Run(14)

“The Dylan Thomas one? Yeah. I don’t get it, though. I mean, it sounds pretty. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ It’s nice, but it doesn’t make sense to me. What is the good night?”

“Death,” Bo said. She didn’t say it the way Christy would, like I was some kind of idiot. She just put it there, an answer.

“Death,” I repeated.

“He’s telling somebody to keep fighting and not just die,” she explained. “I read somewhere that he wrote it about his dad.”

“Wow. You’re really good at poetry stuff.”

“Nah. I just … I like it. Poetry, I mean. I wish I could write it, but I’m no good.”

“Write it?” I laughed. “I’d be glad if I could just understand it. I like fiction. I like a story. But I have to read every poem a thousand times, and I still never really get it.”

“It’s not a real useful skill,” she said. “Not like math. Now, that goes over my head. Junior year, and I’m taking algebra for the third time. Who cares if you know what the hell Robert Frost is talking about after high school? Math actually matters.”

“I could help you with algebra.” The words came tumbling out before I could stop them. It was just instinct. Habit. I’d been good at algebra freshman year and I’d helped half my class pass Algebra II last year. I’d offered to help a lot of friends with their math. But Bo Dickinson wasn’t my friend.

I didn’t hang out with girls like Bo.

And she didn’t hang out with girls like me.

“Maybe,” she said. “And I could help you with poetry.”

“Maybe.”

Another long pause while the bus bounced along. The roads in Mursey hadn’t been fixed in a long while. Some hadn’t even been paved yet. On the streets that weren’t dirt or gravel, you still had to deal with huge potholes and uneven concrete.

“Hey, Bo!” a boy yelled from a few seats back. “What’re you doing this weekend?”

Bo didn’t answer.

“Wanna hang out?” the boy asked. “I’ll give you ten bucks and some whiskey if you’ll come over and suck my dick.”

Bo spun around in the seat, almost knocking me into the aisle. “Fuck off, Isaac.”

Isaac Porter. The quarterback. I was surprised to hear him talking that way. He sat in the pew behind us every Sunday with his grandparents. He’d always seemed real polite.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. “You do it for every other guy in town. Why not me? Is my dick too big for your mouth?”

I could hear some of his buddies laughing. I cringed. I wasn’t naive or anything. I’d watched plenty of R-rated movies with Christy and we’d talked about sex and stuff before. But I’d never had a boy talk to me the way Isaac was talking to Bo. Hell, I’d never heard a boy talk to any girl quite like that before.

“Keep telling yourself that, *,” Bo said. “Fucking redneck.”

“All right, well, I’ll just ask your mom, then,” he replied. “She’ll do it for five.”

I thought Bo was gonna climb over the back of the seat then; her sharp elbow jabbed my shoulder as she lunged. But the bus came to a screeching halt, throwing everybody forward and sending Bo slamming backward into the seat in front of us.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine.” She took a minute to right herself while people walked past us, toward the door. “Come on,” she said. “We’re here.”

“You get off at the church, too?”

“Yep.”

I slid out of the seat and Bo followed.

“Bye, Bo,” Isaac called. “See you at my place tonight.”

“I hate the people around here,” Bo said as we stepped off the bus, onto the sidewalk in front of the church. “People like him and Christy—fake motherf*ckers—I hate them so goddamn much.” She paused and took a breath. “Sorry.” I thought she meant about bringing Christy into it, but then she added, “I probably shouldn’t say goddamn in front of the church, huh?”

“Probably not.”

The bus pulled away, and everybody started walking home. But Bo and I just stood there, staring up at the cross above the door. It was big and white, and even I could see it pretty clearly.

“Can I ask you something?” But, again, she didn’t wait for my answer. “Do you believe in all that stuff? God and Jesus and all that?”

“Yeah,” I said, taken aback. “I mean … I think so. I guess I’ve never really thought about whether I believe it or not. What … what about you? Do you believe in it?”

“I want to,” she said. “But then I think … if there is a God, he’s done forgot about the Dickinsons.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

After a second, Bo turned and started walking, and I did, too, my cane clicking on the sidewalk behind her. It was a sunny day, but a little cloudy, which meant it was just the right amount of brightness for me to see at my best. I could make out more details than usual—like the empty kiddy pool in one of the yards we passed and Bo’s short, scrawny frame, slouched as she walked along in front of me.

“You live over here?” I asked.