Descent

4 - "What's up, Tubs?"

The bus collected more kids in multi-coloured jackets and cartoon character backpacks, kids of all ages clomping up the mottled grey steps of the bus and plonking themselves down onto the L-shaped seats. Tommy recognized some of them from his class but for the most part they were all strangers: just because he knew their names didn't mean he knew anything else about them. No one had been as forthcoming in making nice as Arjun. He wondered now if he could add Leslie to that list and resisted the urge to take a peek over the top of his seat back again.

The farm fields and mechanically planted forests of Rosshaven's environs streamed by the window outside. The trees were thirty foot tall pines planted in rows exactly ten feet apart and grew no branches in the lower areas. As the bus sped by on the gravel highway, the rows of trees passed in waves, allowing Tommy fleeting views down the secret paths of the woods. The density of the trees made seeing what was at the end of those paths impossible, but Tommy imagined he could catch glimpses of secret military bases or boiling chemical pools.

The forest ended suddenly, giving way to an untended field that was split by a thin creek. The double bumps of train tracks heralded the arrival of the bus into the town of Rosshaven proper, and Tommy let his eyes slide across the small single-story buildings of the town: the bank, the barber, the ice cream place. He nudged Arjun, who had maneuvered Private Pizza and the mutant punk fashion icon warthog into a truly acrobatic act, and announced: "It's coming."

Arjun dropped the figures onto the seat and pressed both hands against the glass. Tommy planted himself as the bus swung around the corner, finally revealing the store name the two boys had been waiting for.

Blazing in white letters over a red banner, above store windows festooned with ads for ice cream and lottery jackpot numbers, was the store name: Jug City.

Arjun and Tommy howled with laughter, as they did every day, and this laughter carried them all the way up the northbound street of Rosshaven towards the school.

Richard Bedford Bennett Elementary/Junior/High School was an absolute monster of a public works building and was the single largest structure in Rosshaven. It absolutely dominated the horizon north of the town and was flanked on either side by that same thin creek, which forked around the school almost like the water itself wouldn't dare touch the monolithic structure.

Thanks to his dad, Tommy could identify the building as a classic example of brutalist architecture. The building was a solid slab of brownish grey concrete that loomed over the town, with thin slits for windows that let in very little light. The building was topped by puce-coloured sheet metal structures and gunmetal grey air vents that spewed white fog into the cool October morning.

The size of the building was hard to get hold of as you approached it. It seemed to stay the same size, neither getting larger as you drove closer or smaller as you drove further away. The building didn't seem to be that big until you tried to find the door, then, your eyes searching across the bottom edge of this absolute cube you realize: those tufts of grass at the bottom? Those are bushes. Those sticks stuck into the ground? Trees. That small hole some mouse has burrowed into the wall? That's the main door, through which hundreds of students stream every day.

Once that is seen, the true size of the building snaps into focus and it looms over you, blocking out the sun as your car approaches, chilling the air and darkening the sky. Once you cross that bridge, that tiny stone bridge that hasn't ever been upgraded, the school starts to suck you in. There's nothing else around it--no trees other than those carefully manicured maples along the road, no portables, no garage, no gym: everything lives inside the school itself like a pregnant fish bloated and floating at the edge of Rosshaven.

Anyway, that's where Tommy Carleson went to school.

--

Tommy and Arjun joined the flood of kids spilling out of the schoolbus onto the front lawn, a hundred-something little boots tearing their way towards the playground. The bus always arrived a little before the first bell, so the bus kids would try to squeeze ten minutes of fun out of the morning before they got sucked up into the nightmare of English and Math. Arjun smacked the back of Tommy's head and started to sprint for the play structure, his bag swaying wildly side to side and he tried to pull it onto his back, laughing the whole time. Tommy started after him, but slowed when he saw who was waiting for him by the fence.