Tales From Bus 22

It was over wine and charcuterie at my best friend’s house that I realized perhaps some of the stories I have are worth sharing.

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It was late. I was with Grace, my best friend since third grade, and our mothers. We do this often — wine, snacks and gossip. We were in the Morgans’ living room when Bonnie came in. She’s Grace’s grandmother.

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Bonnie was a substitute teacher at our high school. Grace and I spent a lot of our time outside of school in the Victorian-style bed-and-breakfast she owns. During our little kiki, we found ourselves talking about the years when Grace and I rode to school on the bus.

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The stories that Grace and I shared were some that our mothers had heard time and time again. Bonnie, however, had not heard these tales from Bus 22, and she was thoroughly entertained.

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“Chloe,” she said to me. “Some day you should write a book about all of these stories.”

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“I will for you, Bonnie,” I replied.

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Grace’s family has been just as supportive and encouraging about my journalism career as my own. They’ve become a bonus family to me. Bonnie is no exception. She always tells me and my mother that I’m going places, that one day she’ll get to say she knew me before I was famous.

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I don’t know that I’ll ever be famous, and what I’m about to share isn’t a book, but my time on Bus 22 was more than some moments of degeneracy on a dingy, yellow school bus.

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—

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Grace and I started to ride Bus 22 in the fall of 2015, when we were in seventh grade.

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For a little while, I sat up front. The high schoolers sat in the back. It was immediately clear that middle school shrimps like myself were not permitted back there. And, quite frankly, I did not want to sit with them.

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The high schoolers, even on that first day, showed all of their nastiness and cruelty — something that would become normal and expected. But, somehow, I still found myself in the back at Grace’s side.

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We were attached at the hip. Seating worked in our favor: We had to sit with kids of the same sex — a rule that was established after a girl was caught doing something inappropriate with a boy at the front of the bus.

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Grace has two older siblings: Ian and Chloe. I suppose there must have been an unspoken rule about making exceptions for younger siblings at the back of the bus because no one protested our presence.

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Maybe they didn’t need to protest, though, because we made easy targets to pick on. Hell, Grace’s own siblings teased her ruthlessly and, in her words, treated her like a ragdoll while growing up. I was a timid, quiet kid, so of course I made an easy target.

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Regardless, Grace and I felt cool for being allowed to sit in the back. It was like being let into an exclusive club — you’re either in, know someone or you’re out.

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What happened on Bus 22 is basically “Lord of the Flies” if the kids were stuck on a dirty school bus instead of an island. On those 20-minute rides to and from school, it was complete bedlam.

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I have yet to see such nasty displays of humanity as I did on that damn bus. White kids saying the n-word, throwing homophobic slurs around, physically hurting one another and more. And somehow, these turned out to be the most memorable parts of my middle school years.

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—

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“Jew.” “Six-foot-tall dyke.” Those were the names Grace and I had earned from Ben. 

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Apparently, according to Ben, having brown hair and a slightly long nose was enough to qualify one as a Jew, and I met those credentials.

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And Grace, clad in her baggy basketball shorts, oversized men’s T-shirt and a measly attempt at a slicked back ponytail, was always easily mistaken for a lesbian — no surprise then that the older kids on the bus started calling her “Gacie” (pronounced Gay-cee — a bit of a low blow, if you ask me).

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“I bet by the time you graduate, you’re gonna be a six-foot-tall dyke, Gacie,” Ben once told her.

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Why had he predicted she would grow more than a foot taller within the next few years? I don’t know, but the name stuck. How ironic is it, then, that by the time we graduated, Grace had not grown to be six-feet-tall, and I turned out to be the dyke?

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Ben had a way of naming people. Once, he and Ian told Grace and me about a girl who had contracted gonorrhea, also known as the “Gonorrhea Goblin.”

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Grace and I quickly adopted Ben’s way of naming people. It was funny when he did it, so if we started calling people names, it’d make us funny, too, right?

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Well, no — not when the names you come up with are simply the names of cartoon characters that the person loosely resembles. In a failed attempt at matching Ben’s comedic prowess, we began to call Evan “Baljeet" from “Phineas and Ferb,” and Micah became “Fregley” from “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” Those names never caught on.

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We had to step up our game. There was a boy who rode our bus — Blake, but I no longer remember his last name — who reeked of body odor amongst other pungent, indescribable scents. Grace and I aptly dubbed him “Onion Boy.” It was a rather lame name, especially considering we would later attend school with a kid called “Stinky Mike,” but it did stick.

