ELM/YORK: There are about six of us standing here at the corner, and we look absolutely miserable. Granted, it’s zero degrees outside. A girl next to me is so swaddled in her parka that the only thing I can see is a smudge of her forehead. She keeps refreshing the TransLoc app on her phone. I want to tell her that the app is broken, and the Blue Line is perpetually three minutes away. A lot of things could happen in three minutes. It could start to sleet. The woman in the brown coat could lose her armful of papers to the wind. I could start a conversation, or that man with the earmuffs could. Instead, we are quiet, and we wait for the shuttle to arrive.
* * *
There is no start or end to the Blue Line. You could say that it starts at the Yale School of Medicine, because that’s where it stops the longest before continuing its route. You could also say that it ends at the Yale School of Medicine, for the same reason. Depending on the person, however, the Blue Line could start and end anywhere. Hoards of students board the shuttle just outside of Davenport in the morning, pour out of the shuttle on Science Hill. But there are also graduate students hurtling toward the Divinity School, professors or TAs or people who aren’t even associated with Yale who disembark somewhere along Whitney. If you look at the route of the shuttle, it’s one continuous loop, encircling Yale’s campus. Technically, you could ride it forever.
* * *
225 PROSPECT: Most of the students get off here. It’s strange, to be surrounded by people who aren’t actually my age for a change. There’s an old man in the back who bought toilet paper from Good Nature Market; a woman clenches her grocery bag — “Have a Nice Day,” it says. The bus starts up again, and I stamp down the feeling that I’ve missed my stop. Here, there are fields and fields of snow, and buildings that sprawl instead of tower. The shuttle is still climbing; if I lean back, I can see the tilt. Outside, someone is jogging in the opposite direction. His neon sports cap bobs with every thump of his sneakers, so in the distance, it looks like he’s saying hello.
* * *
There are a few ways to entertain yourself on the bus. You could look at your phone, which is always a safe bet. This is a good time to catch up on the presidential election, or your friends’ social media profiles, or whatever happens to be on Buzzfeed. You could also start a conversation with the person next to you; it’d probably be easier if it were someone you knew. But it’s all right to sit in silence and stare at nothing in particular. Many people do it, so don’t feel ashamed. Lay your head against the window, or fold your hands under your chin, or just do nothing. A fun exercise: What are the other people thinking about? The man in the blue beanie — he looks pensive, maybe about taxes. The woman in the thick coat — she’s worrying about organic chemistry. Imagine, you will never know what goes on in their heads.
* * *
WHITNEY: We have a new bus driver now. Somewhere before we hit the residential neighborhoods, the previous bus driver stopped our shuttle in front of a Red Line bus, slipped on his navy jacket, and disappeared into the outside world. He had a mustache, and a stocky build, and I will probably never see him again. But there’s a kind of satisfaction in that, I think, of passing by people whom you’ve never met but still remember for some inexplicable reason. Like the girl who’s talking to the couple in front of me. She’s talking about her calluses, how her other friends make fun of her calluses, she takes off her glove and shows them to the couple, says that her calluses are — finally — going soft. It’s a bit weird that, if we cross paths again, the only thing I will know about her is that she has soft calluses.
* * *
“Jamais vu” is French for “never seen.” It describes a feeling of displacement, disorientation and loss. You are in a familiar situation that nonetheless seems strange. You are a foreigner, for no good reason. If you think about it, taking the Blue Line down College Street is like going backwards in time. Thirty minutes ago, you were rocketing up. And, now, you are moving in reverse. The order should be Calhoun, Cross Campus, Commons, but you look out the window and it’s the exact opposite. This is the only part of the Blue Line that retraces itself. Keep going, and you’ll end up in the city. Keep going, and you’ll end up exactly where, I suppose, you wanted to be.