Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous

by J. B. Cheaney

  It must have slipped out while Spencer was pounding him. And then…two possibilities—it got kicked to one side or somebody picked it up. Some boy, probably. Some white boy.

  He isn’t the kind to resort to violence, but he might have a few punches left if that’s what it took. First, he’d search the bus—after asking permission, like a nice quiet boy. Then, if the search turned up zero, he’d go house to house in Hidden Acres and quietly ask who has his eagle. That’s how much he wants it back.

  The junior high kids are last off in the morning and first on in the afternoon, so only a handful of them have to wait while Matthew searches the bus and finds nothing but candy wrappers. He feels Bender’s eyes on him as Bender heads for his assigned seat but returns no one’s gaze until Mrs. B stops at the elementary school. Then he stares Spencer down, packing a message in his eyes: You’d better not have my eagle, or I’ll hurt you bad.

  First a tour of the neighborhood. He’ll start with Bender, whose house is closest.

  But in one of those surprises Steven Hawking might call a singularity, Bender starts with him. After Matthew has walked home from the bus and said hello to his grandmother and stuck a couple of frozen eggrolls into the microwave, his doorbell rings.

  “Who that?” hollers Granny from the family room where she’s watching TV. Doorbells ringing are pretty rare around here, unless it’s a package delivery.

  But instead of a package, it’s Bender, with a book in one hand. In the other is a pewter belt buckle with an eagle on it. Holding it up like a police badge, Bender asks, “Is this yours?”

  Matthew tries to speak and swallow at the same time and ends up nodding.

  “Where’d you get it?” is Bender’s next question.

  “I—um—found it?”

  “Where?”

  “Why?”

  “You first.”

  “No, you.”

  Bender, who has been leaning in like a bulldog, leans back. “It’s cold out here. How about I come in?”

  Matthew can’t think of any reason why not. Passing the family room on the way to the kitchen, he says, “That’s my grandmother.” All the intro he means to make, but Bender stops, makes eye contact, and says, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Bender Thompson.”

  Granny clearly doesn’t expect such politeness from a neighborhood boy, and Matthew doesn’t expect it of this boy. “Bender,” the old lady repeats. “What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name, ma’am,” Bender says. “My real full name is Charles Bender Thompson. Like my brother’s is John Thornton Thompson, after my dad’s grandfather.”

  “They’s some fancy-sounding names,” Granny says. “Nice to make yo’ acquaintance. Now get along. I got things to do.” She returns her attention to the TV.

  In the kitchen, Matthew nods toward his plate with one and a half eggrolls on it. “You, uh, hungry?”

  “Enough with the hospitality.” Bender hikes himself up on one of the bar stools and slaps the book on the counter, laying the buckle on top. “Where did you find this?”

  Matthew is still trying to catch up to the last three minutes. “Remember…when we all had to get off the bus so you could catch Igor’s snake?”

  “Sure I remember! That was only two weeks ago!”

  Time is relative, Matthew thinks of saying. But doesn’t. “I found it then.”

  Bender straightens up like a dog on the scent. “You mean by the bus shed?”

  “Yeah. Behind it.”

  “Anybody see you pick it up?”

  “Spencer. He followed me.”

  “Spencer? Baby Einstein? Does this have anything to do with why he knocked you down on the bus?”

  Matthew shakes his head. Picking up the pewter eagle and tucking it in his pocket, he says, “Your turn.”

  Bender hesitates before pulling a piece of newspaper from between the pages of the book. Matthew knows what it is before it’s unfolded, of course.

  “Last fall,” Bender begins, “I met this guy. Never mind how. I was sort of lost, and he gave me a ride home in a pickup truck.” He stops, as though Matthew should say something here. But Matthew can’t think of what to say. “One of the first things I noticed about him was that thing, with the eagle? It was on his belt. I’m sure of it.”

  “Where were you?”

  “It was so foggy I couldn’t tell where I was when he picked me up, and I was too, uh, disoriented to clock the distance on the truck’s odometer when he dropped me off at home. But now I’d bet anything I met him on Farm Road 152. I even think I know who he is.”

  Matthew has never thought much about Farm Road 152 one way or another, so Bender’s words don’t have the effect he obviously means them to have. But there’s a curious energy radiating from an unknown source, like when virtual particles can only be observed by what’s happening around them. The index finger of Bender’s right hand is tapping one corner of the book. One word will release the energy, and after a pause, Matthew decides to say it. “Who?”

  The cover springs open; pages rattle by. It’s a high school yearbook: flashing faces, black-and-white snapshots, club photos of teens in rows. Suddenly the pages stop—at a white space headed by the word SENIORS, and under the heading, an enlarged reproduction of the same eagle in the newspaper and on the belt buckle.

  “Oh,” says Matthew.

  “Right,” says Bender. “Look at the initials.” He turns the book around and points to three letters on the lower right. JSH. The artist?

