I blew off my mom’s request that I wear a coat, so I stood on the curb in the cold waiting for the bus wrapped only in my black hoodie. I hated taking the bus, and couldn’t wait until I turned sixteen when ex-Dad promised he’d buy me a car to drive to school. School’s too far to walk to, and I’d rather die than have Mom haul my sorry ass, so I waited, alone. Sure, there was Whitney a few feet away, but she might as well be a thousand miles away. She was bundled up in a long brown winter coat with a bright yellow scarf and matching gloves and hat. When Whitney spoke in math class yesterday, I tried not to look at her. I tried to catch myself, thinking, Stop staring, but wanting Whitney—or most other girls—was like a wildfire, always changing directions.
Whitney stood with fellow preps Erin, Meghan, and Shelby, each one more beautiful and unreachable than the next. They laughed, baring their perfect white teeth to the gray fall sky. Their laughter was a cold hard rain falling down on me: it chilled, reduced, and angered me. I wanted to say to Whitney, I’m not really a bad guy. I’m not smart enough or rich enough or good-looking enough for you, but I’d love only you. I even took a step toward Whitney, but fear pushed me back. There’s a brick wall of frustration firmly placed between the Whitney World and me. I felt like a doomed character in a Poe story: walled in, brick by brick; buried alive.
I never wanted to be a prep like Whitney or Kyle, nor a jock like Rusty Larson or Bob Fredericks, who strolled in all their three-letter cockiness toward the bus stop. Both of them jock jerk juniors who shouted at each other like they were on the football field. They yelled about nothing, other than to prove that this flat land was their mountain.
I clicked on my knockoff iPod (my jPod I call it) and felt the volume vibrating in my ears as I stared with silent rage at my fellow Swartz Creek Dragons. Music saved me and got me through that hate. Morning, noon, night, or whenever the Whitney World tempted me with unattainable beauty and the Rusty Bobs of school showed their colors of confidence, old Zeppelin, in particular “Stairway to Heaven,” let me feel close to human. All the rage in my head and heart vanished into the volume of Plant’s singing, Page’s guitar, and the Jones-Bonham rhythm attack. I didn’t need new music; the best music had already been recorded.
I blew on my ungloved hands; a cloud of white enveloped my paws. The cold didn’t bother me as much as the wind crashing into my face, making my too-pink cheeks turn almost bloodred. When I stared at Whitney’s bright, shiny smile and stylish new shoes, I felt more than ever like I no longer belonged in this neighborhood. In the divorce, Mom got the house, but little else. Ex-Dad left us surrounded by a nice life we see and seek every day, but can never again own.
I gazed down at my watch; some fancy model ex-Dad got me for my fifteenth birthday a few months ago. It was time to make a daily bet with myself on what would arrive first: the yellow school bus or the long-brown-haired mountain known as Brody Warren. I saw the bus up the street just as Brody rounded the corner, running on all pistons. I wondered if he was late because he wanted to be noticed making an entrance or to avoid ex-teammates Rusty and Bob.
“Dude,” I said as I clicked off the music and came alive for the first time that morning.
Brody slapped me on the back. Ash from his cigarette sparked against the gray morning sky. “How you feelin’, Mr. 151?” Brody asked as he offered me the smoke.
“Okay.” I waved off the cigarette, but Brody pushed it toward me.
“Better than ATM Aaron I bet,” Brody said with a grin. Like me, Brody was without a coat, any sense of fashion, or access to a hairbrush. His long brown mane surrounded his face, which was—unlike mine—sprouting a short jungle of whiskers.
“No doubt,” I told Brody, but my thoughts were with Aaron. We called him “ATM” because he’d loaned us money for the past three years. I wondered if last night we should’ve said, Aaron, what’s with you? Why are you drinking so much? Loan us some rum instead of cash.
“Take it, dude,” Brody insisted, and I took the cig. The smoke tickled my mouth going in and burned my nose coming out. I finished it, then threw the butt to the pavement. Brody’s heavy boot ground it into the gray asphalt like an ant that pissed him off. “You were so wasted last night,” he said in his volume-turned-up-to-ten voice.
“I guess,” I replied, almost in a whisper. The Whitneys of the world already thought I was a loser. They don’t need to know they’re right. Everybody already knew about Brody.
“Wasted!” Brody yelled to Rusty and Bob, who gathered up their backpacks adorned with the bloodred Swartz Creek Dragon logo. They were like twins and part of a family of forty brothers, all of them alike in their game day pressed khaki pants and Red Dragon jerseys. They sported football-season short hair and a complex look of pity, sadness, and disgust as they glared over at the fallen angel Brody. Their lips never moved but their eyes taunted, then rejected, Brody’s existence. “Assholes,” Brody mumbled as we fell last in line for the bus.
