These are children of the night; I hardly see them around in the day. But in the darkness, the world was undeniably theirs

I don’t know what possessed me, but at nine last Thursday night, I jumped on a bus from Bet Shemesh to Yerushalayim and headed to the Kosel. I hadn’t been there in a while, and despite the fact I still had Shabbos to make and a tiring week behind me, I felt I really, really needed to go daven at the Kosel.

The trip descended into the strangest unreality. I had never been on an evening bus out of Bet Shemesh before and hadn’t expected the rowdy crowds of heavily made-up teenage girls and bareheaded adolescent boys. These are children of the night; I hardly see them around in the day. But in the darkness, the world was undeniably theirs. This was their territory.

I was sitting behind two of them. Both had their phones out. “I’m totally storying this,” the girl said without looking up at the boy, whose face was lit up blue from his phone’s screen. He grunted in response and kept scrolling through other people’s TikToks.

A moment later there was a scream and a heavily made-up face appeared over the front of their seat. “OMG, you just storied that?!” the girl two seats in front shouted. Then she disappeared back behind her phone, muttering.