Bus

Monday is going exactly the way I expected.

Every time I drive up to a stop, the first thing that every brat says to me is, “Holy crap, you’re back?” and then every so often they’ll ask why I was gone in the first place.

I have my own stock answer for times like these: “None of your damn business.”

It’s a clusterfuck, this bus. Nobody shuts up when I ask them to, and even the radio isn’t playing anything remotely decent. I’m back in the hellhole again, but there’s some weird form of comfort in it. It’s what I know. It’s what I’ve known for years, and even after being away from it all for a week, I don’t feel as discombobulated as I probably should.

I crack the driver window and let some of the brisk February air make its way into the otherwise musty bus. It’s nowhere near as cold as Duluth here in Yuma, even in wintertime, but there’s nothing that keeps it from being refreshing right now. It’s a slap to the face and it wakes me up from all of the sleeping I’ve done over the weekend.

In fact, the whole place just feels brighter. The sand is a brighter orange and the sky is a more vibrant shade of blue. For it being a Monday, for some reason it feels like a Friday, and that’s saying something since I normally hate both days equally. This time, it doesn’t seem so bad.

What’s even more shocking is the fact that certain kids even say, “Bye,” to me when they get off the bus to go to their first classes of the day. April starts the trend, then Sara and Keke say it, Curtis does it, Michelle says it, Amy mumbles it, then I loose track. I give them all confused looks in return, knowing they wouldn’t question it, and when they’re all off, I close the door and drift ahead in the bus loop, ready to go back to the bus barn and turn in for a few hours.

At the end of the bus loop sidewalk stands Mercedes, a walkie-talkie in her hand as she monitors the monsters that make their way to school. She sees me driving towards her and waves me down, her face brightening immediately as she steps forward, signaling for me to stop.

So I do, and I open the doors for her. She flies up the stairs with the finesse of a gym teacher and within seconds she tackles me in my seat, her arms wrapped so tightly around my neck that it feels like she’s purposely trying to suffocate me.

“God, I’m glad to see you again,” she tells me, her voice right against my ear.

After squeezing me tightly for a few more seconds, she lets go and I don’t know how to respond, so I just smile back at her since she’s doing the exact same thing. She sighs happily and puts her hands on her hips.

Then she points her thumb back in the opposite direction and tells me, “I gotta go watch out for the other buses, but I’ll see you later today, okay?”

I nod. “Yeah, totally, I’ll see you later. I’m not gonna skip town for a week again.”

She laughs and punches my shoulder, but when she steps down the stairs, she looks over her shoulder and smiles at me again. I wave goodbye to her when I pull out of the loop, a faint grin still plastered to my face despite everything being exactly the same as it always was.

~~~~

Well, everything’s almost the same today.

There’s a more…rambunctious air, I guess I can say, to the bus this afternoon.

For starters, literally nobody is sitting down when I bark at them through the speaker, and eventually I just fucking give up, seeing as how they’re probably all hopped up on their hormones and wouldn’t listen to me if I pointed guns at them.

Every so often my eyes peek at the rearview mirror just to make sure that nobody falls out of the back door, and so far, we’re halfway down the main road on the way to Alta Vista. Nothing really out of the ordinary here.

Then I look back once. Once.

And I see Danny, the bounciest little motherfucker this side of the Mississippi, holding a goddamn inflated condom in his clammy hands. For starters, I’m curious at how he obtained such an item. (Then I realize I don’t want to know.) What’s worse is that Andre and Katie are standing next to him and laughing their asses off when he finally manages to tie it shut, and God knows the first thing to do after such a victory is to bounce it around in place, letting it rise and fall over the seats before catching it again.

There’s a hell of a lot of frustration building up inside of me as I watch it happen, but it escapes only in low-volume swears before I just reach over and grab the radio microphone and shout into it, “What the hell are you doing back there?!”

Danny jumps like three feet into the air before letting go of the balloon right as he holds it out the window.

Of course, the condom balloon ends up hitting the windshield of the car right behind us.

And it leaves lubricant stains, as I’m told later today by the kids on the back of the bus.

I’m stuck reeling in my own facepalm as the rest of the morons are chortling along to the oh-so-comedic act that that asshole has just put on, and I know they won’t hear me if I yell at them some more. What’s done has been done, and fuck everything if they don’t know what they did and aren’t proud of it. There’s not a single look of shame that flickers across Danny’s face, not even when he gets off the bus later that day. He’s laughing back there with the kids he calls his friends.

God, they’re all so damn annoying.

Well…at least focusing on their annoyingness is more fulfilling than focusing on my own obnoxious traits.

April, always in the front seat, hangs over and invades my personal driver space. (She had to wear a brace for about a month after she got hit by that dumb bimbo, but she’s alright now.) “I heard they were saving that for today, Mr. Doug.” She’s laughing too; she’s not a tattletale.

I hold the steering wheel tightly in my hairy hands as I grumble, “Of course they were.”