  “Whose yearbook is this?” Matthew asks.

  “My mom’s. You may have noticed—she graduated in 1985.”

  “Why would I notice that?”

  Bender sighs, picks up the newspaper clipping, and points to a name. “That’s my mom. Myra Bender Thompson. Only Myra is her middle name. In high school, she went by her first name, Anne, and I guess her friends called her Annie. I never knew that. After seeing that letter in the newspaper, I hunted all over the house for this yearbook. It was in a box in the garage.”

  He’s turning pages again. The class of ’85 scrolls by, three or four to a page, each in a setting or pose that was supposed to indicate how they saw themselves or wanted others to see them. “There’s my mom.” Bender pauses briefly at a studio shot of a girl lying on her stomach, arms crossed and chin propped on a football. Beside the picture is a long list of her activities and clubs, followed by a quote that he has no time to read. “Cheerleader,” Bender remarks, already moving on. “It figures. But look.” He stops, flattens the pages, and swivels the book around again so Matthew can get the full effect.

  The picture shows a young man in a button-down shirt and hands straight at his sides and heavy horn-rimmed glasses—exactly like the class nerd. Except that he’s standing on his head. The picture is slightly blurry, as though a friend snapped it just before he fell over. Matthew’s eyes go to the name beside the picture: Jason Stanley Hall. “JSH?” Matthew asks.

  “The only one,” Bender replies. “The only one of the seniors with those initials.”

  The boy had no credits by his name, only a quote: A legend in his own time. “What does that mean?”

  “Some stupid thing they do every year. The class of ’85 was supposed to write their own epitaphs.”

  “Epitaphs?”

  “What they’d put on their tombstones. My mom’s is Crashed and burned. Creepy, huh? Typical overachiever. But here’s the thing…”

  Bender hesitates so long that Matthew steals a look at him. He’s gazing at the upside-down boy (who would be right-side-up for him) as though he’d found his long-lost dad. Finally he says, “This is the guy who picked me up on Farm Road 152. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why? Did he stand on his head?”

  “Good one. No, I just got a close look at him. Older now, but this is the guy.”

 
Matthew leans closer to the picture, and something clicks. “You mean, ‘he who shall remain nameless’?”

  “That’s what I think too!”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “Okay.” Eagerly Bender starts turning pages again, stopping at points of interest like a tour guide. “He doesn’t show up in any more of the pictures, just the stuff he did. Crazy stuff. Like here—principal’s car covered with saran wrap. Everybody knows who did it. And here—counselor’s office packed full of balloons. Must have taken all night to do that. Oh yeah, and Murray High’s track studded with toothpicks, and live turtles in the wastebaskets. This guy was awesome.”

  “But…he went too far?” Matthew guessed.

  “Yeah.” Bender paused. “That’s the missing piece, and I think it had something to do with graduation. Because there aren’t any graduation pictures—not a single one. Every yearbook I’ve ever seen has graduation pictures—that’s what it’s all about. Getting out. But not here. And look at this.”

  Bender turns to the personalities section and flattens the page at Most likely to succeed. “Here’s my mom, of course. But look who the guy is.”

  Matthew stares at the grinning couple under the south portico of the high school. The girl is standing on the boy’s shoulders with her arms raised, as though holding up the roof. He reads: Anne Bender. Troy Pasternak. That name sounds familiar.

  “Yeah,” Bender is saying. “That Troy Pasternak.”

  “Which Troy Pasternak?”

  “His name is on the gazebo, remember?”

  “He died?”

  “No. I asked my mom—who doesn’t know I found her yearbook. She said he was hurt in an accident that messed him up. For life. He’s in a nursing home somewhere.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “She didn’t want to talk about it. And if I asked a bunch of questions, she’d get suspicious. She’s been…real hard to live with lately. But I’m thinking it still hurts, because from the yearbook, it looks like they were an item.”

  After a moment, Matthew says, “Weird.”

  “Totally.” Bender feathers the pages back to the beginning, like years in reverse, and slams the book shut. “Like, if she married him, I wouldn’t be here. And she didn’t. And I’ve got a real strong hunch it’s because of JSH.”

  “A hunch is not evidence,” Matthew corrected.

  “I know, but things are adding up. I asked Jay what happened to his uncle, and all he knows is that he fell down some steps at graduation. Says his grandmother cries every time Troy’s name comes up, so it doesn’t come up much. And when I met the guy on the road, he was edgy. Like he didn’t want anybody to know he was there. Like he had a past.” Bender flips back to the boy standing on his head and stares intently at him. “I’ve got to know.”

  A long silence draws out, making Matthew feel he ought to say something. “What about newspaper archives? Did you look online?”

  Bender shakes his head. “I’ve been grounded from the computer. Two weeks, just for tossing a shrunken head on the bus. Can’t anybody take a joke?”

