Knocking down ten things at once with her giant bag, Jyoti tried to look for her umbrella in the heaping mess of clothes and books scattered all over her room. Finally she pulled out her giant yellow umbrella from underneath a pile of laundry she never folded or put away and gave a quick final glance at her dresser to make sure she hadn’t left anything she needed. As she created a mental note in her head to clean up her room when she came back from school, she jumped over her mess and ran down the stairs. Her dad honked the car horn as she quickly grabbed her granola bar and slipped into the easiest shoes to put on. As she opened the door she shivered as a gust of wind blew her hair out of her eyes and left goosebumps down her arms. She walked down the porch and felt the soft drizzle of rain tickling her nose and landing softly on her jacket, she hated gloomy rainy days; oh how she wished there was a sun shower or any ray of light that could make her not want to crawl back into her bed and spend the rest of the day underneath her covers sleeping. “Will you hurry up, you’re not the only person who has places to go.” Jyoti’s dad wasn’t a very patient man but then again neither was she. She laughed and sarcastically walked even slower to the car as her dad shook his head. He thought of how he ended up with a daughter as silly as her who never found a moment of seriousness even as she was getting late for school. As she settled into the passenger seat, she fumbled with her earphones to cancel out the sound of her dad listening to the weather on the radio. She rolled her eyes as she though of the amount of times she tried to convince him he could just go on the weather app on his iPhone. She closed her eyes as the voice of Roy Woods swam across her eardrums. Minutes passed before she opened her eyes and realized she was already at the 169th F train station. She waved a quick goodbye to her father and ran down the steps of the subway station and swiftly walked by the crowd of people headed the same way as her. Just as disorganized as her room, was her bag. She dug through the piles of notes and gum wrappers to find her wallet squeezed in between her laptop and textbook. She quickly swiped her metro card and sighed to see that she had to refill it again after this ride. Luckily the F train was already there as she climbed down the steps and quickly found a seat big enough to put down her bag beside her. She sighed a breath of relief and closed her eyes to catch a quick nap; she had a long ride of 16 stops ahead of her. 20 Minutes had barely passed by before she fluttered her eyes open as she felt a sharp tug on her arm to find that someone had accidentally brushed against her side when sitting down beside her. She scanned the train to find that by now it was clustered with a faces of all different people of different ages and backgrounds. A particular woman stood out to her, she had dark skin and tired eyes, she was grasping on to two large bags in one hand as the other held on to the railing as the train jerked softly. The tired woman looked down at Jyoti and sent a soft smile as her lips curled up in the slightest way to send off a warm gesture.To the left of the woman stood a little girl, not much older than 6 or 7, she held on to the woman’s dress and stared off into the void of blur through the subway train windows, only breaking her gaze to glance back at Jyoti. Suddenly a wave of nostalgia lifted Jyoti up and brought her back to the age of 8 when she took the train for the first time with her mom and remembered thinking of how much older it made her feel. She would see the faces of grown ups all around her, all of which were headed somewhere, holding on to their bags and waiting for their stops patiently, all of which she assumed were either going to work or headed home from work; as she came back to reality she realized she wasn’t so little anymore. She wondered if she appeared as grown up to the little girl as well although she didn’t feel like one. Jyoti smiled back at the woman and her daughter as she got up to let her sit down. With her two heavy bags and the responsibility of her daughter, she needed the seat more than her anyways.