The Girl on the Bus: What Reading Taught Me About Staying
A Girl on the Bus
I didn’t know her well, but I watched her every morning.
The school bus is a formidable place. There was the unmistakable sound as it approached my house, the smell of diesel, and the cold metal handle as I climbed the steps. But the most vivid memory is the walk down the aisle, every kid already seated, staring at me as I tried to pick my spot. Not too far forward, where I’d be too close to the bus driver. Not too far back, where the older, intimidating junior high kids claimed their territory. I always chose a seat about three rows back, across the aisle from Laura.
She always sat tucked against the window, the morning light hitting her book as the trees cast their shadows across the pages one at a time, the bus rolling ahead on the bumpy country roads. She had mousy brown hair with hints of beautiful natural blonde highlights. Sometimes, she would take a tuft of hair, stroke it into her mouth, and hold it there as she read. Always reading. A large chapter book held in her little hands, hardly ever looking up. I could tell how far she was into it by the pages stacked to the left.
I watched her as if looking alone would give me bits of the story she was so deeply in.
Eventually, I moved from across the aisle into the seat with her. I’d try to read over her shoulder, but she read so fast, and I felt too much pressure to keep up. I couldn’t concentrate on the words. I think she knew this. Before turning each page, she would pause and sum it up for me — a quiet little bridge between where she was and where I was. She saw the eagerness in my eyes, the wanting to be inside the story with her, and she met me there.
I don’t know if she knows what that did for me. She was just a kid being kind, but she was also paying attention. She saw something in me before I could see it in myself.
The Window Someone Else Held Open
I was envious. How was she able to stay with the story and not get lost? No adult was there holding the window open for her. We couldn’t have been more than second or third grade, and the only chapter books I knew were the ones my teacher, Mr. Burns, read aloud to us.
He was my favorite teacher because he read so many books to us throughout the year. He read slowly and methodically, pausing in all the right places. I can still remember sitting at my little wooden desk, on my hard blue chair, head down, just picturing everything he described. It was the imagery, the action, what was happening. I was in the story. I was the character.
After he finished one of the books — I can’t remember the title — he took us outside to the open field behind our school. What I do remember is that the main character’s favorite activity was whipping apples. There, we found several large sticks that had been whittled on the end to form points. Next to the spears sat a bucket of apples. Mr. Burns was extending the gift of reading into real life.
That day we whipped apples. I will never forget holding that stick, as long as my own body, as Mr. Burns placed an apple on the point, the juice running down. I pulled it back behind me, just like the boy in the book, and flung it forward — propelling the apple through the air until it landed in the field with a loud thud.
I had no idea why that felt so good. But it did. We were living inside the book, and it gave me a sense of freedom.
But for some reason, I never picked up a book on my own. I tried with the ones assigned in school. I just couldn’t. I needed someone to hold the window open for me.
That wanting stayed with me, but it got crowded out. In a small town, there wasn’t much room for quiet things. Sports got the attention, cheerleading got the attention, extracurriculars got the attention. I followed the praise. Laura, I imagine, kept reading. She was always there on the edges of my world — in the same hallways, the same classrooms, the same small town — and I have a feeling she was always tucked somewhere with a book. I just stopped watching as closely.
The Window I Finally Climbed Through
When I was in college, a group of my girlfriends started reading the Twilight series. All of them so consumed, so lost in it — chatting about Bella and her love triangle as if she were one of our sorority sisters. I felt that envy again, the same one from the bus. I decided to give it a try. My friend Emily had just finished the first book and gladly handed it over. I kept it in my backpack and read it all over campus — between classes, at the union, in the library, curled up in bed with a reading lamp on so as not to disturb my roommate. I don’t know if it was the story, the love triangle, the camaraderie of reading alongside my friends — but I was absorbed in a way I never had been before.
I remember approaching the end of the book and becoming aware of two things at once — I was desperate to know what happened, and I was about to finish my first novel. Over five hundred pages. I read the last line slowly. I closed the book. And I smiled. I had done it. And I knew I would do it again, because there were more books in the series and I had to know how the story ended.
Looking back, it is funny that Twilight — of all things — was what gave me the confidence to call myself a reader. But it did. Now I feel at home in libraries and bookstores. I love picking up books, rubbing the front cover, flipping to the back to read the accolades. When I walk through the doors, I always pause. There is a smell — the smell of pages — and it does something to me every time. It feels ancient, like stories passed down. In a world that moves so fast, it feels like one of the last truly slow things. It grounds me. All those words and worlds sitting right there on the shelves, available at any moment.
There is something about a book — words holding so much weight, confined to such a small space.
The Window I Hold Open Every Night
Growing up, books were not the center of our home. My dad is dyslexic, so reading aloud was never something that came naturally to him. My mom read to us, but only a handful of times — I remember one bright yellow book, all of us cuddled on the bed she shared with my baby brother, her voice moving through the words with a singsong cadence. It was soothing. But books were few and far between. It wasn’t a consistent habit.
I knew I wanted something different for my girls. Not because my childhood was lacking — but because I had felt what a book could do. On the bus with Laura. In Mr. Burns’ classroom. In a college library with five hundred pages closed in my lap and a smile I couldn’t explain. I had felt the window open. I wanted them to grow up inside it.
My girls are close in age — five, three, and two — and they share a triple bunk, all twin mattresses. Every night we climb up together into the middle bunk. The girls take the slide. I struggle up the little ladder. We arrange ourselves — Esme on my left, Ivy on my right, Aura on my belly. It is a tight squeeze from every angle. I can’t even sit up because of the bunk above us.
But once we start reading, it all begins to expand.
We get lost in the stories. We laugh. They ask questions. They point out the silly things on the page. They act out the scenes in our tiny space. I can’t tell you how much I have learned from their books — I thought they would be simple little stories. It amazes me still how a small book with few words can hold so much life. Not just for children. For everyone.
When we are done, my hope is that the books give them a window to their dreams. That the stories carry on into their sleep. That their curiosity about what is out there feels as natural as breathing.
I didn’t know, watching Laura on that bus, that I was watching someone show me who I wanted to become — not just as a reader, but as a person. Someone who stays inside a story long enough to let it change you. Someone who notices the eagerness in others and meets them there.
Every night on the middle bunk, I hope I am doing the same for my girls.