So,” Charlie points at the note, now damp in Ray’s hand, before he even says a word. “You did it, huh? Don’t forget about me for your girlfriend.” That word, girlfriend, feels strange being used in reference to him. Like white crayon on printer paper. He stares at the roses ever in bloom, tracing their vines in his mind before turning the card over. Dear Kacey, I’ve had a crush on you for a while, and couldn’t wait any longer to tell you how I feel. If you like me too then wait for me by your locker before the bus comes tomorrow. He turns to his seatmate as he clambers into the row, describing what just occurred. The girls behind them overhear his soliloquy: before Monday the whole school will have heard the story.

            “She likes me, right? Why didn’t she just wait by her locker?

            For a moment he hears Charlie’s voice in his head, so now you want my advice?, but he just shrugs. “She didn’t say no, did she? I wouldn’t be complaining.” Ray’s head swirls with feelings, explanations, stray thoughts, but he finds he can’t compound them into words. Kacey’s phone number, the roar of the bus’s engine, sometimes I think you don’t want me to figure it out on my own, Hangman, his essay due at the end of the week. The rest of the ride passes in silence, and the roses smudge under the weight of his damp thumb as the bus pulls into its first stop.