Sara eyes my outfit. “I take it Holden helped you get ready?”
I look down at my shirt, which I admit is a bit more dressy than what I’d normally wear. Holden forced me to buy it when we went clothes shopping for school.
“What?” I ask her.
“You’re twelve, not twenty.”
I give her a sneer.
“Snake!” Charlie yells. He holds up a dough snake and makes it wiggle through the air.
“Nice, Charlie!” my mom says, forgetting all about me. “What’s his name?”
I grab the stack of dishes and bring them to the table. Instead of going back to the kitchen, I go to my room and spread my homework out on my bed and get to it.
I’m almost done when I hear Charlie’s squeaky voice.
“Hi, Ferny,” he says, standing in the doorway.
“Hey, Char.”
“Wanna play?”
“I’m doing homework.”
“I can help.”
“I don’t think so.”
He steps into my room anyway. He’s holding Doll, who’s wearing one of his old worn-out onesies that is way too big for her. Charlie walks over to the foot of my bed and sets Doll down so she’s staring at me.
They wait.
I try to ignore them, but Charlie does this loud breathing thing that drives me crazy. Also, Doll kind of freaks me out with her permanent surprised smile and dirty face.
“Are your hands clean?” I ask.
He holds them up, his fingers spread wide. They’re still a little wet.
“OK.” I move some of my books out of the way, and he climbs up.
“I wanna go to school,” he says.
“School is overrated.”
“Huh?”
“Look. All little kids want to go to school. And kindergarten is pretty great. But it just goes downhill from there.”
“Oh.”
“Enjoy your freedom, bud.”
“OK.”
He helps me put all my books in a pile, then picks up Doll and follows me downstairs for dinner.
My dad is working late, so it’s just my mom and us. He tries to get home for dinner a few nights a week, but lately it happens less and less.
Charlie has separated out all the vegetables from the pasta dish my mom made. He stares at the colorful piles and tells them why he does or doesn’t like each one.
“You mushy,” he says to an overcooked slice of zucchini.
Holden keeps his head down, close to his plate. He’s managed to cover up the welts pretty well. Holden is a master of covering up zits and other imperfections with Sara’s old makeup. When Sara was fourteen, she went through this whole makeup stage. She and her friends would have makeup parties and teach each other how to use it. This drove my all-natural mom nuts. She even tried to get them to give each other temporary henna tattoos instead, but none of the other parents would allow it.
One day when Sara wasn’t home, Holden and I decided to play dress-up with her stuff. I was about eight and he was ten. We sat on the floor in the bathroom with the carrying case Sara kept all her makeup in spread open between us. I pointed to each color I wanted to try, then Holden decorated me. I loved the way the powder and lipstick smelled. When I was all done, Holden held out a tiny hand mirror we found in the case. I looked at my Barbie face and laughed. Then I grabbed a blush brush and put some on Holden’s cheeks. We were laughing so hard, we didn’t hear Sara come up the stairs and down the hall. She stood in the door with her mouth open, hands on hips.
“What are you guys doing!” she screamed. “That’s my stuff!” She stomped back down the hall. Holden and I looked at each other and laughed, but we started to put away the makeup.
Before we were done, my mom came upstairs. She looked at me, but she stared at Holden, and I remember how ashamed he seemed. She gave us a lecture about playing with Sara’s things without asking and how makeup wasn’t a toy. The way she towered above us as we sat on the floor, she looked so big and different. And I felt so small. When she left, we finished putting everything away and looked at each other guiltily. We stood at the sink and quickly washed our faces and then went to our own rooms until it was time for dinner.
Halfway through dinner, my dad asked me what was wrong with my eyes. I rubbed them and some mascara came off on my finger.
“It’s my makeup,” Sara said.
My dad nodded and smiled at me. “Playing with your sister’s stuff?”
I shrugged.
“I think you’re much prettier the natural way,” he said.
It was the first time he said I was pretty. Maybe it was the first time anyone said I was pretty. I looked across the table at Holden and noticed that his cheeks still seemed red from the blush I’d put there. I touched my cheek and nodded at him carefully to try to let him know. He got the hint right away and got up to go to the bathroom. My dad watched him go.
“I wish you wouldn’t let the kids play with that junk,” he said to my mom.
“It’s not junk,” Sara said. “And Mom didn’t let them. They were sneaking around while I wasn’t home.”
“Well, whatever,” my dad said, still looking at my mom. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t see why dad cares,” I told Holden later. I’d found him hiding out in the pine-tree cave after dinner.
“He thinks I’m weird,” Holden said. He wiped his cheeks again as if the makeup were still there.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I was playing with makeup.”
“So what?”
“Boys aren’t supposed to.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “We were just having fun.”
But he didn’t answer. He just wiped his cheeks again and turned away from me.
Now, sitting at the table watching Holden hide his face, I finally get it. Even then, he knew. And now he’s the one who’s afraid. Maybe even ashamed. I study my mom as she twirls pasta on her fork. She’s pretty open-minded. So is my dad. I’m sure if Holden told them, they’d be supportive. But he stays quiet. So I do, too.