Nobody spoke when the bus pulled to the curb, a plume of exhaust briefly covering us all. Like lost explorers walking out of a jungle mist, we boarded the bus and took our unassigned but very much carved-in-stone seats. The Whitney World rode in the middle, while the Dragon True Believers sat up front like gatekeepers. We sank like stones in the back of the bus.
“Wasted,” Brody hissed at Rusty and Bob when he passed by them. Big though they were, the jocks balled their fists but never moved their muscles against Brody, their ex-teammate. Brody was a varsity starter as a freshman; an all-state sure bet at training camp two months ago; a kicked-off-the-team loser who stood before them that football-Friday morning.
“Dude, let’s go.” But as soon as the words left my lips, I knew instead I should’ve said, Dude, let it go. I knew that was advice I should’ve given myself about so many things.
“Whatever, Pool Boy,” Brody cracked, but I didn’t laugh. I like Brody’s 151 nickname for me better. This was a put-down name: I’m a terrible pool player, while Brody ruled the green felt. The pre-rum-filled run of the table the night before at Space Invaders arcade was the usual with Brody winning six games to my zero. Aaron won against me, lost against Brody, but didn’t care either way. Brody’s more athletic than me, while Aaron’s hand-eye coordination is honed with hours of Xbox expertise. I suffered the humiliation as the price of friendship admission.
Our seat in the back was near the stoners like Dave Wilson. Dave’s sleeping face was pressed against the window. If it were ten degrees colder, his drool would’ve frozen on his chin.
“What time?” Brody asked as he pushed himself into the seat and tossed his backpack onto my lap. It didn’t hurt since the nearly empty pack weighed so little. I took a few college prep courses, but Brody’s college future vanished with his football banishment. He’d given up even caring about school.
I was puzzled by the question: what time for what? What time was it? What time would we get together later that night? I was still thinking when Brody grabbed my wrist.
“Nice watch.” Brody grunted, then kicked the seat in front of him. “Your dad, right?”
“Yeah, ex-Dad,” I corrected him as his eyes closed. I should’ve said, Brody, your dad left your life because of an accident on the road. My dad’s exit was no accident; it was because of the road I decided to take.
While Brody slept, I put the headphones back on, then clicked on the jPod to drown out the noise surrounding me. I was lost in crashing music and imaginary conversations as the bus made one of its last stops. The stop was in front of the WindGate trailer park, where Roxanne Gray slithered on board. She wore a denim jacket with a white skull patch, a tan wool cap that pushed her brown hair out like the top of a chocolate muffin, and her usual crooked half smile. I ignored her that morning like I had done most every day for years; like I wished I’d done weeks ago at Rex’s end-of-summer, life-ruining party. I wanted to ask her, Roxanne, why did you choose me to fool around with? Why didn’t you pick somebody else? Instead, I listened to Zeppelin and stayed mute until the jolt of the bus stopping woke up Brody.
He coughed loudly, then looked outside as the bus lurched down Morrish Road toward school. “I wonder if the Scarecrow is out there yet?” Brody asked, then closed his eyes again.
“Too early, probably sleeping it off,” I replied. “Like I wish I could’ve done.”
“Well, you ain’t no Scarecrow,” Brody said, then bounced his beefy paw off my knee.
“Guess not,” I offered, then looked near the entrance ramp to the expressway for the Scarecrow, a homeless guy with long, dirty blond hair, ratty clothes, and a straw hat, which was why Brody called him the Scarecrow. He held up a sign that said HUNGRY VET, PLEASE HELP, GOD BLESS, but few cars stopped. One day ex-Dad stopped, rolled down the window, and yelled at him, “Get a job,” then drove away. I heard his reply. If ex-Dad did, he never reacted when the Scarecrow yelled back, “Where?” I’d seen the Scarecrow by the road other times and by the Big K Market.
The last part of the ride was as silent for Brody and me as it was noisy for the rest of the bus. The noise swirled with the force of a hurricane, but I acted calm as the bus pulled into the school’s circular driveway. Whitney World and the Dragon True Believers seemingly sprang from the bus and rushed toward school, while the stoners, the waking wild man Brody, and I stumbled like zombies from the grave toward the building’s front door.
Do you know what it’s like to be paralyzed?
That’s how I felt: I couldn’t make my mouth open or my tongue move. All I could do was listen and watch. Listen to the sick sound of a brick smashing against a human skull, then watch the blood splatter like red rain. From across the few feet that separated me from the very real scene before me, I could hear the smack of brick against bone. It sounded like someone dropping a heavy book off a desk. My eyes were wide, gazing at his eyes, open to the world and closed off to life. My nose cut through the rancid smells already in the air and the rancid mess he made in his pants as life left him. Another hard smash of the brick right above those lifeless eyes left me with the image I’ll never erase: his left eye swollen shut, the right one wide open, staring, it seemed, right into my soul. He was a nonliving answer to a question I had never asked: what did a dead body look like?