Sideswiped (write of passage number fifty-six)

I don't enjoy riding sideways on the bus, and avoid it whenever possible.

This particular afternoon, the bus is fairly full, so I find myself fighting momentum sideways while clutching a rail with two full cloth shopping bags dangling from my wrist, and an ice cream birthday cake balanced precariously on my lap.

Across the aisle, a plumpish young woman is curled up in a corner, her bare knees pressed against a bar, chatting nonstop on her phone.  Next to her, a young man with odd colouring - pale, pink, and washed out - is gazing into space.  He's wearing earbuds.  There's something about the proximity between the two that suggests to me that they're travelling together, just not quite in the same universes.

Every now and then, he sings out a snatch or two of whatever is playing in his ears.  I don't recognise anything, of course. Knees Up Phone Lady glares at him when he does this for the fifth time.

"I'm on the phone," she hisses, and plunges back into the other conversation.

"I was answering the question," he shrugs.

Cramped and crippled, I juggle my packages, struggling to keep the cake upright, and leap gingerly down to the pavement, wondering what the question was.