On the Bus

We've been through this before. When I was younger, I was not what you'd call a beauty. In fact, I was not much of anything, save for the recipient of one too many Fantastic Sam's perms.

At twelve, I was logging long hours pining away for boys who played football on the town team, boys who dated cheerleaders, boys who French kissed before the age of sixteen, which is when I finally got down to business. At twelve, I was following Tammy around and watching as she--just by walking by--could cause a group of boys our age to snap their heads around as if they'd just witnessed some sort of minor miracle. And I suppose she was some sort of minor miracle. She was, after all, a twelve year old who didn't look angly, gawky, sweaty, nervous, or confused. Which were all the things I looked like as I trailed behind her, popping open Pepsi after Pepsi because I had a crush on the guy who sold them at the racetrack beverage stand and the only way I could get him to talk to me was to fork over a dollar at a time and then guzzle the pop on the way back to our seats.

In short, at twelve, I was a mess.

However, there was one place I wasn't a mess, a freak, or an ugly girl, and that place was the school bus. I was a different girl on that bus, mainly because it wasn't populated by people who could make fun of me. The high schoolers had a policy of ignoring everyone who wasn't above grade nine, and the elementary kids were too busy discussing what was in their lunchboxes to care about what went on in the middle of the bus, which was the middle schoolers' territory until the very last high schooler got off the bus. That's when we claimed the back as our own and practiced for the days that we'd get those seats by virtue of being the oldest, the wisest, the cleverest of the bus riders.

And while I was flying under the radar of the high schoolers and the elementary schoolers, I was being noticed for the first time by boys. These boys weren't the boys I wished would notice me--none of them were golden-haired Ryan McLean, after all--but they were boys nonetheless. And I wasn't stupid. I knew exactly how much power I had on a daily basis, and that amount hovered close to zilch for many years. But those bus boys got a little doughy in the face when I came around, so I learned to be thankful for the pinch of power I had during the forty minute ride to school and the forty minute ride home from school.

But after awhile--after love notes and declarations of feelings--I let it go to my head. I became a mean girl, an awful girl. I became a tease.

The boy I could tease the most was Justin.



His love for me was established early on, and this love lasted for years. He wrote me notes on the bus, in study hall, in social studies, in English, and at home. Later, when we were older and taking a language, he sat next to me in French and slipped me a note every single day. I would read it, write back, tap it up over his shoulder so it would fall gracefully on his desk without our teacher--an overweight man who was a man fond of smacking his pointer on the desk to scare students when they weren't paying attention--noticed what was going on. We had whole conversations this way.

You look good today, Justin would write. Are you ever going to let me kiss you?

Sure, I'd write back. In the back seat of the bus when Mr. Custard isn't looking.

I never let him kiss me in the back seat. But I did do something in the back seat, and what I did was cruel, cruel, cruel.

One day, teasing, Justin said I should wear my bathing suit to school so he could see what I looked like in it. I'd been bragging to him, telling him I'd gotten a brand new red plaid bikini and that I was going to show it off to all the Canadian boys over summer when I went up to Long Point. Justin said that wasn't fair. He said he wanted to see it. I told him the only way he'd see it was if he happened to show up at the local pool on a day when I was there. I told him that seemed very unlikely.

But I was lying. I was lying because I had a plan forming in my brain. I fully intended on having Justin see me in my new red plaid bikini because no other boy had any interest in seeing it, because no other boy was dreaming of seeing me in it, and because I needed to see what it felt like to be the center of attention, to do something scandalous, to do something that would send a boy's head spinning off its axis.



So I did. One day I substituted my bra for my bathing suit and carefully hid the halter straps under a thick t-shirt so my mother wouldn't see and wonder what on Earth I was up to. Our school didn't yet have a pool, so there was no reason for me to be donning the bikini under my school clothes. But I made it out the door without arousing suspicion, and I made it through the entire day without having a teacher or a friend grill me as to why there was a plaid bow tied under my hairline.

Once on the bus, I told Justin what was happening. I told him what I had in store for him. I said, "Just wait until you see this."

I could tell just by looking at his face that he was dealing with sensory overload. I think he was shocked, pleased, and terrified all at once. I think I was all three of those, too. This was a me that didn't show up at school. This was a confident me, a me that thought I was fun and interesting and impulsive. At school I was awkward and goofy and predictable. But for those eighty minutes each day, I had a chance to prove that wasn't all that there was to me.

I sure proved it the day I wore my red plaid bikini.

After most of the other kids had gotten off the bus, and after the middle schoolers had scuttled to claim the best seats in the back, I crammed myself into a corner and smiled at Justin, who was sitting in the seat across from me.

He wanted me to do it, do it, do it already. "Come on," he pleaded.

I did it. But right before I did, there was a moment--a terrible, sickening moment--that made me sit back and think, Is this really the best thing to be doing? I knew what I was doing to him, and I also knew what I was doing to myself. I was taunting him, and I was trying to grasp some measure of power by exploiting what little I had to offer in the attractiveness department. Justin loved me for things other than beauty. He liked that I was witty and willing to play with the boys. He liked that I had scathing things to say about other people on the bus and people we went to school with. He liked that I could spend the ride home writing stories that starred us as beloved crime-fighting heroes. I was different. Really different. And maybe that was just a little bit refreshing. But with this move, with this little red plaid bikini stunt, I would be trading in some of that. I would be saying, Now worship me for this. And what if that didn't work? What if it did?

Even though I knew there were a lot of better things for me to be doing with Justin right then and there--watching him load a straw with spitballs, for example--I peeled my shirt off and folded it in my lap. Then, triumphant, I leaned back against the window and rode the rest of the way home like that. Justin was happy with the result, and he talked about it for weeks. As for me, I was just starting to learn what a girl could do to mold a boy, to take him up in the palm of her hand, to turn him this way and that, to make him--even for forty minutes, for a bus ride, for a few short years--hers and hers alone.