by K. A. Holt
I am, in fact, on this bus because of another concerning thing, and that is the fact that Spartacus the dog, not the movie guy, is at peak sick right now, like if sick was a mountain she would be on top of it waiting for a helicopter to rescue her like that guy who climbed that mountain in the place where those cool camel-goats live. Spartacus is very very very sick and it was too concerning to be in my house right now with my mom and dad and sister and the vet tech who might be the helicopter rescuing Spartacus off of Peak Sick or might be helping Spartacus die peacefully at this very second or maybe that’s the same thing and I really really do NOT want to know that.
When I got kicked out of Sandbox for a stupid chat infraction I went into the kitchen to ask mom how come good things can turn into mean things by accident and I walked past the living room and I saw the vet tech’s face, the serious slash of her mouth as she listened to Spartacus cough and cough, and it made me feel hot and melty in a very bad way inside my guts and I had to walk outside and get a fresh breath in my lungs because I thought I might throw up but then my feet needed a walk and it started to get dark and I might not be the smartest kid in the world, but also I know I don’t want to get squished by a truck or even a small car so I got on the bus when I saw it stop. And now I just got squished by a Ben Y but that’s okay because now there’s someone to ride the bus with me while it loops through town over and over and I wish the squeals and groans of the bus noises could fill up my head, but they don’t and I can still hear Spartacus gasping for breath and I can see the vet tech’s mouth in its very serious shape and riding the bus isn’t stopping any of that from replaying over and over in my head like the worst autoplay feature of all time which is saying something because all autoplay is basically garbage’s garbage.
Also even though I can imagine Mom’s concern that she doesn’t know where I am, I still can’t seem to get off the bus.
Spartacus is sick, I say to Ben Y even though she didn’t ask. I just guessed that she would probably ask if she wasn’t in her weird quiet bubble, so I might as well answer her anyway, right? Of course right. I don’t really want to think about Spartacus but also Spartacus is the only thing I CAN think about. I don’t want to think about her dying. I don’t want to think about anything dying. I don’t want to think about people dying or plants dying or even things that can’t die dying. Like this bus or my shoes or Ben Y’s jeans with the holes in them. I know jeans can’t DIE die, but it makes me sad to think about her jeans eventually having too many holes and getting thrown out. That’s kind of like dying for jeans and any kind of dying makes me sad. Especially animals dying. Especially Spartacus. And now I’m feeling a lot of concern all at once.
Oh man, I have so much concern in me, it’s leaking out of my eyes.
Ben Y picks up my phone from the bus seat and she types something on it which is weird because how does she know my passcode but then I remember I changed my passcode so that it would be the same as the password to the dingleberry server so that I would stop forgetting all the password codes, and that was a very good guess on her part, good job detective Ben Y. She pulls the ding string for the next stop and then she pulls my elbow in a way stronger way than I thought she could and she drags me off the bus even though I don’t want to get off the bus and all of my concerns are leaking out of my eyes and some from my nose which is gross but Ben Y does not seem to care.
It’s a deep almost-all-the-way-night blue black outside and it should probably feel super weird that Ben Y’s hand is still squeezing my elbow as we walk, but actually it feels warm and sturdy and way better than walking all by myself.
How does Ben Y even know where I live?
As soon as I open the door I see my sister Carolina in her pink leotard and she looks very, very concerned with wet cheeks and a pink nose and Mom rushes to me and grabs me in a hug and then Dad also hugs me and then Carolina climbs in the middle of us all and I don’t ask about Spartacus because I guess I already know.
The vet tech is standing in the doorway to the living room, the very same doorway I once ran into so hard that I grew a goose egg on my head just like in cartoons. Her mouth is not a serious shape anymore, it is a wide O shape and her eyes are just a little bit angry which confuses me because why would she be angry, but then Ben Y, who I forgot was here for a minute, says, Mom? and I’m so surprised to hear that, I almost don’t see that behind the vet tech Spartacus is in the living room on her blanket on the couch. Spartacus who is not coughing, which is good, but who is not moving, which is bad. I almost don’t see that. But I do.
Can the vet tech fix me if my heart breaks into a jillion pieces?
Mom crushes my head to her chest and the whole family sits on the floor next to Spartacus who is on the couch, which is a backward situation if you think about it, and yes Spartacus is not alive anymore and this is the worst day of my whole life.
