Fear: Ghost and Bus Doors

Throughout our youth we are haunted by many evils, some real and some imagined. I, just as many others told ghost stories and gave myself nightmares by not covering my eyes while watching scary movies, but some ghosts are more real than others.
Middle school students may be one of the scariest of all evils. They have little concern for those around them and try to bury their own fear behind a wall of anger. My personal evil had a name, or at least a nickname, everyone called him, Scooter. I’m not sure if his mother gave him this name, if this was a name he earn from some action or if he anointed himself Scooter and I was never going to find out. Just as ghosts in the stories chose a room or area to haunt, Scooter chose me. My guess is that Scooter haunted many rooms but, he seemed to be my personal ghost.
I rode the bus to and from school and so did Scooter. This was his favorite place to haunt middle schoolers. I had seen and of course heard him on the bus before always doing my best to avoid any contact with him. Knowing the direct eye contact would only provoke his ridicule, I always skillfully took up residence in the front of the bus, amongst the other frightened students. Until one day when the real-estate at the front of the bus was all occupied. Faced with the choice of turning and running of the bus screaming or taking a seat, I took a seat. It became my day to receive my dose of Scooter. Like a shark with blood in the water, he started to circle his pray and I played the part of a helpless seal. The seal act earned me several weeks of name calling and many slaps to the back of the head. A seals best defense is just to avoid the shark, so that is what I did, I stopped taking the bus and started walking to school. The walk was long and cold, but there was no Scooter. The problem with the walk was that I could not always make it to school on time. After I had been tardy to class many times my teachers thought that it was time for an