Generation Dead - 07

by Joseph Talluto

  Sam wished that the driver would just ram the cars out of the way, but the bus’s lack of maneuverability and wide turning radius kept the driver, Wally, from making any progress forward. Within minutes of entering the fray, the bus would quickly become a yellow boulder in the middle of shiny metal rapids that angrily surged around it. And like a boulder, the bus hardly moved an inch. Sam imagined after centuries, the bus would be eroded and the children inside swept away in the insane rush surrounding it.

  “Stop dreaming about your mom naked,” Joey Potts laughed, snapping Sam out of his thoughts. Joey had been Sam’s friend since kindergarten, but that did little to stop Sam’s groaning at Joey’s over-sexualized jokes. Joey’s mind had seemed dirty enough in kindergarten, but now with the boys being thirteen and in eighth grade, Sam imagined that they could shoot an episode of Hoarders there. Every word out of Joey’s mouth had something to do with girls, sex, or both, and while Sam, in truth, thought about those things as well, he hardly had the energy at seven in the morning to talk about it.

  “I wasn’t dreaming about my mom Joey. I was only wondering how long it would be before your palm hair grew in and you went blind,” Sam chuckled.

  “Everyone needs a hobby,” Joey shrugged after checking the inside of his hands for errant hairs.

  The bus lurched forward into a space recently vacated by a maroon Toyota mini- van and began to make a little progress forward. Sam and Joey continued their light-hearted exchange, but fell silent as the bus pulled up to its final stop on the route to Montville. This was both the high and low point of the ride for Sam, and Joey could not help but laugh out loud as he saw the expectant look on his friend’s face.

  The doors swung outward with a gentle hiss and Sam watched silently as she got on to the bus. She was Alice Shah. Her family moved here a year ago after her father had been transferred to the new J&J plant, and while Sam detested most of the changes brought to his town by the drug companies, he had to admit they were not all bad.

  Alice was totally different from all the other girls that Sam had grown up with. The local girls all seemed cut from the same cloth and one-dimensional. Sam honestly had a hard time telling them apart. Alice was taller than most of the girls, but she was not gangly. Rather puberty seemed to be suiting her just fine and her slender silhouette was never that far out of Sam’s mind. More important to Sam, she was smart, but not nerdy, good at sports, but not butch, and above all, Sam loved the way her eyes looked when she casually smiled as they passed in the hall. Her eyes were a shade of brown that Sam had never seen before, something like a cane sugar brown flecked with gold. He had been assigned to her lab group last year, and almost failed science because he spent more time studying Alice’s eyes than the experiments. He would have gladly sat sweaty on a bus for the rest of his teenaged life to get a chance to talk to Alice or simply steal a glance. But above all of the usual teenage boy interests that drew Sam towards Alice, it was her confidence that he loved. She never seemed to be unsure of herself, like so many of their peers. Alice carried herself with a silent strength and she never backed down when a classmate or teacher questioned her. And somehow, to Sam’s amazement, in spite of all of these stunning attributes, Alice never appeared to be arrogant. She was nice to all her classmates and never tried to rub their faces in her attributes. Sam had never had a crush before, but with Alice, he understood perfectly well why it was called just that. Thoughts of her constantly pressed down upon him and weighed on his mind the minute he let it begin to wander.

  Alice knew little of Sam’s feelings or how he thought about her, but she suspected that there might be spark waiting to be fanned. She had always been a good judge of people and could usually figure out what someone was after, even before they said it, but in truth, she had actually never stopped to think that any of the boys would or could take an interest in her. Intelligence and ability had always isolated her from her peers and seemed to intimidate all of the boys. None of the boys seemed capable of speaking to her without making some comment about being a brain or trying to regale her with pointless stories of touchdowns. Alice would have loved for someone to stop trying to put her on some ivory academic pedestal and just ask her what she thought of last night’s episode of The Bad Girls Club or latest Ryan Gosling movie. She longed to be viewed as normal, but her father, the doctor, did not seem capable of accepting normal. Saturdays were not for movies with friends, let alone a boy. No, Alice’s weekends were reserved for enrichment tutoring, traditional dance classes, piano lessons, meetings of the Future Doctors of America Club and traveling soccer. There was no way her parents would have ever let her talk to any of these boys, but in truth, Alice was not really interested in talking to any of the boys in her classes, except for one: Sam Williams.

