Chapter One: Marlin
It should have been a normal rush hour ride from Brookland Station, past Georgia Avenue, through Columbia Heights, then down through that damnable bottleneck—a place some of the drivers still secretly called Spanish Town, though it wasn’t much of that anymore. But Marlin noticed, as he worked the lever for the door and let people in all through Mount Pleasant, that something was powerfully wrong.
At Mount Pleasant and Irving Streets, the mean teenager (Marlin had been there himself and swore the kid was a gangbanger) got on the bus. Then, at Mount Pleasant and Hobart, the Asian guy (Marlin was sure he had two girlfriends) got on. He was the one always leaving gum on the seat. At Mount Pleasant and Park Road, the angry black girl with the quiet face (probably something to do with her always staring at the young Asian guy) got on, and she was the one who blocked the back door. At Eighteenth Street and Park Road, the old lady who could barely speak to him through her other language, but kept on speaking to him anyways when he was trying to drive (she was far too skinny for an old lady, even)… all of these people were his worst costumers,
