Bus

I have a dentist appointment on Halloween. Nothing’s wrong with my teeth so they send me off scot-free with a goodie bag of toothpaste, floss, and an extra toothpaste tube, despite the fact that I’m thirty-two years old and that stuff is normally only given out to little kids. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? A Halloween dentist appointment. People are supposed to rot their teeth out on Halloween with sugar balls and then come crying to the dentist afterwards. Along with the fact that it falls on a Monday this year, I’m not really in the spirit.

Well, I never really am in the spirit for a lot of things, Halloween included. That’s why I close my door that night and stay in, going out of my way to avoid stupid people in stupid costumes going around and begging for free candy that I obviously don’t have, the Scrooge I am. It’s a pretty good night. I take a shower and change into my favorite pajamas – my Led Zepplin long johns and a dirt-old Minnesota Vikings t-shirt – and before you can say “loser,” I’m chilling on the couch watching reruns of a show about nothing.

It’s almost pleasant, really. Mondays are rough for anybody, but I’ve always had a special hatred for them, almost more hatred than the loathing I hold for my job itself. It’s just that terrible reminder that my weekend’s over and I can’t continue doing nothing anymore; I have to be a productive member of society.

But it’s eight at night and my apartment complex never gets too many trick-or-treaters anyway, and so I feel some kind of…comfort? I don’t know, it’s weird. I never get to feel completely at-ease, and even though I still have that nagging dislike of humankind nagging in my brain as usual, somehow it doesn’t feel so bad at the moment.

Of course, that’s until somebody knocks on my door.

Out of instinct, knowing it’s Halloween, I shout, “GO AWAY.”

A few seconds of silence pass. Then the asshole knocks again.

That’s when I get up and put on my grumpy face to hopefully scare away the inevitably stupid kid who dares to knock on a completely random apartment door, and as I whip open the door to confront it (yes, I said it – children are not human), I’m faced with not one, but two kids.

Hell, I recognize them. Hell, they ride my bus.

It’s James and Hector, James wearing an orange tux while Hector is clad in the same suit in powder blue, probably the least annoying couple of boys in their neighborhood, and when they realize who I am, they just look at each other silently and then their eyes are back on me. We all have pretty much the same facial expression at the moment – one of pure shock.

“Mr….Mr. Doug?” James sputters. “You live here?”

When he speaks, it’s a reflex of mine to put my mean face back on. “You don’t tell a soul.”

They look at each other again, and while James’s eyeballs are about ready to pop out of his head, Hector has a half-smile plastered to his face and just shrugs.

“I won’t tell anybody,” James says, taking off the ridiculous top hat paired with his dumb outfit.

“Damn straight, you better not,” I grunt. “Why the hell are you here, anyways?”

“We’re hungry,” Hector says plain as day. It’s the most I’ve heard him talk all day, the bus rides included. “More candy.”

James doesn’t even try to cover up his buddy’s honesty and just nods and shrugs in agreement. “We take it you don’t have any candy?” he bargains, smirking sheepishly. Well, at least he’s not being completely rude.

“I haven’t participated in anything Halloween-related since I was twelve.” Seriously, just because I’m fat doesn’t mean I have candy on me. “So no.”

“Are you sure?” Hector persists, adjusting his stupid hat. At the moment, they really could pass as Dumb and Dumber.

I cross my arms and do my best to glare at them. “How about I give you some toothpaste? I got a little tube from my dentist today.”

I’m joking, but either I didn’t make it clear enough, or they’re just idiots.

“Hey, I’ll take it,” James says, holding open the pillowcase stuffed with tooth-rotting treats.

Hector kind of laughs.

“I was…I was kidding,” I tell them, a little taken aback by their reactions. “Do you actually want my stupid toothpaste or are you just screwing with me?”

James runs his tongue over his top teeth before saying, “I could always use some more.”

I sigh like it’s some big chore to walk all the way to my bathroom and dig out one little tube of toothpaste among the rest of all of the endless samples my dentist has given me in the past, and when I walk back to my door and James and Hector are still standing there, they look at me in surprise when they see the tube in my hand.

“Whoa, I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” James snickers, but the way he says it isn’t sarcastic or mean. There’s a genuine sort of wonder in his voice. “That’s pretty cool.”

“We gotta share that, man,” Hector elbows him.

I don’t think they see the strange looks I’m giving them.

They turn around and head back to whatever cave they crawled out of, and as James tosses the tube into his bag, he turns back briefly and says, “Happy Halloween, Mr. Doug! Thank you for the – well, it’s not candy, but it’s something!” Hector nods at me as if to say, “Ditto.”

