This Might Hurt a Bit

by Doogie Horner

  One of the shadows moves.

  “DEFCON four.” I sigh and pull the rocks out of my pocket. As I jiggle the reassuring weight of the rocks in my hand, I creep sideways toward the bus stop like a crab, never taking my eyes off the approaching wraith.

  Still just a shadow, it heads toward me, trotting for a moment before it breaks into a run.

  I hope it’s the greyhound. He’s fast, sure—he easily keeps pace with the few cars that drive up our road—but he doesn’t like to cross the road.

  The dog runs through a bar of sunlight from a hole in the roof, and I can see the Doberman’s shiny brown-and-black coat. The Doberman doesn’t give a shit about the road or any other man-made barrier. He runs silently, as single-minded as a guided missile.

  I cock my arm back to throw the rock, but then the greyhound rounds the far corner of the barn.

  I barely have time to think, Oh shit, before a deep, mournful bay announces the arrival of the mastiff, lumbering from the tree line behind the farm. The other dogs circle back to join him, nipping at one another like happily deranged maniacs, before wheeling and charging toward me in formation, bone and meat united in grisly purpose. They howl in unison, and their meaning is clear: WE WEAR NO COLLARS. WE HEED NO COMMANDS.

  “Dammit.” I drop the rocks and pull the egg sandwich out of my pocket. “I was hungry.”

  I’m dead meat. I’m dog food. I’m John McClane perched on the edge of Nakatomi Plaza’s roof. I have only one move left.

  I lob the egg sandwich like a hand grenade, and it lands in the middle of the road. The mastiff scoops up the sandwich without slowing down and shakes it in his jaws like he’s trying to break its neck. He paws at it in the road, trying to get the tinfoil off.

  The other two dogs try to snatch a bite, but the mastiff growls, picks the sandwich up in his mouth, and runs back to the trees. The Doberman and greyhound chase him, nipping at his ankles as they disappear in the shadowy woods.

  The street in front of me is suddenly empty. The only evidence that the dogs were there at all are the distant growls I can barely hear over the pounding of my heart.

  Then I hear another sound, a low mechanical hum.

  The grind of gears downshifting.

  I run toward the stop sign and arrive, panting, just as the school bus pulls up. The door swings open, and Granny gives me a funny look as I climb the stairs. Our bus driver is probably ninety years old, but she looks older. She’s little and wrinkly like an ancient elf. She hates that we call her “Granny,” but I don’t even know her real name.

  She blinks at me behind the lenses of her sunglasses, the huge square ones that only old people and futuristic bounty hunters wear. I must look shaken up, because she asks me in her high, creaky voice, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I lie. “I’m fine.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  MY STOP IS EARLY IN the bus’s route, so only a few kids are sitting on the bus as I head toward my seat in the back. All of them have headphones on, either sleeping or staring out the windows like zombies.

  I still don’t know most of the kids on the bus too well, but I at least know their names: Jeff Albanese; Katie and her sister Avalon; this weird kid who looks like his mom uses a soup bowl to cut his hair. I pass Liam “Spags” Spagnaletti, sleeping with his head tilted back against the green plastic seat, mouth wide open, just begging for some bully to drop a bug in his mouth.

  I walk all the way back to my usual spot, last seat on the left, across from Trey. He too is sleeping, folded up in his seat like a beach chair, legs wedged against the back of the seat in front of him, knit hat pulled over his eyes.

  The bus pulls away from my stop, gears grinding noisily, and bumps down the road into the woods. I look out the back window and watch the horse dogs’ farm disappear around the bend.

  On my school bus, as on most, the cooler you are, the farther back you’re allowed to sit. The two last seats are the most coveted, but the fact that I sit back here has little to do with how cool I am and a lot to do with how early I get on the bus and how few cool people I have for competition. PJ is on the bus too. He sits with me, but his stop is the last one before school, so we don’t sit together for long.

  The only time I can’t sit in the back is if Mark Kruger is on the bus. Mark is not only cool, but he’s also tough, and he’s a senior, a triple whammy that guarantees him platinum-plus back-seat status.

