The number 15 bus — the Jeffery Local — ran near my house on Chicago’s South Side. I would take it to school if my parents were unable to drive me. I would take it home after soccer practice, sweating and weighed down with bags. Sometimes on a Saturday night, I came home too late and fell asleep in my seat and missed my stop. I didn’t get my driver’s license until after I graduated high school.
Senior year, my first class wasn’t until 10 in the morning. I would wait at the stop on 69th and Jeffery Boulevard with other people from South Shore: prepubescents riding to middle school alone, adults with briefcases and suits, mothers and fathers holding their toddlers’ hands, and teenagers with tired eyes and headphones on, like me...