My morning grooming completed, I retrieved my blue plastic book bag from under the tarp and began making my way across the campsite. The glow of morning was now filtering down through the forest canopy but a heavy mist still clung to the ground. As I reached the perimeter of our little clearing, I looked back to see the outline of my mother squatting to pee at the base of a spruce tree. I didn’t turn back to say good-bye. I had a schedule to keep. I had paced out the path to the road in the preceding days and knew it should take me about seven minutes. But that was assuming full daylight, and I didn’t have much extra time budgeted in case I got lost or got stuck in a patch of stinging nettles. As it was, I made it to the octagonal cabin where Crazy John lived with little trouble and followed his well-beaten path straight to the road.
I emerged from the wall of forest right where I wanted to be—directly across from the DEER XING sign. The black silhouette of the crossing deer had a bullet hole in its head. This was the spot, I’d been told, where the school bus to the mainland would stop.
A group of kids was already congregated around the sign. They were staring at me as I stepped out from under the shelter of the forest canopy. I must have looked like a wild animal. The oldest kid—a big, solid girl with acne—stepped defensively in front of the others. I hopped over the little drainage ditch and crossed the road.
“Is this where the bus stops?” I called out. I extended my hand as I approached. “I’m Josh,” I said, introducing myself with my best smile. No response. “I’m starting sixth grade.”
“Where did you come from!?” the big girl spat back. She stepped toward me, her hands raised in front of her. She was wearing black jeans and a black ski jacket. Her hair was dark brown, cut close to the top of her head but incongruously billowing out in long curls from the back. She looked to be fourteen or fifteen years old.
I didn’t know how I should answer her question. I clearly couldn’t tell her the truth. But how much of my story did I need to lie about? I smiled and gestured casually back at the woods across the road: “Oh, we’re building a house out here. You know, just got the land, just getting started.” I nodded, trying to pretend like I was a normal kid, a new neighbor on the Island from somewhere normal.
The big girl didn’t seem to buy it. Her fists balled up. The other kids crowded around just behind her, staring at me. One of them was clearly her little sister. She had the same square blocky face but without the acne. The other two were siblings. They both had tapered, equine faces anchored by prominent buck teeth and were wearing acid-washed blue jeans and fleece-lined denim jackets. Their blond hair was feathered up in graceful swoops. They looked so clean.
The big girl’s little sister pointed at me and shrieked: “A spider! He’s got a spider!”
I followed her gaze to my chest, where a big brown hairy spider was strolling over onto my left arm. I flicked the spider off quickly but saw that my sweater was speckled with little twigs and tendrils of moss and lichen. I began brushing myself off matter-of-factly and looked up with a grin as if to say: “Whoopsy! Don’t know how that got there.”
The big girl stepped forward and shoved me hard with both hands.
“Get out of here! You’re not supposed to be here!” She kept after me, driving me back several steps with each shove. She was strong and dwarfed me in size. She shoved me again. The shoulder of the roadway had turned to gravel, and I almost lost my balance as I slipped on the loose rocks. The bus stop was receding into the distance. I finally pushed back at her, yelling: “Cut it out! Leave me alone.”
Her face screwed into a vicious scowl and she began throwing punches at me. One glanced off the side of my face. The next punch landed square in my chest and paralyzed me for a moment. I gasped for breath. She grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down into her bosom—she smelled like fresh soap—and then she drove her knee up into my belly. I hugged myself defensively, doubling over. She charged at me hard from the left and knocked me off my feet. My right shoulder hit the gravel, and the side of my face slid along the ground. The dirt was dry and chalky. She shoved me with her foot, and I slid down into the little gravel ditch that ran along the edge of the roadway.
The strap of my book bag broke in the fall and a cascade of pens, pencils, and notepads tumbled into the trickle of water at the bottom of the ditch. I began sobbing. Before Leopoldo had sent him back to San Francisco, Uncle Tony had spent the last of his money buying me the book bag and school supplies at Pay-N-Pak. We’d picked them out carefully to prepare me for the new year. I scrambled around on hands and knees gathering up these little scholastic talismans. The pens and pencils I fished out could be dried, but the notepads where already turning to pulp, the blue lines of the paper bleeding into uselessness. On my knees, I looked up at the big girl, holding the mortally wounded remains of my hopes for the year in my lap.
