Do You Live Under a Rock?

The school bus has always reminded me of a dragon, yellow and fierce, and not guaranteed to spit you back out again once it swallows you up. 

Every morning, when I stand at the end of my driveway and wait for it, I close my eyes and imagine that it will not come. I am the last person to be picked up, and somehow the last person to be dropped off, even though that doesn’t make sense to me, so sometimes I pretend that Mr. Tim, our bus driver, will skip me for convenience's sake. I create elaborate scenarios in my mind; accidents and detours and flat tires, and every day just when I have convinced myself that the power of my mind has saved my day, I hear the familiar engine growl and see its ugly sunshine face rounding the corner.

I swear I feel my feet get heavier every time I step onto that bus, like each step is draining my energy away from me, coffee poured through a strainer, rain pounding down on saturated ground. 

Our bus driver greets me every morning the same way:

“Well, lookie who the cat dragged in!”

Apparently it's what he says to every kid every morning, but each time he always laughs like it is the funniest thing in the world, like he is so clever. It is so dumb, but I always laugh, like we all laugh every morning, because we all feel bad for Mr. Tim. He is middle aged and balding and has a belly that touches the steering wheel. He doesn’t have a wedding ring, and everyone found out last year that he still lives with his parents. My friend Casey joked that they probably made him our bus driver to scare us into going to school every day and doing well, otherwise we might turn out just like him.

“And could you imagine anything worse?” Casey had giggled, pretending to gag. 

I hadn’t laughed with her, because I felt too bad for Mr. Tim. Maybe one day his legs had gotten so heavy that they hadn’t even let him step onto the bus, that he had just stood there, frozen in place, until the bus moved along. He ended up in the belly of the beast after all though, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to laugh at his misfortune, I identify too closely with the fictionalized backstory I have created for him in my head. 

This morning, when the bus rolls to a stop in front of my mailbox, and I step onto it, I am greeted not by Mr. Tim’s unshaven smile and “lookie here”, but by a gray haired woman with a no nonsense brow and manicured fingernails who looks like she could be my grandma if my grandma didn’t bake cookies- or eat cookies for that matter. 

As I step into the bus, she gives me a crisp good morning, and starts to drive again, before I have even found my seat. I am thrown off, but Casey’s frantically waving hand brings me back to Earth, and I hurry to my seat next to her, which she always saves for me by putting her Lululemon lunch bag on it. 

Casey gets most of her clothes and belongings from her two older sisters, who are upperclassmen at the high school, which subsequently means that she dresses like one of them. Casey is the only other sixth grader who has been dress coded multiple times. I can’t imagine wearing anything that might expose the baby fat still stubbornly sitting on my stomach, or wearing shorts short enough that the line of my underwear is visible.

Once, when I was at Casey’s house for a sleepover I realized I didn’t have a spare pair of underwear for the next day, and Casey nonchalantly handed me a thong. It took me three tries to figure out which way it went, and I was too embarrassed to admit to her that I had never so much as seen one in real life before, just on the mannequins in the store my mom took me to get fitted for my first training bra. 

Casey is jealous of the fact that I need to wear a training bra, whereas I hate the extra fat and skin that seemed to grow overnight, and cause one of the seventh grade boys to hiss, “Sexy,” at me in the hallway. I don’t really fully understand what that word even means, but I understand that it has something to do with the invisible line that I have somehow crossed over. 

Womanhood, was the word that my mom said when I told her, even though I am still trying to understand what it means to be a big girl, and that playing with dolls is absolutely unacceptable.

Two weeks after I got my training bra, Casey greeted me on the bus with pink bra straps showing above her white shoulderless top, two sizes too big of course. I know that she doesn’t really need it though, and that she stuffs it with tissues, because once while we were changing for P.E one fell out. I was the only one who noticed before she scooped it up in a panic, and of course I didn’t say a word. Casey is my best friend, even if she is too loud and sometimes embarrasses me with her hyena laugh and too mature clothes.

When I slide into the cracked blue bus bench seat next to her, she is practically vibrating with excitement. I am distracted by her clumsy attempt at eyeliner, but the words that have begun to spill out of her mouth far in lieu of a greeting pull my attention away from the questionably horizontal lines that circle her eyes, making her eyelashes seem short and her eyes appear smaller than they are. I am sure that Casey thinks she looks like a pop star, and since she doesn’t at all I make a mental note to tell her she looks great.