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Perhaps the most memorable thing Onion Boy contributed to Bus 22 was a stream of vomit. One day, on our way home from school, all seemed to be well until there was a commotion from the middle section of the bus.

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This caught the attention of us in the back. Within a matter of seconds, we were met with a pile of vomit sliding down the aisle as the bus drove uphill. There sat Onion Boy in his seat, smirking and laughing as if he was proud of himself. This sparked an instant outrage, and a slew of insults were hurled his way.

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“Are you kidding?!”

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“You’re fucking nasty!”

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“What is wrong with you?!”

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This didn’t faze Onion Boy, but it did grab the attention of our bus driver, Steve.

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After a few moments of waiting and several shouts of annoyance, Steve reappeared with a bag of something. He made his way to the aisle and poured some sort of sawdust absorbent over Onion Boy’s mess.

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“Just walk over it when we get to our stop,” he said.

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Steve should have known better. There was no way in hell any of us were stepping in vomit, especially with our good shoes on. As we made our way to our stop, we devised a plan.

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Once the bus stopped at the familiar spot across from the church on Main Street, we jumped into action. We opened the fire escape at the back of the bus and, despite Steve’s lackluster protests, jumped out into the road one by one — except for Chloe Morgan. Chloe was short enough to clamber over the seats on all fours, and she did exactly that until she reached the front of the bus.

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Much to the confusion of the line of cars behind the bus, the lot of us briefly chatted before dispersing and making our respective walks home. Just another day on the bus, another story to mention to my mom when I got home.

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—

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There was a kid on our bus named Matthew. He and his sister, Charissa, were the children of a teacher at our school. Matt was one of the only out gay kids at Williamson High School, so people gave him a hard time.

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While he never seemed to let it affect him, I always felt sorry for the way people treated Matt, especially on the bus. Sure, he could be annoying and say rude things himself, but did that warrant people calling him homophobic slurs every day?

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No one spoke up for him, myself included. I was far too reserved, and for my own benefit, I stayed as far away from queer-related discussions on that bus as I could.

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You see, around the time I was in eighth grade, I realized I was a lesbian. It was something I was always subconsciously aware of, but I didn’t fully acknowledge it until I was 14. It felt like a dark, heavy secret — something that I was convinced I would take to the grave.

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Matt was always kind to me. There was an odd, unspoken sense of camaraderie between the two of us, and maybe that’s because he could tell what I was going through.

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Queer people are good at scouting one another out. Then again, it could have just been obvious. When I came out in my adulthood, my mother, brother and Grace all said they knew.

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Regardless, I was deep in the closet at 14, and seeing the way that the kids on my bus spoke about queer people was enough to make me fear even being perceived as such. Instead, Grace took all the “dyke” flack, and perhaps she did this because she knew what I was trying to hide.

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Our dynamic has always been this way. Grace was (and still is) the loud, take-no-shit friend. She was an athlete and said whatever came to her mind. She would come to my defense at the drop of a hat.

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Meanwhile, I was far more meek and awkward. I spent my free time indulging in online fandoms, drawing, writing and reading. But I’ve always been the one to talk sense into Grace and keep her from doing something stupid.

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We made quite the odd pairing, especially because Grace considered kids in our grade with the same hobbies and interests as mine to be weird.

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The way the kids on Bus 22 regarded anyone they even deemed as queer was enough to keep me on guard at all times. Take Grace’s “six-foot-tall dyke” name, for instance. Every time someone would call her by that name, I would silently pray to myself that they wouldn’t turn it onto me, that they wouldn’t figure me out.

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There was a girl who rode our bus named Libby. She was quite a character and was prone to random bursts of anger.

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Libby had short, dyed hair (purple, if I remember correctly) and wore glasses. Someone once told us at the back of the bus that her real name was “Libigail.” I don’t know if that’s even true, but we still called her that just to piss her off.

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Because of her appearance and demeanor, Libby was also constantly called names. Even in the middle of an infamous outburst, Ben shouted, “Yeah, lesbian rights!”

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So I did my best to remain discreet, to never give myself away. I played along when the older kids would call someone gay. I stayed silent when they were hostile towards Matt. I feared that if anyone even jokingly called me gay, I would face a never-ending stream of scrutiny.

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I was in enemy territory, so to speak. Flying under the radar. I like to think of it like that scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion disguise themselves as Winkie Guards.

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No one could tell me apart from the rest. I wanted to keep it that way.

