Their eyes met and they were stuck in a moment that yearned to stretch into eternity. The girl was maybe 12 or 13. She was riding shotgun in beat up pickup truck, an older, graying man who must have been her father was driving. He had turned left off a side street, pulling out in front of traffic from both directions, and quickly pulling in line next to the bus Sedgewick was riding.

As soon as the father pulled out he realized he hadn’t looked either way and he hesitated, but then it was too late so he floored it, but then he regained his sense and checked the traffic again, which only allowed him to know just how badly he was cutting someone off. The girl smiled and rolled her eyes in a way only a pre-teen girl could do; a girl who wasn’t yet totally embarrassed at the very thought of her parents, a girl who liked to smile and laugh and go swimming all day long and into the night when the mosquitoes would feed on you every time a square inch of bare skin appeared above the water.

Sedgewick watched the whole botched left turn and then suddenly met the girl’s sparkling eyes as the truck pulled alongside the bus. They looked at each other for a moment, and the moment stretched beyond a casual glance to the point where they both realized the other person was starring. The girl smiled and kept looking at Sedgwick, a head and shoulders slouched in the bus window, just above the TCF Bank banner on the side of the bus.

She seemed to know why Sedgewick was starring–the fact that her father had just made a really dumb driving blunder–and she took this with the same lighthearted joy that she took her father’s poor driving. Sedgewick noticed that a school was on the side street the truck had pulled out from, and he figured her father must have been picking her up from some after school activity, drama or maybe volleyball or something.

She was young, but her black hair framed her freckled fair skin and glowing smile in a way that seemed beautiful and mature. She wore a white shirt, not the cheap undershirt kind, but a dressier one that accentuated her budding breasts.

After their eyes had been together for more than a simple glance, for more than a moment, and on into just plain starring–a time long enough to exchange a volume of information–the girl looked over her shoulder to see for herself just how bad her father had cut off some poor rush hour driver. Her laugh increased when she saw the slowing car and its gesturing driver, and her eyes swept back to the road ahead, taking in the lone bus rider who had locked eyes for a tender moment.

Sedgewick watched her the whole time, his tired face slowly easing into a smile after the truck pulled away.