The boy who accidentally rubs his knees against her, sitting opposite him, suddenly touches the donkey. "Shit!" he moans. And he quickly gets up from his seat. Standing up, he puts the receiver to his ear. A woman in work uniform, who was standing—the train is moving like a clam at this time—quickly takes the empty seat. "Mom!" the boy says. "I missed my stop!" He listens to explanations, obviously, and then says: "Okay, I'll call the Pope! God, God." The girl pricks up her ear. "Dad! I missed my stop! Yes, in Pallejà. Yes, yes. Now." Silence, and again: "Well, look, what do I know... I'm a total idiot! I was looking at my phone and... Yes, until now."
The girl stops watching videos and suddenly raises her eyes to the boy, who bites his lower lip and shakes his head as if to say it can't be true. She's fascinated by this normality, this apparent good humor. He called himself an "asshole," with sincerity and grace. It didn't seem like there was any shouting on the other end of the phone, neither from his mother, at first, nor from his father, later. Apparently, both understood this mistake and simply asked him where he got off. They had probably agreed to pick him up at the bus stop.
What would have happened if she had called her parents now to tell them she missed her bus stop? There would have been shouting, reproaches; perhaps they would have hung up the phone. She wouldn't have called herself an "asshole" so naturally, nor would she have told the truth: that she was looking at her phone. She would have come up with some excuse that wouldn't make her look bad. And yet, she wouldn't have been spared the shouting and the bad mood when they'd met. Suddenly, fascinated, she imagines that this boy's parents had even played a joke, the kind a friend would play on you. And she's thinking about all this when she skips the stop and, with glassy eyes, calls out to her father. "Dad, I missed the stop..." And then she whispers, "Please don't shout..."