  Mark is real country: He eats homemade deer jerky from ziplock bags and dips chewing tobacco on the sly during class, spitting the juice into a disgustingly full Yoo-hoo bottle when the teacher isn’t looking. He’s on the football team, but he doesn’t dress like a jock. He wears work boots, flannels, Carhartt jackets. A scar runs from his left ear up to the part in his hair, on which no hair will grow. PJ and I have had a few discussions about how he got that scar, and our most likely guess is that he got it while wrestling a twelve-point buck to the ground with his bare hands.

  Mark is rarely on the bus. He usually drives to school, something only a couple of the older students do. At the end of the school day I often see him climbing into his rusted pickup outside the vo-tech, a separate building behind the high school where some of the seniors like Mark learn how to do plumbing or electricity or other trades like that.

  Mark also isn’t at school a lot of mornings because this is the fall, and fall is deer-hunting season, so he comes into school late.

  Yes, that’s right. Here in Whatthefuckburgh, deer hunting is a valid reason to skip school.

  Teacher: You have to come into school today to learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic. Also to learn history and chemistry.

  Student: I can’t. I have to kill an animal instead.

  Teacher: Oh, okay. That’s more important. You can learn about the forces that govern society and order our universe some other time. Someone needs to teach those deer a lesson too.

  I don’t have a moral objection to deer hunting. I eat animals every day. I don’t think that hunting is immoral. I just think it’s rude.

  The bus winds its way through the pleasant countryside of Shuckburgh, springy suspension bouncing over the roads’ many bumps and holes. The back of the bus may or may not be the coolest, but it is undoubtedly the bumpiest.

  This morning it also seems to be the smelliest. I notice a foul stench and assume it must be manure still stuck somewhere on me from last night, but this stench is different from manure. Manure is robust and lively. This smells more like . . . decay.

  Trey is still sleeping, so I reach across the aisle and nudge him. “What’s that smell?”

  He doesn’t pull his hat up above his eyes, but he points down to his book bag. “It’s my bag.”

  Like a fool, I lean down and take a big whiff of his bag. The stench is so bad I rear back immediately. “Ugh! Is it full of shit?”

  Trey smiles and pulls his hat off, revealing a disturbing twinkle in his eye.

  “Dude, you won’t believe what’s in my bag. Wait till we get to school. I’ll show you then.”

  Well, it’s nice to know I have that to look forward to.

  Trey doesn’t care that I’m revolted. He doesn’t care about anything. He treats teachers and adults as if they’re kids like him. This makes him come across as cool and confident, but honestly, I think there’s something wrong with his brain. He always has this crazed look in his eyes, and I’m pretty sure he cuts his own hair, because one day half his head will be shaved, and the next day it will be dyed green, and then a week later it’s all gone. His two front teeth are huge, like a rabbit’s, and there’s a gap between them wide enough to slip a penny through, which he does sometimes as part of his “vending machine impersonation.”

  I lean back in my seat and look out the window. Trees blazing with yellow and red leaves slide past. Even though I miss Bethlehem, I admit that the countryside has its charms. The ride is relaxing, a nice way to ramp up to the day and get ready for class.

  I’m excited for
English today because we’re going to be discussing Lord of the Flies. I used to be a voracious reader; I could burn through a book in a day, no problem, if it was a good one. I especially liked adventure—the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Jack London, wolves and spaceships and swords and shit.

  But I haven’t read many books since we moved. I don’t know why. I guess I’ve just been busy with the move and all and getting used to the new house. How empty it feels. I suppose I devote most of my reading time to watching Die Hard now, ha. I only read Lord of the Flies because our teacher Ms. Hunt forced us to, but boy am I glad I did, because it was great (even though it did cut into my Die Hard time). It’s about an airplane full of elementary school kids that crashes on a deserted island. Some of the boys try to establish a civilized society, but of course that doesn’t last long. After a couple of days they’re bashing each other’s brains in with rocks and offering bloody sacrifices to a pig head on a stick: the Lord of the Flies. Ms. Hunt sort of hinted we might have a pop quiz about it today. No problem. I’m ready.