JAVIER
BEN B
The twitch of his eye,
a slight wiggle,
barely noticeable
(but I notice it)
as he reads the note
while Mom reads the newspaper,
while I eat my cereal.
He sips coffee,
grimacing
as it steams up his glasses.
He reads the note again.
Why now?
He says the words to himself,
and it’s like I can see them
floating in front of us,
murmurs made of small fonts.
Um.
My voice is a bigger font,
bold,
no flourish,
standing tall,
even if the word
is a dumb one.
My teacher said
I’m one of the best typists
she’s ever met.
She said if I type in class,
my notes and assignments
and tests,
it could help me . . .
I test out a new fancy word,
underlined in my brain:
excel.
Mom looks up from the newspaper.
Dad frowns.
But . . .
a 504?
Really?
Now?
In the seventh grade?
You’d need . . . a diagnosis.
Doctors. Psychologists, maybe.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned this before?
Who is this teacher?
Why are you typing in a remedial reading class?
He sets the letter down,
stands,
pours more coffee,
cleans his glasses.
My fonts all fall away.
I don’t have answers.
I’ve been thinking:
finally something to help me do better,
not why now
not what’s wrong.
I think Ms. J is right.
My chin sticks out,
all by itself,
a stubborn protest
against the way Dad said
Who is this teacher?
I’ve tried it.
For a while now.
Typing in class.
It works.
For real.
It works great.
And you always want me to be great, so . . .
Dad sips his coffee,
curses under his breath,
at the boiling heat, or . . .
I don’t know, kiddo.
A 504 . . .
that’s new territory.
Territory for other kids,
special kids.
Not kids like you.
His font is bigger now,
his words snap snap snap,
clicking together.
Firm.
My words are lost,
swallowing by his bigger
meaning.
What did he just say?
About being special?
/> I don’t have words
to figure that out.
I mean,
any way my brain
repeats it:
. . . special kids.
Not kids like you.
It’s not great.
Am I not special?
Is special bad?
Do I not want to be special, then?
I don’t understand.
Mom looks in the rearview mirror,
not at the cars behind us,
but at me,
in the backseat,
on the way to school.
Dad is only being cautious,
she says,
her gaze locking onto mine
while we idle
at a red light.
Remember the dyslexia fiasco?
I remember the test.
I remember no one had any answers.
I remember Dad just hired another tutor.
I remember Thursdays got doubled up,
and I couldn’t eat dinner
until eight p.m.
Is that what she means?
I catch her eyes in the mirror,
I shrug,
just before the light turns green,
just before she looks back at the road.
Sometimes I don’t really understand Dad,
I say quietly, almost under my breath.
Sometimes I don’t either,
Mom says, even quieter than me.
Dysfluency.
Ms. J typed that in the chat.
She meant Javier’s stuttering.
Dysgraphia.
Ms. J wrote that in the letter for Mom and Dad.
She meant my awful handwriting,
my note-taking,
my pencil grip.
Dyslexia.
A test I took years ago.
Inconclusive. Does this child have anxiety?
What is Ben Y’s dys, I wonder.
What is Jordan J’s dys?
Maybe the word for all of us should be
dysvergent.
It’s like a bunch of whispers,
the willow branches
blowing around me
as I lie in the grass,
looking up,
blinded by the sun,
crushed by the heat.
What is it saying to me?
The tree?
I listen so so carefully.
I try to hear every tiny breath,
but it’s all just out of reach,
like everything is for me,
so close,
but so far,
teasing me,
pretending I can hear it,
pretending I can get there,
pretending I’m good enough,
when the whispers already know
they aren’t for me.
They’re never for me.
I hear the bell.
Class has officially started.
I am still officially lying in the grass
under the tree.
I don’t care if Mom saw me
dart under the fronds
instead of into the school
before she drove off.
I don’t care
at
all.
Ben.
Ben B.
This time it’s a real whisper,
I hear it clearly.
I sit up.
Sweat drips down my cheek,
tickling me,
as I peek
around the branches.
Javier.
Hoodie tied around his waist this time.
I can see his whole head and face
for the first time.
Buzz cut.
Big eyes.
Serious mouth.
Hi.
Hi.
You’re late for class.
S-S-So are you.
BEN Y
<0BenwhY>
I don’t know why I came here.
