The School Bus

Sacheen I think her name was. I remember faces much better than names.  Her high, but soft cheekbones, her dimples and her button nose, which seemed to always long to point skywards, at odds with her eyes which tended down. I was twelve, she sixteen or seventeen. Blonde hair, dirty dishwater blonde, the same as under her fingernails. I remember them because it was weird for a girl back then. Boys had dirt, but girls were always immaculately clean, sort of. We got on the same bus. She sat next to me or behind me. She was one of the people who always talked to me. She even defended me when other kids on the bus picked on me. She said I was cool and that you shouldn't pick on me. She lied though. I was a nerd back to then.

I loved her for that. In fact I just loved her. Those thin, tight tight black tights with the run in the side. Maybe her family was too poor to replace them, but now that I think about it, maybe she just didn't care. She was one of those people that seemed to be always off balance and bumping into you when she talked. Either out of excitement or clumsiness, or because she needed it. Human touch. This habit is absolutely miserable in a guy, like those ones that are awful at any sport they try. But in a girl, it could be a little endearing. Always flopping into something and smiling, half apologizing, half meaning to do it. Like a ragdoll.

She was a dirty girl, real potty mouth and she talked about drugs and sex. Her breath always smelled like cigarettes. I loved that smell. The way it curled off her lips. Pouty, ruby red lips stained with tar. I think she smoked every morning waiting for the school bus.

"You shouldn't smoke," I told her once, "it's bad for your health." She only laughed at me. But in that cute, playful way. What it must have been like being lectured by an upstanding, moral twelve-year-old.

She asked me once if I masturbated. I said I had heard about it (on tv or something) but I hadn't tried it, as yet. Nonetheless it was all too exciting to be asked about such a thing by a girl like that. Afterwards I really wanted to try it.

I wanted to try everything she tried. It sounds corny, but it was really like that.

"I try every drug, but only once. I never let them addict me." she told me one time, which was astonishing because it contradicted everything I knew about drugs, which was nothing ― only what the textbooks had said, and that friendly police officer who visited the school from time to time and handed out frisbees and teddy bears. Other cheesy stuff like that, telling you how bad drugs were. It even gave you simple clear instructions right there on the t-shirt, in big red letters. 'Just Say No.'

Sacheen was much cooler though. Later, when I was addicted to heroin, I realized part of what she had said was a lie.

Her fingernail polish was often chipped and rubbed off on stuff. One time a little bit rubbed off on my hand. I left it there without washing it. It was Sacheen's.

Sometimes she wouldn't get on the bus. I guess her boyfriend or her dad or something was giving her a ride to school. She never talked about her parents and I never saw them. Her boyfriends were cool though, some of them. People said some of them were gangsters or dealers but they were friendly, to me anyways. Friendlier than some of the normal kids who picked on me. Maybe Sacheen had told them to be nice to me since I was cool; a cool kid. They weren't always nice to her, though. Sometimes I saw them push her or pinch her hard. I didn't like it. But I didn't dare to say anything. They had muscled arms, much bigger than my twelve year old twigs. And they had that wild, roaming look in their eyes, like coyotes. And she probably would have just laughed again and not really wanted me to.

But they took care of her. They used to wrap her in their own jackets. Those expensive sports team jackets that all the kids wanted. Solid leather or nylon with the waterproof Gore-tex and all the fancy pockets. Two hundred, three hundred, six hundred dollars. More than most kids parents would spend anyways. I guess they must have had other sources of income; like part-time jobs. Maybe that's why they were never in class. One of them was the son of the town judge.