THE NEXT MORNING, Holden and I go out to wait for the bus again. Holden teeters at the edge of the road, kicking stones across the street. I join him, imagining that the tiny pebbles are the heads of the jerks who hurt him. Pretty soon we hear the far-off squeal of the bus brakes.
I feel Holden stiffen beside me. “Yeah. You know what? I’m out of here,” he says. “Wanna come?”
Yes, I do. But it’s only the second day of school.
“Where?” I ask lamely.
“Who cares?”
“What about school?”
“Overrated.”
I wonder what Ran would do. He’d probably tell me that running away doesn’t mean the problem won’t just be waiting when you come back.
The bus brakes sound again. One more stop and we’ll see the top of it crest at the hill beyond our house.
I want to go with him. I want to so much.
“You go,” I say.
He shrugs and lopes off down the road toward his pine cave, as if he doesn’t care a single bit that I don’t join him. He doesn’t even look back once.
When I step on the bus, I pause at the third seat. It’s empty again. Waiting for me. But I keep walking all the way to the back. I keep my jaw clenched as I sit where Holden sat yesterday, in front of the same two boys. The people around me get quiet. It seems like ages before the bus finally starts down the road again.
One of the boys cranes his head close to the back of mine and sniffs.
“Looks like Hildy finally had a sex change,” he says.
There’s a brief quiet, then everyone around me laughs.
“See you at Hawee’s!” someone farther back whines.
I stare straight ahead at first, just like Holden did.
“Hey, Hildy,” one of the jerks whispers. “Come back here and sit on my lap.”
I feel a hot sting on my ear. One of them has pinged me just like they did to Holden.
My fingers curl into a fist.
“Hey, Hildy, how ’bout a kiss?”
Another ping.
I squeeze my fist tighter. My eyes are watering. How could Holden sit here like this and not do something?
“Aw, I think Hildy’s gonna cry.”
“What’s wrong, Hildy? Come back here and I’ll make you feel better.”
Someone yanks my hair.
“Nope, not a wig!”
I wipe one eye with the back of my hand. Do not cry. Do not cry.
“I’m sorry, did that hurt, Hildy?”
Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Another tear slips down my face.
“Oh, my God. She’s really crying!”
“Maybe she didn’t want to be a girl after a —”
The force of my fist against his jaw shuts him up midsentence.
The bus is silent again. I realize there might be a camera in the back of the bus and I’m going to be in serious trouble. Far more than if I’d skipped with Holden. I expect Trudy to pull over and haul me off the bus. But we keep moving on as if nothing happened.
I stay turned around, staring at the jerks. It’s funny because I realize they look alike. Thing One and Thing Two. I stare at them and hope they feel my hate burning their skin.
Thing One holds his jaw with a hurt-puppy look on his face.
“You’ll regret that,” Thing Two says.
I raise my aching fist at him. “You leave my brother alone,” I say.
“Oooooh. I’m scared.”
“You should be.”
He laughs. “You’re the one who should be scared. You and your queer brother. I can’t believe he needs a little kid to stand up for him. What a wuss.”
Thing One doesn’t say anything. Maybe my fist managed to do some damage. My fist sure throbs enough. Still, it seems to ache more with the desire to smash Thing Two’s nose.
The Things whisper threats in my ear all the way to school. No one sits with me, even though the bus is packed by the time we make the last pickup. I have no idea what the Things are doing behind my back, but I’m sure it’s not pretty. I hold my backpack tightly, ready to make a run for it as soon as we get to school. But everyone is up before me, and it’s obvious no one is going to let me out of my seat.
I sit back and wait, my cheeks burning. Day two at school and I’ve officially made enemies with everyone on the bus.
When it’s finally my turn to get up, I walk slowly, not knowing what I’ll face when I get off. When I reach Trudy, she puts out her hand to stop me. I’m afraid to look her in the eye, so I concentrate on her ugly hat instead. It’s grimy and the pom-pom hardly has any yarn left on it.
“You watch yourself, missy,” she says. “I know your type. Your brother, too. Troublemakers. I don’t stop my bus ’less someone’s bleeding normally, but if I see you act up again, you’ll be off my bus in a heartbeat.”
I feel my mouth drop open in shock.
She makes a face, imitating me.
We stare at each other like that for a few seconds. Then she moves her pink wrinkled arm, and I nearly fall down the steep steps trying to get away.
Ran’s waiting for me at my locker.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he says, eyeing me up and down. “You look awful. Why are your ears bright red?”
Ran is wearing a brown shirt that says DIG IT in green letters.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He keeps looking at me anyway. Like Charlie, he knows if he just waits long enough, I’ll cave. But I know he’ll be disappointed in me if I tell him what I did. Ran is a pacifist. He knows the art of ignoring bullies. I guess Holden does, too.
I hold my sore fist in my other hand.
“I’m fine,” I say.
He tilts his head a little to study me.
“OK,” he says, as if he knows I’m lying.
He turns to leave. The back of his shirt says COMPOST FOR A CURE, and underneath is a picture of the planet with a Band-Aid on it. As I watch him walk away, I wish he’d come back. I wait for him to turn around, but he just keeps walking.
