Magic Bus

I had been lucky enough to walk to school until I started fourth grade, and I remember being envious of the kids who rode the bus. I even made a bus out of a white gift box left over from Christmas—I just glued  cardboard seats in there and put my dolls at various checkpoints around the room and had the bus driver pick them up. The fun part was figuring out which dolls got to sit together—one day Dusty was with Malibu Barbie, then the next it was Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake. The configurations were endless, and each day new best friends formed.

When I started riding the bus, I realized how wrong I had been.  

In fourth grade: an older girl named Nicole picked on my brother by sitting behind him and hissing “teethless, teethless” at him every day (he was six and had lost a bunch of baby teeth at once) and getting other kids to start in on the chant.

In seventh grade: an cute older boy in our neighborhood sitting with me  and pushing himself in really close, and putting his arm around me, to everyone’s laughter—which I later found out was a dare.

In eighth grade: taking the bus through some of the worst neighborhoods of Lowell, MA—tenements, chained animals, skinny and dirty kids.

In ninth grade: sitting next to a girl named Libby who was carsick but having the bus driver refuse to stop. Our Catholic girls’ school was on a field trip to a Mexican restaurant (yes, you read that right:  field trip to a Mexican restaurant). Then our teacher held out a cardboard  box for her to throw up into and I made a quick dash for another seat in the middle of the bus before it all went down. I remember the teacher grimly clutching the box and yelling to the back of the bus, “DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY TAMPONS? LIBBY HAS HER PERIOD!!!”  and everyone laughing. But also being terrified, because who knew PMS made you throw up? And what was she going to do with a tampon right there in that seat?

Gilford was not, as I had hoped, the end of my bus-taking. I didn’t turn sixteen until the second half of junior year, so I was late to start driving. That meant I had to take the bus, which was both humiliating and enlightening. The bus started at Governor’s Island first  and then made its way down Route 11 A, past  Patrick’s, toward Gilford Hills and the trailer park there, and then back toward the school. The last stop was at the bottom of Cat Path, a road I was grateful the bus didn’t actually venture up. On that bus I sat alone, because it was always a third full at most, even after everyone had been picked up.  No one even sat near each other, or talked. And it’s a testament to how much I hated the bus that I was grateful for this.