“Look what you did!” I choked out. “You fucking bitch!” I screamed at her—a line I’d learned from Leopoldo.
Looking down at me, the big girl tightened her lips and jutted her jaw forward. She jumped down into the ditch and kicked me in the shoulder and again in the side, and then scrambled back out. She walked back toward the bus stop, apparently finished with me.
Squatting in the ditch, I tried to regain my composure. I knew I shouldn’t let the other kids see me cry. I took a few deep breaths and then busied myself resuscitating my book bag. I’d packed that bag so precisely, wanting everything to be perfect for my first day of school. Now it was all ruined. I dried my school supplies as best I could on my pant legs, leaving wet streaks across my thighs. The two halves of the strap from my book bag hung impotent and unusable. The hard plastic buckle that had held them together was broken into pieces. I tied the two halves together, pulling the soft plastic straps tightly into a double knot.
My work completed, I climbed out of the ditch and dusted myself off. The big girl was standing, arms crossed, at the line where gravel turned to asphalt. I got it. That was her line of demarcation. I was now about fifty feet from the bus stop where the other kids were gathered, but I wasn’t going to attempt a border crossing with the big girl standing sentinel. I’d have to wait her out.
The bus came growling around the corner behind me and passed within a foot of where I was standing on the narrow shoulder. Faded yellow, riddled with rivets. The bus stopped up ahead of the sign and the doors opened. Thick clouds of black diesel smoke chugged up from the exhaust pipe. The other kids ran forward. But the big girl wasn’t budging. She just stood there, arms crossed, guarding the border. I watched as the other kids disappeared up into the bus, but she still didn’t move. Out the back window a line of faces blankly witnessed our standoff. The bus honked. I tensed, leaning forward, book bag slung over my shoulder, waiting for her to turn. She still didn’t move. I stared at her, pawing at the gravel with impatient feet. She stared back impassively. The engine growled. The black smoke kept chugging upward. Then the big girl turned suddenly and began running for the bus doors.
The second she leaned into her turn, I launched after her, sprinting toward my ticket to school and beyond. I knew she was going to tell the bus driver to leave without me. She wanted the doors of the bus to close in my face and leave me choking on smoke. I was sure of it, but I couldn’t let that happen. I churned across the gravel and leapt onto the asphalt, running, pumping with my arms, the book bag slapping against my back.
When I came alongside the bus, I felt my shoulder lighten as the book bag strap gave way again. The bag skidded along the ground, spraying pens and pencils in its wake. I stopped and kneeled to pick up the bag, frantically sweeping up school supplies, scraping my fingers across the blacktop in a frenzy. The school bus honked twice in quick, annoyed succession. I scooped up my jumbled belongings and looked up. Every window of the bus was filled with laughing, howling children.
I stumbled up the steps of the bus. A sea of jeering faces greeted me inside. The kids in the back were rising up, straining to get a good look at me. The bus lurched forw
ard, and I stumbled, grabbing onto a green vinyl seatback to keep my balance. The air was buzzing with whispers and snorts. I kept my eyes down, working my way back row by row, looking for a seat. But they were all full. Kids slid to the aisle-edge of the row to keep me from sitting by them. Feet stuck out to trip me, kicking at my shins.
A pudgy porcine face—all teeth and nostrils—suddenly popped into my field of vision, screaming: “Freak!” He’d found the word they were all looking for, and soon a steady chant of “Freak! Freak! Freak!” rained down on me. Finally, mercifully, a vacant seat appeared toward the back of the bus, and I slid wearily into it.
Snap! I felt a sharp sting across the back of my neck. I jerked forward, startled, and covered the back of my neck with my hands. Snap! The sting again, this time along my knuckles. I slipped down off the seat, as low to the floor as I could go, and looked up to see the cause of my new torment. He was a huge kid—probably a high-schooler—with a comically red face. He had a buzz-cut on top but sported long blond curls that billowed down onto his shoulders. Who were these short-on-top/long-in-back barbarians?