“Ohmygoddidyouseethepicture?”

Her words spill out of her mouth like a soda bottle shaken and then uncapped, and I struggle to piece together the words.

“What picture?” I ask, once I have decoded.

“Oh my gosh!” Casey exclaims again, even though I’m sure she knows I haven’t seen it, which is all part of the fun for her. She loves the fact that I don’t have a phone and she does.

“Do you live under an actual rock?” She says, and picks up her phone, practically quivering with excitement. Do you live under a rock is Casey’s favorite thing to say, and she says it very often, mostly just to me. I know that she means it as an insult, but I can’t help but think that it might be nice to live under a rock, cool and dark and protected. I imagine that it would smell like ferns, and the only visitor I would have would be my older brother, who would somehow receive a discharge from the Navy and who might even live under a neighboring rock. 

“Look!” Casey bursts out, and shoves her phone under my nose.

It takes a minute for my eyes to focus on what I am seeing, and a second longer for the message to reach my brain. We learned about that in Science, how without our brain, our eyes would be useless. 

It is a grainy picture, way zoomed in, but it's obvious that it is the driver's seat of a school bus, and it is Mr. Tim sitting in the driver's seat and on his lap is a girl. She is small, and wearing pink sneakers and overalls, and her face is covered with black scribbles, where someone edited the photo to hide her identity. She is facing the front window and her hands are on the steering wheel like she is pretending to drive the bus, and maybe she is because Mr. Tim certainly isn’t. 

One of his hands is wrapped around her waist, and the other rests on the inside of her thigh. They are both facing the door and whoever took the photo, though based on its blurry quality, they had no idea it was being taken. Mr. Tim is smiling, and the girl’s face is black lines. 

There is a lump in my throat the size of Europe, and I can’t swallow.

“What, who,” my words can’t come out right, I feel like I am in a movie, a character acting the part of dumbfounded and surprised. 

“Isn’t that just insane?” Casey is so excited, and I don’t understand why. “Someone caught creepy Mr. Tim being a pedophile, two days ago, but they just reported it this morning. Can you imagine, yesterday we all rode in this bus that was driven by an actual pedophile.”

I don’t know what that word means, and Casey can tell because she rolls her eyes. “Goodness, Rosie, do you live under a rock? A pedophile is a grown up who gets crushes on kids. How disgusting is that?”

“So disgusting,” I say, and I really mean it because I actually feel like I might throw up, and I wonder how mortifying it would be if I had to open the window and do just that. 

“How do you have that picture?” I ask.

“Oh wow, your voice is literally shaking!” Casey exclaims, “I know it is so gross right! And oh yeah so basically someone took that picture but like crossed out the girl’s face and then sent it to the principal and superintendent and then they sent it to all the parents trying to figure out who the girl is. I have it because Jeremiah Glover is a total snoop and saw it on his mom’s email, and took a picture. Everyone is freaking out.”

Casey looks like it was just announced that One Direction is coming to play a private concert for our school. All of the books and movies that I know she is obsessed with reading and watching about middle school girls solving crime has come true, and I can tell that she sees herself as the main character who catches the bad guy and gets the cute boy all while wearing strawberry flavored Chapstick. 

“I am literally going to figure out who it is, I know all the girls in this school,” she announces, and I close my eyes so I don’t actually throw up all over her oversized sweater that falls off of one skinny shoulder, on purpose, she told me. 

“What happened to Mr. Tim?” I ask.

“He was arrested of course, dummy,” Casey says, “You can’t just be a pedophile and get away with it.” 

She glances around us every time she says the word to see if anyone has heard her and is impressed and of course everyone has heard her because she talks so loud and of course everyone is impressed because everyone on this bus is eleven years old and easily impressed. 

Everyone knows, I think suddenly, everyone knows that someone on this bus is the little girl who was on Mr. Tim’s lap. She is like a pop star, everyone is talking about her, and she is in one of these seats refusing to say a word, looking at the picture of herself and probably saying ohmygodwhat like stupid Casey is. I feel too hot, I wish she would just stand up and admit it already so we can all stop this breathless staring, the sidelong glances under seats to see if anyone is wearing pink sneakers. There is not a single pair of overalls on this bus. 

