Trouble was, I hadn’t really thought about what I would do once I was on that bus.
Everything inside the bus blurred together. Kids in blacks and browns blended into their seats, making it hard for me to tell which seats were taken and which were up for grabs. It wasn’t the first time I’d wished camo wasn’t such a popular fashion choice in Mursey. I blinked, hoping the sunlight coming through the windows would help once my eyes adjusted, but that was taking too long for the driver.
“Sit down,” he said. “We gotta go.”
“Okay. Sorry.” I started to move toward a seat near the front that, as far as I could tell, was empty.
“In the back,” he snapped. “Front seats are for the middle schoolers. High school students sit in the back.”
I gulped and started walking, my cane snagging on the edges of people’s shoes and backpacks. I hoped the back seats would look clearer once I got closer, but they were still blurry. The only difference was, I could hear people whispering—probably about me—in some of them.
The bus driver honked the horn and hollered back at me, “Sit down.”
Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should’ve just called Daddy and made him leave the store for a minute. Or Mama could’ve gotten one of her friends from church to come. Or I could’ve begged Christy to put off losing her virginity just half an hour longer so she could drive me home.
“Agnes.”
I almost didn’t hear her over my own panic. Her voice wasn’t loud at all. But when I looked to my right, the sun was pushing through the dirty glass just enough to glint off a mane of strawberry-blond hair.
“Sit down,” Bo said.
“I can’t see where—”
“Sit here,” she said.
“Oh.” It wouldn’t have been enough to say I was surprised. Sure, she’d helped me out in the woods, but the bus was school grounds, and Bo Dickinson and I weren’t friends. If anything, I’d have thought she hated me the way she hated Christy.
But the bus driver slammed his hand on the horn again, and I was left without a choice, so I sat.
“What’re you doing on here?” Bo asked. “Don’t your mama usually pick you up?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’ve seen y’all in the parking lot a thousand times. Not all of us are blind, you know.” She nudged my arm in a way that was almost playful. After a second, though, she said, “Sorry. Was that a bad thing to say? I ain’t always sure what’s … what do you call it? Politically correct?”
“You’re fine,” I said. “Honestly? Sometimes I forget other people can see stuff like that.”
“Makes sense. You’ve never known no different, so …”
The bus started moving, and for a few minutes, neither of us said anything. I thought the whole bus ride might be that way, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved about that or not. But before I could figure it out, Bo started talking again.
“You didn’t answer,” she said. “What’re you doing on here?”
“Oh. Um … my parents were both busy this afternoon. So I’m taking this to the Baptist church and walking home.” For a second, I considered telling her I’d been told not to, like Bo might be impressed by my rule-breaking streak. First the woods, now this.
But Bo was the kind of girl who cussed in front of teachers and stole her mama’s whiskey to bring to parties and went down on other girls’ boyfriends. None of my little rebellions would be at all impressive to her. If anything, she’d probably just laugh at me.
I wasn’t sure why I cared about impressing Bo Dickinson, but the idea of her thinking I was some kind of loser really bothered me.
“Hey,” she said. “You read that poem for English yet?”
“The Dylan Thomas one? Yeah. I don’t get it, though. I mean, it sounds pretty. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ It’s nice, but it doesn’t make sense to me. What is the good night?”
“Death,” Bo said. She didn’t say it the way Christy would, like I was some kind of idiot. She just put it there, an answer.
“Death,” I repeated.
“He’s telling somebody to keep fighting and not just die,” she explained. “I read somewhere that he wrote it about his dad.”
“Wow. You’re really good at poetry stuff.”
“Nah. I just … I like it. Poetry, I mean. I wish I could write it, but I’m no good.”
“Write it?” I laughed. “I’d be glad if I could just understand it. I like fiction. I like a story. But I have to read every poem a thousand times, and I still never really get it.”
“It’s not a real useful skill,” she said. “Not like math. Now, that goes over my head. Junior year, and I’m taking algebra for the third time. Who cares if you know what the hell Robert Frost is talking about after high school? Math actually matters.”