At the end of school, I walk slowly to my line for the bus. I swear Trudy gives me the evil eye when I get on. The dirty pom-pom on her hat tips to one side. And the TRUDY TRUDY TRUDY letters feel like a chant. Trudy’s gonna get ya. I don’t know why she hates me. I’m not the one who started it. What about the ear pinging? What about how those jerks treated Holden? She didn’t seem to mind that.
As I walk past, I look down at the dirty aisle floor. I mean to sit in the third row again, like Holden made me promise, but my legs have other ideas and I’m heading to the back of the bus for more torture. Maybe Holden and I are more alike than I thought.
Things One and Two take their seats behind me. They lean over and grunt in my ears before they sit down.
I look out the window at all the other students waiting in line for the sane buses.
I lean forward and squeeze the straps of my backpack. Exactly fourteen stops before my house. Thirteen. Twelve. The Things don’t bother me again, but I swear I can feel their silent insults stinging the back of my head. As we come up over the hill to my house, I slide over to the edge of my seat. But Trudy doesn’t slow down. “Hey! You missed the stop!” someone yells.
But the bus keeps chugging down the hill. When we get to the very bottom, she slows and pulls over. I get up and walk down the aisle, careful to watch the floor in case someone sticks out a foot to trip me.
“Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t even see you there,” Trudy says when I get to the front of the bus.
I start to step down, but she still hasn’t opened the door.
“Guess I’m used to looking for your brother,” she says in a high-pitched, lispy way just like the Things did when they were talking “gay.”
I’m too shocked to reply. The door swings open, and I jump off.
Was this legal? Could she do this? I shake my head as the bus pulls away. Then I look up the long, gradual hill I have to climb. It’s September and it’s still hot. I stand there, listening to the bus drive away. I wonder if Trudy is checking her mirror to see if I’m walking up the hill yet. Maybe I’ll get kidnapped, then rescued somehow. Then my parents could sue Trudy.
As I start to walk, my eyes fill with tears. I feel like a big baby for being so upset, but it really does hurt to be wronged. It hurts so much.
And then I realize. This is probably what Holden feels like every day.
NO ONE’S HOME when I finally get to the house. I drop my backpack in the hall by the door and go into the kitchen to pour myself some water. The house feels so quiet, I decide to go back outside and sit on the front steps. The sun blasts down on me, and I feel a drip of sweat slowly slip down my chest and into my belly button under my shirt. I leave my cup on the steps and walk to Holden’s tree cave and crawl inside. It’s cool and welcoming in a silent way. Holden has wiped the ground smooth, probably so he won’t get pine needles on his pants. I sit and listen to the traffic go by. I wish Holden were here now. Or Ran. But then I think about how disappointed they’d be if I told them what I did on the bus. Holden because I’d broken my promise about sitting in the back, and Ran because I’d used my fists instead of words.
I look at the hand that punched Thing One. I hear the ugly words they hissed in my ears. Feel the sting of their fingers. And I hate them. I hate the way they think.
After a while, my bum starts to get sore from sitting so long, and I climb out of Holden’s cave and walk home. Sara, Charlie, and Doll are on the living-room floor, playing Connect Four. My mom is in the kitchen, making dinner.
“Ferny! Come play!” Charlie yells when he sees me. He makes Doll do a happy dance by bouncing her up and down on the rug so it looks like she’s jumping.
“No, thanks. I have homework.”
“What’s up your butt?” Sara asks.
Charlie makes a farting no
ise.
“Nothing,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re a sucky actress, Fern.”
I stop and glare at her. “Do you know about the bus?”
She shifts on the floor. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know what happens on the bus? To Holden?”
“The wheels on the bus go wound and wound,” Charlie sings.
“Shut up,” I say.
“Bad word!”
I glare at Sara.
“What happens?” she asks. But I have the feeling she has a good idea.
“They hurt him,” I say quietly, gesturing toward Charlie to make it clear I can’t go into detail in front of him.
She sighs, as if she can’t believe she has to explain it all to me. “I didn’t ride the bus senior year, but, yeah, I heard that some of the kids gave him a hard time.”
“And you didn’t do anything?”
“What do you want me to do? I told him to tell Mom and Dad, and he wouldn’t.”
“So that’s it?”
“Yes? Look, what happens on the bus is Holden’s problem. Not yours.”
“Holden doesn’t have a problem. They do!”
She flips a red checker into a slot. “He has a problem.”
“Stop calling it that!”
Charlie claps his hands over his ears.
“Sorry, Fern. But until Holden embraces who he is, it’s going to be”— she pauses —“an issue. That’s his problem.” She drops another checker in a slot. “It’s Holden’s choice to come out to us and ask for help. He needs to be the one to change things. I only egg him on so he realizes we all know. We all know, Fern — me, you, Mom, and Dad. But he’s the one who needs to say the words. He has to be the one to take the first step.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how it works.”
“But what about the bus? Can’t you and I do something? Can’t we tell Mom —?”
“Tell Mom what?” my mom asks from the doorway.
Sara flashes me a shut-up glare.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Holdy has a pwoblem,” Charlie says, trying to shove two checkers down a slot.
My mom and Sara exchange a look, and that’s when Holden walks in the door.