When the bus screeches to a stop outside of our school, Casey has to grab my wrist and pull to my feet before I realize that I am sitting frozen in my seat, and everyone has already poured out the open doors like a flood, or a dam breaking. 

“Jeez,” she says as we walk through the fast emptying entryway of our school, “This whole thing has really freaked you out, hasn’t it?”

There are two orange cones on the floor in the hallway, and a wet floor sign next to it, the janitor is mopping at a spill. He is balding and older, and I think about Mr. Tim wearing a prison jumpsuit as orange as the cones, just like in the movies. I picture him mopping floors of a dark, dirty jail, with other inmates snarling behind bars like wild animals. I feel sad for him, and then I feel disgusting for feeling bad for a pedophile. 

“Helloo,” Casey says, and when I look at her she is looking at me with one eyebrow raised, her face resembling the doubtful emoji. It’s an expression she has curated, I helped her. 

“Oh,” I say, “Well, yeah. I mean, it's horrible.”

We are at our lockers, they are right next to each other. A twist of fate or Casey’s incessant way of getting what she wants with adults. She drops her backpack with a thud and turns to face me, her hands grab my shoulders. I feel like we are in a movie, a sitcom about middle schoolers who always get into impossible situations and find their way out.

“Rosie,” she says, and looks around us dramatically, as though she is sure that someone will be eavesdropping. The bell has already rung, we are late, but I don’t care. I feel as though I have been submerged in cold water, and I am becoming numb, toes to the top of my head in a wave. I can’t stop thinking about how the girl in the picture is a girl who is in this school, how eventually, everyone is going to know who she is. 

“Rosie!” Casey exclaims again, this time shaking my shoulders. 

“What?” I ask, focusing on the crooked black lines on her eyelids instead of her excited grin, which feels inappropriate somehow. Like whenever one of the boys on the bus makes a grown up joke that they read online that we don’t really understand, but do enough to feel strange about it, even if we don’t know what we are feeling strange about.

“So,” Casey breathes, her bubblegum breath on my face, “The girl who was in the picture is totally not going to admit it, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to. But someone needs to come forward and say it was them, otherwise Mr. Tim might walk free.” She says the last two words with the emphasis she puts on phrases that she thinks are impressive. 

“So,” she says again, her voice an excited whisper now, “I am going to do whoever it was, and really the whole school, a huge favor, and say that it was me!”

She waits, eager for me to exclaim that she is so smart and such a hero, and maybe they will even make a movie about her one day. I know Casey so well. I feel nauseous, and the lights of the school are so bright, I don’t know how I have missed how horribly bright they are all this time. 

“But, Casey,” I say, “Someone took the picture. Someone knows who the girl is.”

Casey makes a wordless exclamation at my stupidity, “Oh my gosh, Rosie,” she says, impatiently, “Whoever took the picture probably couldn’t even tell who the girl was from that far away, that’s why they blacked out her face. Apparently it was a concerned pedestrian, that’s what Jeremiah said the email said. Like some jogger who was running by and happened to see.”

“But that’s lying,” I say, my voice small and childlike.

“No it’s not, Rosie,” Casey sounds disgusted, she drops her hands and opens her locker, pushes past me to open mine too, like I’m too slow to complete small tasks. “It's just telling the truth for someone else.”

She opens my locker and stands there, staring into it. My pink P.E. sneakers sit on top of my math workbook, bright and too cheerful. I never wear them outside of P.E., except for two days ago, when I forgot to take them off. 

She looks at me, and her mouth is a perfect O shape, her eyes are so wide that her terrible eyeliner actually almost looks even.

“Oh my god, Rosie,” she says, but before she can finish I am running, down the hallway, through the open doors and across the parking lot, across the outside track quick as a flash and into the woods on the other side. I run blindly, my eyes refusing to take in the greens and browns and grays and brilliant flashes of blues in front of me. Finally, I stop breathing heavily and sink down. 

Next to me there is a rock, big and gray and sturdy looking, with a throw rug of thick verdant moss draped across its back. 

Do you live under a literal rock? Casey’s voice is in my ear.

I get on my belly and wedge myself under the rock, even though my feet and most of my legs still stick out, and it is far from a comfortable cave. 

I curl up as tight as I can and close my eyes. The darkness is sweet and comforting and filled with blissful silence.

And believe it or not it smells like ferns, just like I always imagined it would.