This is on a bus back from camp. Im thirteen and so are you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other dudes I hadnt met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It turned out it would be me and just one girl. Thats you. And were still at camp as long as were on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us. Were still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still smell like pineneedles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you, but I dont know if you do or dont more-than-like me. Youve never said, so I havent been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so on. A girl whos smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh, is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who reads books that no ones assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet Back in the real world we dont go to the same school, and unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we wont go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something. The suns gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. Were talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we know. And then Im like, Can I tell you something? And all of a sudden Im telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And theres no expression on it. And I think just after a point Im just talking to lengthen the time where we live in a world where you havent said yes or no yet. And regrettably I end up using the word destiny. I dont remember in what context. Doesnt really matter. Before long Im out of stuff to say and you smile and say, okay. I dont know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but theres nowhere to go because were are on a bus. So I pretend like Im asleep and before long, I really am I wake up, the bus isnt moving anymore. The domed lights that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and youre not there. Then again a lot of kids arent in their seats anymore. Were parked at the pick-up point, which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You might be in your dads car by now, your bags and things piled high in the trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our way off. Its Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light, so I cant really see her face, but I can see her smile. And she says one word: destiny. Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didnt know you were friends with them I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our house and camp is over. So is summer, even though theres two weeks until school starts. This isnt a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad, this is a story about how I learned something and Im not saying this thing is true or not, Im just saying its what I learned. I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody cant turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isnt a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But its a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But thats not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still havent.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:20:53 +0000