My name is Rachel, I’m 27 years old, and I live in Portland, Oregon. I take the same bus to work every morning. Same route, same stops, same silent routine of earbuds in and eyes down. I like it that way. The bus is my buffer between home and everything else.
One Tuesday morning, that buffer disappeared.
I had just sat down when a man across the aisle looked up from his phone and said, “Rough morning, Rachel?”
I froze.
I don’t have a unique name, but hearing it spoken by a stranger hit differently. I stared at him, trying to place his face. He was maybe mid-forties, average build, wearing a gray jacket. Nothing about him stood out. I pulled out one earbud and asked, “Sorry—do I know you?”
He smiled like that was a strange question. “No,” he said. “But I see you here all the time.”
That didn’t explain anything. I don’t talk on the bus. I don’t wear a name tag. I glanced down at my bag, half-expecting my ID to be dangling off it. It wasn’t.
I asked how he knew my name.
He hesitated for just a second too long, then said, “Your laptop sticker. It has your name.”
It didn’t. I knew that for a fact.
I told him he was wrong. His smile faded, and he shrugged. “Must’ve mixed you up with someone else,” he said, already looking back at his phone.
But the damage was done. My heart was pounding the rest of the ride. When I got off at my stop, I waited until the doors closed, watching through the glass as the bus pulled away. He never looked up again.
All day, I replayed it. Maybe he overheard someone say my name once? Maybe he worked near my office? Or maybe it was just a coincidence layered with nerves and imagination. Still, none of it sat right.
The next morning, I took an earlier bus. Different crowd. Different driver. I thought I was being paranoid.
Three days later, I saw him again—standing at the stop across the street, watching my bus pull away without him. He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile. He just watched.
I’ve changed my route since then. I walk part of the way now, even when it rains. Nothing else has happened. No messages. No encounters.
But every time someone says my name in public, my stomach tightens.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was coincidence.
Or maybe someone noticed me long before I noticed them.