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—

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Amidst the shenanigans, hostility, physical violence and occasional sexual acts, you may be wondering, “Where the hell was the bus driver during all of this?”

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Trust me, he was well aware of what was happening on Bus 22. Steve, formally known as Mr. Steve by passengers, was a pastor at a local Baptist church, and I believe he still preaches to this day. I think he tried to be more of a friend to us than a bus driver — maybe because he was intimidated by the rowdy bunch of teenagers in the back.

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It was easy to manipulate Steve into doing whatever we wanted or letting stuff slide. Steve even got in on the bullying. If there was something we wanted him to say over the intercom, he would. Sometimes, he would say things completely unprovoked. He once randomly went over the intercom and asked if anyone would like to play Firetruck with him.

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Firetruck is a game where one person puts their hand on another’s inner thigh and gradually moves it up until the other person says “red light.” While the elementary schoolers up front had no clue what Steve was talking about, you can probably imagine how those in the back reacted.

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“What the fuck?!”

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“Steve, do you even know what that means?!”

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And the most commonly used phrase towards our dear bus driver, whether he was speaking over the intercom or playing church music: “Fuck off, Steve!”

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Steve’s negligence would continue, but eventually, working cameras were installed on the bus. This was bad news for us in the back. We were being watched and listened to, and now we could face consequences.

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The cameras caused a sense of paranoia for about a day before things returned back to normal. Once again, people were up and moving and throwing things while the bus was running, and once again, the n-word was freely tossed around while kids screamed at one another.

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Unsurprisingly, this caught the attention of the bigwigs at Williamson — our principal and dean of students.

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One day, we were about to embark on the journey home. We flocked to the back and took our usual seats, but as the other buses began to leave, good old 22 stayed put. Kids began shouting at Steve, but the commotion quickly fell silent once Mr. Butterfield (nicknamed “Butterballs” by none other than Ben), the dean, stepped onto the bus.

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Mr. Butterfield proceeded to scream at us for a lengthy amount of time while Steve drove the bus around the school. We muffled our laughter and concealed our smirks as his voice drilled into our ears.

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He also informed us that Bus 22 had been highlighted as the worst in the school district. I don’t know why he would tell us this because it only amused us even more, and I think it only made people want to act worse.

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And oh so casually, I went home that day and told my mother about our bus’s new title. It didn’t occupy too much of my mind at the time. I was too busy rushing through my homework so I could spend an ungodly amount of time on my phone.

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When I was off the bus and out of school, I spent the majority of my time on sites like Instagram, Tumblr and Wattpad. These sites were homes to several of the fandoms I was a part of.

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I spent so much time scrolling through Tumblr and Instagram to look at fan art. I spent an embarrassing amount of time reading and writing fanfiction on Wattpad. These spaces were like my own little escapes, especially after witnessing such nasty displays of bigotry on the bus.

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I didn’t realize it at the time, but these fandom spaces helped me come to terms with myself. I mean, I didn’t ever say to myself, “OK, I’m a lesbian,” until I saw Kim Walker in the original “Heathers” film, which I discovered through the musical.

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And while I spent so many years being afraid to tell people who I really am, I was able to feel at ease amongst others like myself. All I had to do was pull my phone from my pocket.

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—

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Up until the night that Bonnie told me I should write a book, I never considered sharing my stories from Bus 22 with anyone unless I was telling them as silly anecdotes — because that’s all they were to me. But for some reason, her suggestion stirred something within me. 

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I didn’t think my few years spent on Bus 22 would remain some of my most memorable experiences from middle school. But they’ve stuck with me more than any dances, class events or field trips ever have.

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Those years on the bus are far behind us. Grace, Kylee, Chloe and Libby all have babies now. Ian has been serving in the military since he graduated. Ben moved away from Pennsylvania and I haven’t heard a word about him since. Matt is no longer Matt but Madi. I’m in my senior year of college, and I didn’t officially come out until I was 21.

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It’s strange, the way we had our own little motley crew at the back of the bus; we started and ended our school days together. Now, I only keep in touch with a handful of my fellow passengers, and I have no clue where the majority of them ended up.

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I find myself wondering if these stories have stuck with them the same way that they have with me. Do they wonder where everyone else is and how they’re doing? Do they even remember the names of the kids in the back?

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I don’t know. Maybe those years on the bus are cemented in my mind because I was finding myself amidst the chaos of adolescence, and the backdrop just so happened to be worn leather seats, dirty windows and a ragtag, unhinged group of kids who were also coming into their own.