He flicked a thick middle finger off the pad of his thumb. “I’m Kjell and I’m going to do this to you all day long,” he vowed in a death-metal growl. I stayed wedged between seats, squatting on the floor for as long as I could, but my legs began to cramp up. I pensively hoisted myself back up onto the seat. Kjell seemed not to notice me. I looked out the window and saw forest giving way to rolling grasslands. Snap! Kjell snapped me on the back of the neck again. He laughed in deep chest tones. I spent the rest of the bus ride with my hands clasped tightly to the back of my neck. From time to time Kjell would snap me on the back of my hands or on the top of my head. I bobbed my head evasively while trying to look at distant points out the window to avoid vomiting from motion sickness. The bus bounced and swayed. The air was thick with the stench of diesel.
The kids around me were yelling and laughing loudly. Some of this was directed at me, but most of it seemed to be just the way these simian life forms communicated. They were yelling about what fun they’d had over the summer, about who had grown boobs, and who was a big faggot. The bus eventually crossed the bridge onto the mainland, and a town began to develop on the left side of the highway. The yelling seemed to get louder and louder the closer we got to school. Until we stopped to pick up a couple of Mexican kids, and then the bus fell silent for the rest of the ride.
When the bus finally released us into the loading zone at Stanwood Middle School, I was jostled from side to side and absorbed into a stream of students surging forward into the sprawling campus. This was a real school. People were flowing in all directions under covered walkways leading to multiple buildings. I felt safe in the crowd. If they couldn’t focus on me for more than a moment they’d leave me alone. Up some stairs and through the hallways I skittered, head down.
I found my homeroom and slid into my desk just as the bell rang. Our teacher, Mrs. King, greeted us: “Good morning class! Are you ready to learn?” I nodded vigorously. This was where I was meant to be. I sat at the edge of my seat like a sprinter in his starting blocks. I raised my hand every time I knew the answer, which, except for math, was most of the time. I raised it so many times the teacher stopped calling on me, and the boys behind me began fake-coughing “Faggot!” into their hands. I didn’t care. These idiots could brutalize me all they wanted on the bus, but in the classroom I would outshine them all.
When the bell rang, Mrs. King caught my eye and beckoned me over with a scoop of her hand. “Come talk to me,” she said, as though she needed me to keep her company through the loneliness of recess. She pulled up a chair next to her own for me, and we talked like a couple of friends. Mrs. King had a smooth and youthful face framed by perfectly round, brown curls. She looked directly into my eyes when she was listening to me, and her lips leapt up into little smiles whenever she spoke. She asked where I’d gone to school before, and I told her about being home-schooled and about my brief time in a New Age school where I’d learned to write poems and interpret dreams. She had me read a passage from a book and read from a handwritten page. She then asked me to do a couple of math problems.
Our conversation fell silent. Mrs. King clasped her hands shut and placed them on her lap. She leaned forward, seeking out my eyes, and told me she thought I was very bright. But, I was years behind in math. I’d have to go to remedial math. And probably remedial English too, but only because I couldn’t read or write in cursive. It felt like she’d slapped me across the face. My temples swelled, and I fought back tears. “Remedial” was for bullies who couldn’t find the United States on a map of North America. Couldn’t she see how smart I was? Mrs. King’s eyes opened to their full aperture. She wasn’t smiling now. She bent her head to one side, viewing me from a new perspective. She unclasped her hands and, smiling again, volunteered to stay after school to tutor me in cursive: “Like I said, I think you’re really bright, Josh. If you’ll agree to stay and learn cursive, I’ll agree to stay and teach it to you.”
“I can’t,” I apologized. “I have to take the bus home. Not really home, but where we’re staying.”
“Can’t your mom pick you up late?”
“Yes, she could’ve, but she can’t now because we don’t have a car anymore. Well, we do have a car somewhere but this guy Leopoldo crashed it.”
Mrs. King straightened her neck and narrowed her gaze. “Well, let’s call your mom and talk about this,” she concluded.