  Sam was so awkward and would often trip over his words when they worked together in science class last year, but instead of finding it annoying, Alice loved it. She felt Sam was different from the other boys. He never tried to impress Alice with the usual teenage stories of strength or sports prowess. Sam always approached Alice as an equal and treated her like a person, not a challenge to conquer like the other boys or a china doll like her father. Sam was completely different from any boy Alice had ever met, but she could never tell him that. What difference would it make? Her parents would never allow it. So Alice had resigned herself to secretly love Sam Williams and found the ride to school on the humid, stale school bus to be the happiest fifteen minutes of her day, because at least there she could play by her own rules and be her own person. But maybe, just maybe, there was some way she could let Sam know. She had finally convinced her parents that she needed a cell phone, for safety reasons obviously, and they had actually given one to her. But would Sam even want to talk to her? Maybe he was just being nice and she had mistaken it for interest! Unlike many challenges in her life, Alice was unable to solve this one, but she had grown tired of waiting and wondering. She would rather know one way or another, and if she failed, she failed. And as all the thoughts rumbled through Alice’s head, she climbed the stairs into the bus to the happiest part of her day where she could steal glances at Sam or smile at his awkward waves.

  Joey was snapping his fingers next to Sam’s head. “Dude wake the hell up. Jeez man, you stoned or something this morning?”

  Sam slapped Joey’s hand away and took the opening to deliver a devastating titty twister. “My bad man. I couldn’t hear you so I had to turn the volume up.”

  “Bastard,” Joey hissed while rubbing the area of Sam’s attack. “Next time, I’ll give you something to grab with your mouth.”

  “I’ll make sure to bring my tweezers and magnifying glass,” Sam laughed, but cut it short as Alice approached the empty seat in front of him.

  “H-hey Alice,” Sam stammered and instantly tried to cover up, “You, uh ready for that test today in science?” Smooth, Sam internally chided himself. Why the hell couldn’t he just talk to her like he did in class? Why was it so difficult here? And as if in response to his unspoken questions, Joey chimed in.

  “Hey Alice love what you’re doing with your hair,” he smiled obviously content with his operating skills.

  Alice smirked briefly at Joey and turned her attention back towards Sam, “Yeah Sam, I guess I am, but you get that stuff so much better than I do. I really wish we could have studied together or something.” Alice knew that half of what she had just said was a complete lie; she was top of the class for every subject, but she really did wish Sam would ask her to study with him. It was the only way her parents would let her see him.

  Sam blushed, “That probably would’ve helped me more than you. Well, I’ll see you in class.”

  Alice started to speak, but stopped herself, “Yeah, see you fifth Sam.” As she turned to continue down the aisle, a folded square of paper slipped from her stack of books and lazily wafted towards Sam.

  Sam’s eye’s widened, maybe there was a God and this was his way of telling Sam to go for it. Maybe this was fate giving h
im a push towards Alice. Almost reflexively, Sam’s arm shot out to grab the errant sheet of loose-leaf from the middle of the aisle. As Sam started to lean back into his seat, a heavy push caught his arm and propelled him face first onto the dirty, rubber-ridged aisle. Before Sam knew what was going on, something huge crashed down on top of him and a collective gasp echoed through the bus.

  Sam rolled over trying to see what had just landed on him while still clutching Alice’s paper, but before he could see for himself, he had his answer.

  “You dumb shit,” an overly deep voice growled. Sam closed his eyes for a second and wished he were anywhere other than where he currently was. Of all the people for him to trip, literally an entire busload to choose from, and it had to Chris Kelly.