It’s not like Jordan J
is my bff,
but maybe
we’re . . . something?
Friends with an asterisk?
Not bestie besties,
but not nothings.
Should I knock on the door?
Is he even here?
I should be in school.
He should be in school.
I bet on my eleventh toe
he’s not in school.
I wouldn’t be.
If I were him.
I see the asterisk
in his eyes
as he opens the front door
wider.
I feel the little starry spikes
hooking into me
like sticker burrs,
pulling me through the doorway,
into the house.
Not besties.
But not nothings.
[low and slow fart noise]
Can losing a dog possibly be
even sort of
kind of
sideways close
to losing a brother?
Can the pain
sear and pop
and burn and flame
the same way
every day
for weeks
and months
and . . .
for a full whole
entire
year?
Like it does?
Still?
Today?
THE day?
Can Jordan J
feel
even a little tiny bit
of what I feel?
Is that what friends with an asterisk
is all about?
Is that why I’m here?
Instead of anywhere else?
We sit on the floor,
not on the couch.
Jordan J’s mom peeks in the room,
her curly hair tripping over itself,
falling to her shoulders,
like it’s lost its way
either to
or from
her messy bun.
The TV is on.
Loud applause
fills the room.
Jordan J is quiet,
so quiet,
it confuses my ears.
It’s the loudest, saddest quiet
I’ve ever heard.
JORDAN J
Ben Y and I sit on the floor because Spartacus found her way to the Rainbow Bridge from the couch and even though Mom said the couch is fine and safe and just the same as it was before, which is probably true, I don’t think I will ever sit on it again and I wish no one else would either and even though I can’t feel happy right now, it almost makes me feel whatever happy might feel like when you’re super sad that Ben Y just came right in and sat on the floor right next to me, no questions asked.
I have fifty-three episodes of Fierce Across America recorded on my TV so that I can watch them any time I want which is pretty much all the time. Ten dancers, ten choreographers, twenty lives changed. . . . This. Is. Fierce. Across. America. I can do announcer Mae Michaelson’s voice pretty much better than she can do her own voice even though she has a British accent and I have no accent though maybe I’d have an accent to her if she heard me talk. Do Florida people have accents? Maybe we sound like sweat and sunshine and sand and bare feet, but, like, all of that coming out of our mouths? I don’t know, I just know that watching D’Andre pirouette right now is spinning a teeny teeny tiny bit of sadness away and maybe I should ask Ben Y why she’s here except it feels like I know why even though I don’t know why which is weird but I’m just going to go with it.
It’s a little bit weird that your mom sent my favorite non-human almost-person Spartacus over the Rainbow Bridge last night. Those are the first words I say to Ben Y and I don’t mean them in a mean way or anything just, it was weird and Ben Y looks at me like Mae Michaelson looks at Veronica Verve when Veronica says D’Andre’s piroue
ttes could use a little work, or as Ben Y herself would say, she looks at me like I am bonkers bananas. Then she says, Oh, you mean euthanized, but she trails off when she gets to the -ed part of the word because I guess she sees me make the ahhhhhh face I make when someone uses very specific and scary words about la la la la la I don’t want to think about it, any of it, nope nope nope nope nope, and now I can’t stop saying nope and rocking back and forth just a little bit while D’Andre gets schooled on not being too aggressive with his jetés, or as Mae Michaelson says, Without better control, he risks injury to both himself and to the front row of the audience, hahahaha. Am I also out of control enough to risk injury to myself and my audience, aka Ben Y, hahahaha? I want to stop rocking and saying nope, but I just can’t yet.
Ben Y says in a quiet voice that slides in between my nopes that her brother, her best friend, the only person in the world who understood her also died and how she knows that’s not the same as a dog dying but it kind of is because her brain and her heart and her everything still hurt all the time when she misses him. She says maybe Spartacus will get to be dust in a box like her brother, which isn’t as scary as it sounds because if you think about it, it’s just like the dust that floats in space and eventually all collects together to make a planet, so basically her brother is in his post-human, pre-planet form right now and that idea is pretty freaking cool because can you imagine what a planet made out of Spartacus would be like? It would be an awesome planet full of love and snuggles and face licks and stinky farts. That makes me smile. Also dust is like sand and I like the idea of Spartacus being in her own sandbox.