My Own Ending
“Never chase after boys or buses,” my father counseled. “They’ll always leave you behind.” I took his advice and ran with it, literally, in full Nike garb at 6 a.m. to a boy who’d boarded a bus bound for Kathmandu. A crimson fannypack thumped against my thighs, ferrying a letter written in the night’s wee hours. My initial plan was to pass it to Hannah, leaving later for KTM, but I didn’t have faith that fate would cross their paths in the sprawling, smoggy capital. I woke with just enough time to run the 3.3 km distance (even with my sluggish jog). Sun salutations and morning meditation in my sparse room would’ve been soured by a litany of What ifs . And so, despite my father’s advice, I laced up concrete-crusted sneakers and chased the boy on the bus through dawn’s mist, past literal signs of metaphoric importance: The Big Lebowski showing later that evening, a few flickeri...