  Chris Kelly was in the same grade as Sam, but that was where all similarities ceased. Chris had been left back numerous times, so while many of his classmates were dealing with the onset of pubescent awkwardness, Chris had moved into the deep-voiced, thinly bearded, angry phase of life known as full blown teenagehood. And while Sam was not a small or sickly kid, he was eclipsed by the height and mass of Chris, all of which presently sat on top of him.

  “Hey Chris, sorry man. I didn’t see you there,” Sam offered apologetically.

  “You tripped me,” Chris said somewhere between an accusation and a question. He seemed slightly perplexed by the current situation, having gotten used to his peers steering wide of him, but the inquisitive expression on his face quickly passed and a cloud of red anger seeped across. “You friggin’ tripped me Williams?” He shouted as he grabbed Sam by the collar and hefted him from the floor.

  “Dude, it was totally an accident,” Joey tried to interject, but only succeeded in getting his face palmed and being pushed back into the seat.

  Sam knew what was next, but tried to smooth it over, “Chris, my bad. I’m clumsy. Total accident. Never happen again.”

  At this moment, Wally caught a glimpse of the situation in his angled safety mirror. “Hey you two stop screwing around. You wanna slow dance, save it for Saturday night.” Sam winced at Wally’s remark knowing it would do nothing to assuage Chris’s anger.

  Chris’s grip tightened and he pulled Sam closer to his gritted teeth. “Later,” he hissed as spittle flecked his chapped lips and then he released Sam and made his way to his honorary spot in the back of the bus.

  “Shit,” Sam muttered as he slumped down into his seat next to Joey. In that moment, Sam was sure that both fate and God must be real, and that both must absolutely hate him.

  ***

  The school day seemed to slow down and stretch, painfully extending every minute. And while Sam was almost thankful that the day seemed to be delaying his meeting with Chris Kelly, he almost wished he could just get the beating over with and move on.

  The bell chimed its two rounds of a three-tone synthetic xylophone song; the students would almost reflexively fill in the missing third round while they moved down the hall. As Sam moved through the seething mass of students, he wondered if maybe there was some Pavlovian reason, known only to the administration, that the bells never seemed to finish, only so that the students could.

  The rush of students in the halls pushed Sam closer to his next class and he instinctively moved to the right and slipped out of the flow and into the classroom. Alice turned as Sam walked in and smiled, but something about her smile struck Sam. She looked almost apologetic, almost sorry to see him. Had he really made that big of a fool of himself on the bus earlier today? Or maybe Alice was just offering an early condolence for the injuries he was sure to have later on. But Sam tried to put this out of his head and slowly picked his way through the minefield of backpacks to take his place at the lab table across from Alice. Sam tried to put the awkwardness of Alice’s hello out of his mind and concentrate on the fact that he had a chem test. No teenage boy that had ever walked the Earth, could pass on a chance for a good round of self-loathing over some mistake made in the presence of a cute girl, and Sam was no different. His ears burned with shame and he could feel the prickly heat dancing up and down his neck and back. He was sure that his typically fair complexion had transitioned nicely into one resembling an over-ripe strawberry.

  The other students filled in around Sam, the test was distributed and he blindly circled answers and filled in equations. Failing this test was not going to be the worst part of his day, but Sam still chided himself for not being able to focus. He kept glancing over his shoulder at Alice only to find that she was staring back at him too, and every time accidental eye contact was made, she would quickly offer the same sad smile and look quickly away. Each time this gauche social dance played out, Sam could feel another piece of his self-image shrivel and die.

  “Way to go this morning!” he chided himself internally, “Really a good way to get her to notice you by tripping some cro-mag and letting him sit on you!” Now Alice’s smile, something that used to make Chris’s guts turn to melted butter, was causing him more pain than anything Chris had planned for him.

