Strangers

ONE stops at a red man. There is not a car in sight but he shouts to everyone to stop. And the people already half onto the roads freeze in their movements and abashedly return to the much-chased pavement where they seem to watch him, all of them, surreptitiously, as if waiting for a sign. The lights change and he plunges into the road. The others follow like chicks after a hen, or perhaps like soldiers following a disciplined general who knew so much. 
ONE sees that she is pressing the bell to stop the bus. She reaches for the one nearest to her and does it quickly. The girl gives her a half-smile, a classic one without any teeth showing, which under inexperienced eyes might seem to simply be relaxing her face muscles from hours of nothing. I know better. She knows better. 
ONE stares at her. She is beautiful. She has dark, dark brown hair, like the night, oddly enough - she seemed to make you know for sure, yes, know, that the night was brown after all. And those eyes... They sparkled beneath her eyebrows and were like droplets in an ugly sea. And the freckles that had been carelessly splattered on the canvas of her nose, and the way slight dimples appeared carved in her face from time to time. And oh her smile. 
Now that was odd. 
It was herself.