hall pass?

whered you get that circle, girl?
He looked at me again, accosting, refusing to let me drop my eyes.
you been fightin?
I was sitting with my legs crossed on in the back of the colfax bus, and he was cross-armed in the seat across from me.
why arent you in class right now?
I was 14 and wearing knee high combat boots, stockings, piercings and all the rest. I wouldn’t listen to interference.
dont have class, I’d say and look away.
But there he was, watching his own folly play out again. He didn’t know me but he was me, and it pained him to watch us going to shit all over again. And so he camped like a fucking vigilante on the back of the downtown bus right about when morning class was supposed to start. Every kid who walked by,
you goin to class, you on your way home to grab your homework and hand it in or what now?
He didn’t tolerate silence. You’d always answer him eventually, maybe you’d even stop and think for a second about whatever risky thing you were probably getting into.
More often than not we’d ditch anyway.
He always watched though and it got to be that every time I was fucking up, his glowing eyes and knitted eyebrow came to mind। I never did learn my lesson till it was too late and I was hands-bound in the back of a squad car.