Kids are strange creatures.

~~~

Time flies when you’re having fun. Well, that’s what they say when you’re at the end of a nice part of your life and you’re trying to comprehend why all of your memories are blurred, but time can also fly when you’re in such a miserable plateau that every day feels the same. The week before Thanksgiving break is going to give me a week away from the brats, though there’s another little thing that springs up on the ride home from school a few days before.

I don’t catch the beginning of it. It’s just that we’re at a stoplight when I hear Craig suddenly shout, “That’s because you’re a fat dyke!” and like a fighter, the girl who ripped the sign off of that pole that one time, Katie, screams the f-word at an alarming volume right back at him.

“Whoa whoa whoa, watch your language back there, jeez!” I say to nobody in particular. Well, I say it to Craig and Katie, but fuck if they’re listening.

“Craig, what did she ever say to you?” Michelle – Craig’s twin – immediately shouts right after Katie drops her bomb, and through the rearview mirror I see her stand up and give her brother the nastiest look I’d ever seen her give anybody.

The whole bus seems to go quiet. Even when I say, “Guys,” in that silence to get their attention, nobody pays me any mind. Rightfully so.

Craig just stares back at his sister and then looks over at Katie, who’s sitting next to Michelle and turned around to face the grade-A moron. He seems to stammer over an answer, a slight Chinese accent populating the syllables, but he can’t formulate a coherent thought and just laughs. Like it’s a joke.

“That was a really dick move,” someone else speaks up, and across the aisle Curtis stands up – yelling at them all to sit down would probably not bode well right now – to gather closer to the scene. “I didn’t hear her say anything that bad to you.”

“That’s because I didn’t,” Katie grumbles, her voice weak. I can’t see her face.

The light turns green so I slowly ease on the gas pedal, and like they can just tell what I’m bound to say, they all slink lower in their seats, not quite sitting down but not quite standing.

“I didn’t mean it,” Craig stutters, still trying to cover his sorry ass. “Why’d you have to take it so personally?”

“How is something like that not meant to be taken personally?” Curtis speaks up again, sounding like a pro. (Then again, I’ve heard that kid argue about politics way more eloquently than some politicians in office.)

Katie looks at Curtis and there’s a brief softness that flashes over her face from what I’m able to see.

Things are quiet again. I pick up the intercom and speak into it.

“Guys…don’t be mean to each other.” It’s all I can say. When they train you to drive a bus, they tell you to not be assholes to the kids who are super emotional. I just tone down my own personal asshole-ness at the moment, just enough to get by and say something.

Michelle rolls her eyes and shouts, “Amen!” before patting Katie on the back.

And I don’t know if they took it to heart, but the normal low roar of the bus conversations is back to normal after a few minutes on the road. I don’t hear any yelling or loud swearing, and when I look back in the rearview mirror after a few minutes, Katie’s smiling again while Craig has his head against the window, looking like he regrets everything he’s ever done.

~~~

Thanksgiving is here, and I’m spending it alone. What else is new?

I’m used to it since it happens literally every year, and because I have the week off from work, I spend it the same way I’ve spent every other day this week – by sleeping in and surfing the Internet on my old laptop with the TV blaring. The Thanksgiving parade is on right now on all of the news stations, and I keep it on since there’s nothing else playing anyway.

It’s almost noon and I’m still in my pajamas.

I sigh and stare at the ceiling for a second before thinking about what I’m gonna cook myself for dinner.

Well, I’ve got some chicken in the fridge…I could probably make myself some chicken strips…I never liked turkey much, anyway.

Snapping me out of thought, my cell phone rings, vibrating on the coffee table where my feet are propped up. I leap forward and snatch it, looking at the number and halfway hoping it’s a telemarketer so I can have the opportunity to tell them off.

There’s not a number, though – there’s a name. Carrie Tater.

She’s been calling me at least once a week now, and I guess it suits her that she would call me on Thanksgiving, a day where everybody should be celebrating with their family and all of the crap they’re thankful for, even if they’re the most ungrateful people to live. I flip my phone open and hold it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Doug, how are you? How’s your Thanksgiving going?” Carrie practically smiles into the receiver. I can hear the happiness in her voice – lucky girl. Behind her, I can hear faint chattering, but I can’t tell if the TV is on or if she actually has guests over. (She’s probably got friends over, knowing her social skills.)

I look behind me at all of the zero other people in my apartment. “It’s pretty good, uh…yeah. How are you?”

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I? You’re not, like, hosting a party or anything, are you?” I like how she just casually asks questions to subtly point out my pathetic nature.

“Nah, I don’t have anything going on,” I tell her. She should know by now that I am not a social being. I don’t want to dwell on it. “How’s your day been?”

She laughs. I can’t tell if she’s laughing at me or at the chatter behind her. “I kind of reassembled my old college band today and Ezra is in love with us,” she tells me, sounding more cheery than Santa himself. “I invited my gal pals Sadie and Madison over and we’re just catching up as a group for the first time in years. I visited Madison on that road trip where I stayed with you for the night, but I haven’t seen Sadie in a while. It’s been interesting so far.”

Yeah, I figured. She was in a damn punk band in college as the drummer with two other girls and she mailed me one of their CDs – their only CD, actually. They broke up after college. She was still friends with them, though. “Sounds fun.”

“It’s a lot more fun than being alone,” she jabs, still knowing my sore spots even all the way across the country. “You need to come over here one of these days.”

“I’m not driving to North Carolina just out of the blue, Carrie,” I tell her. “We’d have to, like, plan it. I’m not gonna pull a you and just come over with not even a month’s notice.”

“Aw, you gotta be spontaneous!” If I didn’t know her, I’d have thought she was drunk. “That’s the fun of it. Show up at my doorstep and surprise me. I’d love it.”

“Of course you would,” I say, cramming my hand in my pajama pocket.

“Well, damn. When I already miss my big brother and wanna see him more often, hearing that he’s spending Thanksgiving alone certainly doesn’t help.” Just like that, Sassy Carrie comes back with a vengeance.

The last thing I want to do today is argue, especially with my only sister and our only remaining family member other than her daughter and our weird uncle. “Yeah, yeah.”

She ends up keeping me on the phone for a good hour, talking about how happy she is to have a week off from her work – she’s a biology teacher at a nearby high school – and how Ezra keeps shocking daycare workers with her smartness. Under normal circumstances I’d probably tell Carrie to shut up a lot more often, especially since she’s not good at keeping quiet about stuff she’s excited over.

I don’t know why I just sit back and listen to her ramble about her much-more-interesting-than-mine life. I guess it just has to do with the fact that she’s right – I don’t see her nearly enough. And even if it feels like we’re from different planets sometimes, I guess there’s one thing we do have in common – we come from a long line of dead people who lived dead-end lives and we’re both just trying to survive at this point. We just have different ways of doing so.