numb
I stood at the end of the driveway and watched a house being erected on the lot that we hoped would just stay a lot. I sat on the bus. The seat right in front of the emergency exit on the left side of the bus. Candy wrappers crammed in the cushions and bottles on the floor. I looked ahead at the blonde boy with the protruding lips and the dimpled chin. Or out the window. I didn't realize there was a log cabin on the right side of the route until after I moved. I saw the corn fields grow and shrivel and be harvested for silage for cows to eat and become drunk off of. I saw the pond shrink, freeze, and flood and the cats sneaking off with mice in their mouths. I saw some later as red splotches on the highway. I left the bus. "Bye, Dave." to the man who had driven a bus for twenty years. He said hello, Summer and have a good day, Summer every morning. I stepped down all three steps onto square slabs of pavement. In the winter, there was a crow frozen at my feet when I left those three steps. I thought of it falling out of the sky like that. It's wings splayed and blood chilled to solid. I entered the building, turn to the left, turn to the right. The freshmen clogged the arteries. Laughed too loudly, talked to loudly, everything too loudly. I waited in the corner for the door to open to my class. A senior twenty minutes early. I read my book. He came, unlocked the door. Ready for another wonderful day? I waited. They arrived two minutes or less before the bell rang. Damn seniors. With their cars. Their cell phones. Their lives. Fuck em all. I want to stand in the hallways and talk too loudly and laugh too loudly to be noticed. Then this smallness and naivete would be justified. That's not right. I didn't think that. The pledge of allegiance in a midwestern accent. Go Norskies. You'd laugh. It was right out of Fargo. A girl sat in front of me. Chunky with a bad perm. Her eyes were blue. There was a crooked tattoo on the back of her neck. Some butterfly ribbon thing. The guy who made it must have known that one day I would sit behind her and focus on its asymmetry. Asshole. She opened her bookbag. A panoply of colored pens. A tub of lotion. She flicked the top with the deftness of someone who fixates too much on their skin. She poured it into her white puffy hands with the round fingernails. It fell into a spiral in the palms then she rubbed it between her fingers. Into the webs. He talked at the front. Droning about something or other. It was his last year. What did he care? She then slid her oily fingers up her arms. Her paleness was shocking. Her skin snapped back. Amazing elasticity. She encircled her forearm with her hands. Quickly then slowly. For ten minutes. Every weekday. Until I graduated.