  Across the aisle, Trey’s asleep again, his head bobbing up and down in rhythm with the bus’s gentle motion. We bump over a one-lane bridge that is only about a foot wider than the bus and have to slow to a crawl before dipping down the other side and speeding up again. The farms give way to the natural tangle of woods. I like the sound of the engine, deep and calm. I put my headphones on but don’t play any music.

  The bus starts to fill up. Nobody I know too well.

  We pass the housing development on Delps Road and Vern floats onto the bus, radiant as a sunbeam. She’s a walking Instagram filter, perpetually backlit, light streaming through her long blond hair. There must be a football game tonight, because she’s wearing her cheerleading uniform—a short black dress with a bold orange S on the chest—under a cropped white jean jacket. She struts down the aisle and sits a few seats in front of me. She glances at me for a second as she sits down, and my heart hiccups.

  The bus breaks from the dark woods into bright morning sunlight. My head is leaned back on the seat, bumping pleasantly, and I’m almost asleep when the view out the window looks familiar to me. A big hill slopes up and beyond sight above the top of the window, and I notice it’s filled with unharvested cornstalks.

  Hey, that’s the hill we walked down last night!

  I stand halfway up to look over the seat backs and out the windows on the opposite side of the bus. The bus slows down, and I realize why the farm looked familiar to me last night: The bus drives past it every day. This is Mark Kruger’s stop.

  I’m still tired, so the pieces fall together very slowly in my mind. I can almost hear them clicking as they slide into place like falling Tetris shapes.

  This is Mark Kruger’s stop.

  The bus grinds to a stop, and Granny swings the big silver handle that opens the bus doors.

  That means that the farm we painted last night is probably Mark’s.

  Mark climbs the bus steps, the top of his camouflage baseball cap slowly rising into view.

  That means I probably punched Mark Kruger in the face last night.

  Mark walks down the aisle toward me, his left eye black-and-blue and swollen shut.

  Correction: I definitely punched Mark in the face last night.

  I grab my bag and scramble out of my seat.

  Mark looks out of place on the school bus, his hands stuffed into a beat-up Carhartt jacket, trudging down the aisle like he’s headed to pull a double shift at the steel mill. Hat pulled low over his serious face, he glances up at me indifferently before looking back down at his boots.

  But a second later he looks up at me again, suddenly interested, and his one eye that isn’t already swollen shut narrows shrewdly. I quickly stuff my right hand in my pants pocket to hide my scraped knuckles. If I didn’t look guilty before, I sure do now.

  I’m still standing in the aisle, so I quickly sit down in the nearest seat, realizing only once I sit down that I’m sitting right next to Vern. I jostle her, and she scoots away from me, toward the window.

  “Hey!” she says. “What are you doing?”

  I don’t want Mark to notice me any more than he already has. I try desperately to act casual.

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just, uh . . . Big game tonight, huh?”

  This question catches her off guard. “Uh, yeah?” She smells fantastic, like honey and flowers. “Yeah, we’re playing Lehigh. The Fightin’ Game Hens.”

  “Ooh. The Game Hens,” I say, searching my suddenly blank mind for football terms. “Killer . . . defense.”

  “Yeah,” she says, starting to get a little annoyed. “Uh-huh.”

  Mark stares at me as he walks past, and I expect him to grab me by the neck and shout, “IT’S YOU!” But a moment later he’s already passed by and taken my old seat in the back across from Trey.

  “Well,” I say, sliding out of Vern’s seat. “Good luck at the game!”

  “Thanks,” she says, relieved that I’m leaving.

  The bus starts rolling again as I hurry toward the front. Granny sees me running up the aisle in her rearview mirror and yells, “No standing while the bus is in motion!”

  “Sorry!” I sit in the seat directly behind her. If I could sit on her lap, I would. I very badly want to turn around to see if Mark is looking at me, but I know that if he is and he sees me looking over my shoulder, it’ll make me appear even more suspicious.

