Lost - By Nadia Simonenko Page 0,2

stairs. The bus is ten minutes late, and my feet are starting to go numb.

“Jesus Christ, it’s so cold today!” complains Tina, her teeth chattering. Even after four years here at Cornell, she still can’t handle the cold. Sometimes I wonder why she chose a school known as much for its bleak winters as for its education. It’s upstate New York—what exactly did she expect?

I’m happy she picked this college. I’d be completely alone if she hadn’t.

“Who the heck even gets up for class this early, anyway?” whines Tina. “Maria, why am I even out of bed? Seriously!”

“It’s almost ten o’clock, Tina.”

“Hey, that’s early for a Friday!”

I roll my eyes at her, but I can’t help but smile anyway as her blond ponytail bounces up and down as she tries to keep warm. Tina has only one class on Fridays—one of the benefits of being a second-semester senior, she claims—but she decided to ride up to campus with me today anyway.

My feet are freezing. The only thing stopping me from just giving up and walking to class is that our apartment is two miles away from campus... and it’s all uphill, too. It’s a fantastic apartment—and so much cheaper than living in the dorms—but I sometimes feel as if I’m commuting from the moon.

The dirty blue bus caked in salt and muddy road spray pulls up to our stop, and we race up the stairs and into the warmth. The bus is as humid as a rainforest from the melted snow from countless students’ winter boots, and I watch condensation drip down the window as we pull away from the curb.

I sit in the middle of a gap of three empty seats and Tina sits down next to me. Two stops later, a swarm of students crowd into the bus, and I feel like I’m a sardine in a tiny can.

A boy in a green jacket and blue jeans sits down next to me, and my stomach turns over. He’s too close to me. My chest tightens up and I suddenly feel like I’m short of breath.

His leg touches mine as he sits back and relaxes, and my heart starts pounding. I close my eyes and try not to shake, but I can feel my jaw trembling. My neck muscles tense up and start to cramp as I sit rigidly in my seat, nearly paralyzed with fear.

I can’t breathe. I’m going to suffocate.

I open my eyes as Tina nudges me with her elbow. She gets up from her seat and grabs onto the handrail as she looks down at me in concern.

“Hey, wake up, Maria!” she says, winking at me. “You’re gonna miss your stop!”

She waves to the driver and drags me out of my seat as the bus pulls over to the side of the road. I follow clumsily behind her as she takes me away from the boy sitting next to me and outside to safety.

I feel completely helpless and devastated by my embarrassment, but I am also grateful beyond words for her saving me yet again. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled me back from the brink of a panic attack.

She links her arm around mine and we walk the last half mile to campus together.

“Thank you, Tina,” I whisper after several blocks of silence. My heart is still racing, but I’m finally starting to calm down a little.

“Don’t worry about it. I know how you get around crowds,” she answers with a warm smile and understanding eyes.

I smile back at her. She’s too good to me; she’s even pretending that the crowd is what upset me.

“You didn’t have to do it, though,” I whisper back to her, feeling guilty. “You didn’t have to take care of me. Now you have a long walk to class because of me.”

“Big fucking deal,” she says. “My fat ass could use the exercise, so let’s walk.”

I grin at her. Tina has the dirtiest mouth of any girl I’ve ever met, and it only gets dirtier from here. At first glance, she seems like a dainty little blonde with a penchant for pink, but that’s as far as her party-girl façade goes. Her mouth is downright legendary after a few drinks.

I’d expected her to be a typical sorority girl when I first met her. Instead I met someone almost as broken as me—someone who I could trust—and I’ve never been happier that my first impression was wrong.

She turns to me with a grin after another long silence.

“If you ever see