neither rain nor snow….
Taking the bus to our ‘new’ old junior high via a long ride to ‘poor town’. Early September morning. We’re half asleep. Not even the rabbits in the field are up this godamn early. The shoes are tight, my shirt is stiff with Easy On spray starch. No one murmers, we’re as excited as a grandparent’s funeral. We are going to hate this place and hate the teachers, and curse God Himself for arranging the merger just to screw us. We would catch it at the second stop, then up the hill for another 6 stops. At least I only had a half block walk.
Man, I’ll never forget that first day. We are in two groups, the eighth graders, sullen and bristling with schemes to demean us. And us lowly seventh graders, too scared to admit it. Kids drifting down from various directions. We looked so spiffy in our new clothes (not that we felt anything other than cursed)–suffering through the store trip with mom, trying on endless shirts and pants . Now, time for lesson one: girls went shopping, too……….and more money was spent.
We look over and two strange girls are coming. Closer they get we realize it’s Jocelyn and Sallyann, neighbors from one street up. Jocelyn was the type A, with the fancy clothes and wild blonde curls dancing on her shoulders. Sally was quiet with short brown pixie hair.
Not any more.
Sally had a dress only halfway to her knees and very high thick heels, displaying shapely legs that did not exist 4 months ago. What trickery be this? Jocelyn went full mini skirt/panty hose look, her hair now straight and falling down her back. Their heels clack as the walk.
Stunned males………..whispers: “Is that fucking Sally?” “Jesus, it doesn’t look like her!”
The bus pulls up two blocks up, taking in the first convicts. It looks bigger than a football field. The brakes howl like midnight banshees. The floors are filthy; the girls are skeevy in their slippery new heels. The front door is opened manually; loud cracks and crunches of metal hitting metal.
It arrives, the door opens for us. We stare, no one ready to abandon childhood so completely. Hic Sunt Dracones–beyond this, there be monsters. One of the eighth graders says, “get on the bus, morons!”
Once we’re riding, every stop yields girls in brand new ‘look at me’ clothes, with legs suddenly materializing from a magic place, colored tights, radical hairspray-drenched curls, developing chests. Male hormones playing twister.
When you sat down, the seats crackled with age, the springs complain. You wind up sitting with someone you barely know.
Bus driver is a dwarf with perpetual beard shadow. In no time, he displays his well-honed talent for grinding gears and scraping the tailpipe on bumpy intersections. He resembled a hobbit or the dancing short guy in Twin Peaks.
The bully gets on with his brother, sneering in his little blazer. He has not grown an inch over the summer. He tries to strut to the back of the bus. His brother pokes him in the chest. There is a brief staring contest; the bully seethes with rage, his brother laughs and pushes him out of the way.
In a few weeks, both brothers vanish and are never heard from again.
Eventually, we realize that a quarter of our 6th grade class is gone. It takes awhile, ’cause most of the lost boys/girls were nerdy. I miss Betsy, though; she had potential. Not a lot upstairs, but she was starting to blossom physically. She, like several others, was now enrolled in Catholic School.
Girls in front, whispering and giggling. Us 7th graders in the middle, 8th graders at the back. After around a month, verbal abuse begins, and even some girls catch hell. No one opened windows; hell, we were just barely awake at that hour.
Then we pull up at the ancient stone edifice. Defeated mumbling of ‘oh shit’ or ‘fuck’, just taking in this pile of dilapidated feces. Our new home for 2 years. It was like trading in your corvette for a rusty 63 Corvair.
Well, let’s go inside.