  The same half- hearted tone resounded and before Sam knew it, chemistry was over and he was moving one more period towards his inevitable beating at the hands of Chris Kelly. Head down, hands in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, Sam moved towards the door, but something in the pocket brushed his hands. It was the folded piece of loose leaf that Alice had dropped on the bus. With everything that had happened, Sam forgot to give Alice back her work. “Even that you can’t do right!” Sam’s angry interior voice scolded, but his berating was cut short by the fact that Alice seemed to be waiting by the door, and not only that she seemed to be looking at Sam, she must have known that he had the paper. Sam figured he had probably kept her from handing in some homework, something she never missed, and now she was waiting to rescue it from his sweaty grip. Clumsiness aside, Sam figured he really had no chance now.

  “Hey Sam,” Alice said hesitantly, “Did you, uh, find um, a paper on the bus this morning?”

  Without thinking, Sam blurted out, “Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have given it back so you could hand it in.” His hands shot out of his hoodie pocket and thrust the now wrinkled and creased square of paper towards Alice. Her tan skin turned a shade of crimson and she started to speak, but was cut short by Sam’s attempt at damage control

  “Just tell me what teacher the homework was for and I’ll tell them I had it. That it wasn’t your fault.” A look of confusion clouded Alice’s face.

  “Uh, Sam, no that’s ok,” she paused, “You didn’t look at the paper, did you?”

  Completely confused Sam shook his head dumbly, “Nah, I didn’t. I was gonna give it back, but, well, you know. I’m sure you saw.” He frowned.

  Alice decided to take control of this situation and pushed Sam’s hand and the folded square of paper back towards him. “Yeah, I saw. He’s such an idiot. But, um, maybe you should hold onto that.”

  Even more confused than before, Sam’s mouth hung slightly open, “Wha…?”

  Alice smiled, but this time the awkward, apologetic one was gone. In its place was the gut melting radiant smile that Sam looked forward to every morning.

  “You’re literate, right Sam?” Alice said jokingly, “I mean I’m gonna feel really bad if we’re in the same classes and you can’t even read.”

  Sam felt as if he had entered an alternate universe where another Sam and another Alice were having a completely different conversation and he was totally lost.

  “Yeah,” he said as his brow knitted together, “I read, I mean I can read.”

  Alice’s eyes brightened with a hint of mischief, “Glad to hear it. Maybe you should read that.” And with that, her smile brightened even more and she ducked into the throng of students surging towards their next class.

  Numbly Sam unfolded the square of paper. He had no idea what had just occurred or what Alice was even talking about.

  The paper unfolded and with it some sense of reality crept back in; Sam looked down to see what Alice wanted him t
o read. Why would she want him to read her homework? Did she really think he was that dumb? That he needed to copy hers? But his questions were cut short as he looked down to see a short phrase written in the middle of the paper in Alice’s precise looping script.

  There written carefully on the paper Alice had written:

  Sam,

  Call me sometime. I’d really like to talk to you more than just on the bus.

  Alice

  And there underneath her name was her phone number.

  Now Sam was sure that he fallen into some alternate universe. There was no way that Alice actually liked him. No way he was that lucky, but in spite of his attempts to prove his inner fears of loser status, there it was written clear as day.

  The bell sounded and Sam was now late for gym class, which meant running laps, but he could not have cared less. Chris Kelly be damned, as far as he was concerned this was now the best day of Sam’s life.

  ***

  The usually glib banter that passed as morning news reporting was somewhat more reserved. The anchors on CNN and MSNBC put aside their potshots and celebrity reports to relay a story breaking on the BBC. Even Fox News abandoned its typical apoplectic diatribe on the Left to run the story.

  “Outbreaks of illness are currently being reported throughout the United Kingdom, as well as all major cities in France, Germany and Spain. Unconfirmed reports are coming in from as far as China and Australia, but the true scope of the situation is yet to be determined.” The reporter paused and wiped her brow, “Very little is known, but it appears that a virus or disease of some variety, attacks the nervous and circulatory systems resulting in sudden stroke or cardiac arrest. Victims complained of flu-like symptoms, reporting complaints such as headache, nausea and fever. It is recommended that anyone displaying these symptoms contact a relative, friend or lift company to provide them with transport to the nearest hospital. The authorities are asking that citizens do not attempt to drive themselves in the event of an incident while operating a vehicle.”