  I wish I still had my egg sandwich. This is DEFCON 3 for sure.

  The kid with the soup-bowl haircut is sitting in the seat across the aisle, and he stares at me blankly.

  “What are you staring at?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t stop staring at me either, so I scooch down in my seat and scowl out the window.

  It’s clear that some great force is at work here, cosmic powers aligning for the sole purpose of destroying me. First the bull was sent, then the dogs, and now Mark. Even if I make it off the bus alive, I’m sure a great leviathan, like the whale that swallowed Jonah, will gobble me up during swim class.

  Despite my hopes that a freight train will broadside the bus and end the terrible suspense, I’m still alive a couple of stops later when PJ gets on the bus. He’s surprised to see me sitting up front. For my part, I’m surprised to see he’s wearing a tuxedo. He’s also holding a big, evil-looking warthog head under his arm, but that’s normal, part of his Iron Pigs mascot costume.

  “Why are you sitting up front?”

  “Why are you wearing a tuxedo?”

  The bus pulls away. “No standing while the bus is in motion!” Granny yells at PJ.

  PJ sits down next to me, the warthog head on his lap.

  Our football team is called the Iron Pigs because Shuckburgh used to produce a lot of pig iron. It doesn’t anymore. All the steel plants closed down a long time ago, putting the whole town out of work. I’m pretty sure most of those people never got another job, or at least not a good one, because the bus passes a lot of tumbled-down trailers and rusted pickup trucks on the way to school.

  But, silver lining, at least the steel industry’s glorious legacy lives on in our football team’s stupid name.

  At the beginning of the school year PJ wanted to join the football team so he could be closer to Vern, but he didn’t want to have to tackle anyone, so instead he decided to be the team mascot, as in, the guy who runs around in a costume at the games. That wasn’t a position that was currently filled, or that even existed, but PJ thought it would be fun and nobody had the heart to tell him no.

  He’s gotten really into being the mascot, even writing his own chants for the crowd to recite at games.

  PJ tried to buy a giant pig head at the costume store, but he couldn’t find one that he liked, so instead he made one himself out of papier-mâché. The result was a terrifying creature, more boar than pig, more monster than boar. When he proudly showed Frankenswine to Jake and me, we recoiled in horror.

  Massive tusks framed its mouth. Brow
n pipe cleaners bristled from its sloping brow. PJ was thrilled with the result, so I tried to break it to him easy. “That pig is . . . awfully hairy,” I said.

  “That’s not a pig,” Jake said, not trying to break it to him easy. “It’s a warthog. Look at the fucking tusks, you idiot.”

  Since then PJ has been trying to get the football team to change their name to the Iron Hogs. He slips the modified name into the cheers he leads at the football games, but so far it hasn’t caught on.

  Never quick on the uptake, PJ doesn’t notice that I’m terrified about Mark. He points to the orange flower in his lapel and smiles. “A geranium! See? Just like in Vern’s garden.” He opens his suit jacket so I can admire the lining. “Do you like it? I’m going to ask Vern to the Fall Fling. I finally figured, what the heck. I’ll just—”

  I cut him off. “That’s fantastic. Listen: The farm we painted last night?”

  “Oh yeah, that was great! I’ve been thinking of ways we could make the water balloons work and thought that maybe if we warmed the water up, it wouldn’t shock the cows quite so—”

  “That was Mark Kruger’s farm.”

  PJ stops, puzzled. “Really? How do you know that?”

  “Because the bus picked him up right there, and he has a black eye, and he gave me a suspicious look when he saw me.”

  “Ah,” PJ says, “I see.” He turns and looks toward the rear of the bus, and I quickly slouch down in my seat to hide my head.

  “Do you see him back there?” I whisper.

  “Yep.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Staring at me.”

  “Crap.” I rub my scraped knuckles, incriminating evidence. “What if Mark figures it out? Oh my God, he’ll kill us. Or what if he tells on us? What if we get in trouble?”

  PJ considers this. “He doesn’t seem like the type of guy who’d tell on us.”