Shuffle
Skip
Repeat
He played his usual game of pretending to consider the palatable array of music which graced his iPod before settling for an Arctic Monkeys song, as always, just in time for the 7AM school bus that revved up the road with a satisfying crunch of gravel. The morning had a deliciously crisp quality to it, with swirls of fog swathing the trees in mild ambiguity while the sun danced a waltz in a rose and custard sky, the colour of cakes sold in Pastéis de Belém, the best patisserie in Lisbon.
He realised he hadn't eaten breakfast just as he boarded the bus.
Ah, well. **** it.
The sun skipped between the spaces in the leaves, playing hopscotch with his imagination as he dazedly looked out the window, lost in his music. Although the people on his bus were nice, he didn't exactly like them. The boys wore low pants and branded caps, the girls caked on makeup and tittered vapidly at everything the boys said. A few others quietly occupied the back seats like him, engrossed in their own world. He felt a stronger connection with these people, although he'd barely spoken to them before.
He lapsed back into his reverie while looking out the bus window, lazily tracing patterns in the cracks of the broken walls of the empty restaurants and hotels that passed by. The economic crisis had rendered hollows of places previously choked with people, now haunted with the after image of busy commerce and make-believe vignettes of scenes occurred in these skeleton remains. They were darkly beautiful, modern bones of the city that held a history too close to his own.
He forcefully snapped out of his running internal monologue just as the bus pulled up the driveway outside school. The distance of a block stood between him and school, a block fraught with danger, for he'd been robbed on a previous occasion (not that his school bag had much else besides lunch money and books). At least they hadn't nicked his iPod. He'd be helpless without it.
Music was his poison. He drank it in like the alcoholics of the night drank scotch. Every drum beat was a ricochet echo of his own heart, every guitar string picked was a twanging of his veins.
And music got him through the day. The last bell had already rung and school was over. The kids rushing out the hall blurred into an exquisite pointillism of neon clothes and benevolent cusses at each other. He picked up his bag and walked to the bus, lost in the sleep deprived haze of his thoughts.
On the ride home, he wondered where he'd be in a few years. He wondered if he'd find a place in the cascading chaos of a society ruled by the anarchy of physics, and the fear of inevitable oblivion. He wondered if he would be remembered, if his footsteps would have an echo.
But for now, he thought, his microcosmic life in Lisbon would do. There were dark alleyways to explore and museums to visit and pastries to eat. Somewhere, a waiter put a tablecloth on a dinner table with a flourish, where two lovers would later dine. Somewhere, a boy ran down some abandoned train tracks with his dog, laughing at the summer sun. Somewhere, a girl with auburn hair picked seashells from a glimmering beach as the waves crashed around her fragile legs.
Somewhere, in his heart, a flicker of nostalgia coursed through his blood.
The next song on his iPod came up.
Shuffle.
Skip.
Repeat.