“Your bus is coming in about ten minutes,” her mother said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the bathroom first?”
Bridget was about to give an angry reply that she wasn’t a four-year-old, but given her accident record in the last day, she bit her lip and went to the bathroom before running out to catch the bus.
As soon as the big yellow bus pulled to a stop in front of her, Bridget remembered why she hated that part of school. Riding the bus had been the most humiliating part of high school for her.
She bit her lip and walked up the steps. The bus was crowded, dirty, and it smelled. A few people whispered and pointed when she got on. She knew they were talking about what happened the previous day. She guessed their whispers were, “She’s the girl who had an accident,” or “She’s the girl who peed her pants.”
“Angela.”
Bridget looked around. Lia was waving at her from halfway back. She stepped over the obstacles of backpacks in her path in the aisle until she got to Lia and took a seat next to her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Buenos dias,” Lia replied. She smiled.
“What?” Bridget asked.
“I was saying good morning to you, chica. Did you sleep okay?”
“Oh yeah. Spanish.” Why didn’t Angela take German? Better yet, why didn’t she take Spanish in high school? She remembered. Jesse Stevens took German, so she had to take it to so she could get a date. It was a wasted effort. He took Allison Stewart to junior prom. She did well in German, so she never regretted the decision until now. If only she had taken Spanish, then she would not have to learn two years of language in less than a semester. “I got it taken care of. I found our conversation in my notes. We’ll go over it Friday night, right?”
“That’s what I said,” Lia replied.
Bridget twisted her hair around her finger and tried to think of something intelligent to say.
“So are you seeing the new Star Trek movie?” Lia asked.
“There’s a new Star Trek movie?” Bridget asked.
“I guess that is a no,” her friend said, “You know those Harlequin romances will rot your brain.”
“Will they really?” Bridget asked.
“I guess not, but you are too smart to read those.” Lia smiled and looked out the window. “Hey. We’re at school.”
The two girls filed off the bus and headed to their lockers. Bridget just followed Lia. How was she going to know which locker was hers?
Bridget’s face turned red as the answer to her question became readily apparent. A baby diaper taped to her locker worked as well as a flashing beacon that pointed her way through the fog of students.
Lia ripped the diaper off and tossed it in the trash. “How dare they,” she yelled.
Bridget randomly turned the lock on her locker. It was no use anyway. She wouldn’t know the combination. “It won’t open,” she said.
“Here, let me try.” Lia opened the locker up.
“I guess I am just upset,” she answered. She pulled out her books she thought she would need for the morning and followed Lia to pre-Calculus.
The class was boring. The teacher droned on and on like the science teacher on the Wonder Years. She whispered her thoughts to Lia.
“What’s the Wonder Years?”
“Just an old TV show.” She couldn’t make that mistake too many times. If she wasn’t grounded, she would have spent time watching TV to see what she should be making references to.
The Ferris Bueller teacher kept rambling on. He probably didn’t even notice his white-board marker faded to illegiblescribbles five minutes ago. No, that was just an epsilon and an alpha.
The rest of the morning classes were uneventful. Physics was more lecture and in English they discussed Brave New World.
Mrs. Miller took the opportunity to embarrass her by asking her to compare the life styles of John Savage and Henry Foster. She had no idea who the woman was talking about. “Um, I don’t know.”
“Angela did you even read the book. Your paper on differences between themes of 1984 and Brave New World is due Monday. It is Thursday.”
“I’m working on my paper,” she said.
“Can you answer the question?” she asked Lia.
“John was a savage and had a mother. Henry was born in a test tube. It was an insult if someone suggested you had a mother or a father.”