I looked down at the floor, tracing the linoleum patterns with my eyes. I rubbed my shoulder. “We can’t call her because we don’t have a phone, Mrs. King.”
Her face hardened. “Well, I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, then.” With that, she let me go out to catch the remainder of recess.
In the schoolyard, I sat by myself on a bench, staring at the patch on my knee. If Mrs. King couldn’t see me for the gifted student I really was, no one could. School had failed me. Or, more likely, I’d failed at school. Either way, it wasn’t worth the struggle to get here. This remedial school wasn’t going to make my life better.
A girl from my class named Erin came and sat down next to me. She wore thick pancake makeup and had orange bangs that stood straight up through the magical power of hair spray. Erin looked at me with pity and shook her head. “Did you even wash your face this morning?” She made eye contact with me, searching my soul to understand why I was choosing to be so gross. Her eyes drifted to the right side of my face and seemed to stop at my ear. She grimaced. “Oh my God. I’m not even going to say it,” she told me. “It’d be too mean.”
I looked past her, pretending I didn’t care. Pretending I didn’t want to punch her in her made-up face. Pretending I didn’t want to punch myself in the face.
Erin excused herself to talk to some of the popular girls over by the monkey bars. I slipped away to the bathroom, which was dark and cavernous and reeked of bleach. I scrutinized myself in the mirror over the sink. The right side of my face was streaked with dirt. My right ear was pocked with black dots. My neck was flaking little rolls of dead skin. My lower lip was swollen and red on the right side. I washed my face as best I could in the cold water at the sink but there was no soap. I scrubbed at my cheek and my neck with the rough, pulpy brown paper towels and began to gingerly pick off the little bits of grit that were embedded in my ear. I didn’t get far before a group of eighth-graders came in and announced to no one in particular: “All faggots out!” I assured myself I wasn’t a faggot but wisely fled the bathroom anyway.
In the hall between periods, I struggled with the combination lock on my yellow locker. There was something enticing about having one little place in the world that was all my own. But as the bell rang, I gave up trying to open it. What was the point? I was never going to come back to school to use it. I stood with my back to the lockers, staring up at the asbestos ceiling tiles. A group of boys hustled by on the way to class. One of them turned his head to stare at me, a wry smile
developing on his face.
“You guys, go ahead. I’ll catch up,” he said. “I gotta take care of something.”
He stopped right in front of me. I lowered my head to look at him. He had spiky blond hair and wore a baggy gray sweatshirt. His face was clean and clear, and when he spoke I could see the flash of a retainer in his mouth.
“What are you looking at, fag!?” He was trying to sound tough.
I opened my mouth but knew there was nothing I could say. I saw his right upper-cut coming and shielded my belly, taking most of the force of the punch on the back of one arm. But then he kneed me in the groin, and I sank to the floor. He hurried off to rejoin his friends. The churning nausea didn’t last that long, but I didn’t have the will to get up. Who was this kid? The reason he left his friends, the reason he was late for class, the thing he had to “take care of,” was stopping to knee me in the balls?
On the bus back to Camano Island, Kjell found me again, even though I was hunkered down in the middle of the bus. He snapped at the back of my neck whenever I sat up. It was too much: Kjell, the yelling, the sickening turns in the road. A dark heaviness in my gut pulled me into despair. I massaged my temples, trying to use the astral projection techniques my mother had shown me to rise above it all. But I couldn’t focus long enough to get into a meditative trance. I was going to throw up. I felt the waves of nausea beginning to climb up into my chest.
But then, out the window, the black deer with the bullet hole in its head floated into view. I lunged out of my crouching position and scrambled to get off the bus before the big girl. She tried to trip me up as I passed her seat, kicking at my knees. I stumbled but didn’t fall. I leapt off the bus, gasping for air, and ran across the road and into the forest before she could come after me. From the underbrush I watched, panting, as the bus moved off. The big girl stared defiantly at the wall of forest and shouted: “Sissy!” Then she and her sister and friends walked up the road and disappeared around the corner where, no doubt, their driveways led to warm, clean houses and milk and cookies and television.
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