  Matthew can’t help but grin. Not at Bender, but at a spot on the wall behind him, where there’s an imaginary door he decides to open. Nodding toward the house computer set up in the dining room, he says, “You can use mine.”

  They say you can find anything on the Internet, but that’s only partially true. Newspaper archives going back twenty years are available only for a price, and that price would include somebody’s mother killing them once she found out they’d used her credit card. They search for Jason Stanley Hall and Troy Lawrence Pasternak but turn up only genealogical records, a college basketball player in New Hampshire, and a theater director in Spokane. They’ve about run out of ideas when Matthew’s mother comes home.

  She covers her surprise at Matthew having company. But surprise is harder to conceal when she invites Bender to dinner, and Bender accepts. Since it’s Granny’s night to cook, they have black-eyed peas and cornbread, which Bender scarfs down like a brother, with perfect manners. Granny takes a liking to him. Even insists he stay while she tries out one of her new stories.

  Matthew is used to sitting on the floor in a darkened room while Uthisha the Zulu Storyteller, in native dress, moans and wails through a tale of how the zebra got its stripes or why the Zulu people are so tall and strong. Her stories are based on real African folktales, but she juices them up with a little jive talk or hip-hop rhythm. To Bender, it’s all new, though; sitting beside him, Matthew feels the rock-solid attention, the chuckle at a joke, the gasp of surprise. He is drawn into his grandmother’s act like never before and has to wonder why he can hear it better through someone who’s still pretty much a stranger to him.

  “What was that all about?” his mother demands when the front door finally closes behind their visitor, a little after eight.

  “What was what all about?”

  “Is this kid your new best friend?”

  Matthew feels for the eagle in his pocket and gazes at the door. “Don’t you want me to have friends?”

  She sighs. “I want you to have the kind of friend who knows when it’s time to go home.”

  “But you invited him to dinner. And Granny invited—”

  “Never mind. Let’s go wash up.”

  But while rinsing dishes for Matthew to stack in the dishwasher, she can’t let it alone. “I wish I could figure out his game.”

  “What game?” Matthew asks, studying a smudge of butter on a plate.

  “He’s sly. I don’t believe his Mr. Manners act for a minute. And what’s with all that yammering on about his brother?”

  Matthew shrugs. Then he realizes they knew a lot about Thorn now and very little about Bender.

  Mama wipes her hands and hangs up the dishtowel. “I’d watch that one if I were you.”

  • • •

  Next morning, the temperature gauge reads fifteen; the littles are huddled with their parents in steamy cars by the gazebo, and the big kids wait until the last minute to dash across the crunchy grass and get in line. Bender boards last, stopping beside Spencer. “Did you do it yet?”

  Spencer squints up at him. “Do what?”

  “Apologize to Matthew for knocking him down.”

  Spencer’s shifty eyes glance out the window. “It was an accident. And he punched me first.”

  “Any time, Bender,” Mrs. B calls from the front.

  “I’m not done,” Bender says to Spencer and unhurriedly takes his seat.

  Spencer whirls around, his glance raking Matthew before settling on Bender. “Not done with what?”

  “Are you messing with him?” Matthew asks later—much later, when Bender is over at his house and they’re trying to dig up more online information on J. S. Hall and the class of ’85.

  “Messing with little Spencer?” Bender’s eyes widen innocently. “Me?”

  “Might’ve been an accident, like he said. And I did hit him first.”

  “No way it was an accident. His flinty eyes’ve been digging holes in you for weeks.”

  “Guess I never noticed.”

  “Well, you ought to start noticing things, dude, before you get run over by a truck.” Bender points to the screen. “Try typing in ‘high school graduation pranks.’”

  “That would give us a million hits. And it would be everybody else’s tricks, not the one we’re looking for.”

  “So what? Might give us some good ideas.”

  Matthew sighs, already a little bored with the project. In his opinion, people are not as interesting as astral bodies. His fingers tap restlessly over the keys before clicking the drop-down menu on the browser bar. “Okay, but first—this is my favorite website right now: Oxford University’s astrophysics page. Outstanding animations.”
He clicks a link.

  Bender leans forward reluctantly and stares at the flaming star on the screen as it burns from white to yellow to deep orange, finally collapsing to a lump of matter so dense that nothing can escape from it, not even light. Little by little, Bender’s attention is captured; first he looks, then reads, then rereads, then looks again with growing comprehension. Matthew doesn’t see this, since he’s also staring at the screen. But somehow he feels it.

  “So that’s what a black hole is,” Bender says at last.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Weird. That’s my family.”

  “Your what?”

  “My brother. Thorn’s always been squat in the middle of everything, like a big fat sun, sucking up all the oxygen. Even when he went away to college. But…”

  After a brief silence, Matthew clicks the replay button, and the star bursts to brilliant white again. “But what?”

  Bender’s voice sounds dry and crinkly. “We went on this family ski trip over Christmas? First vacation in four years. It was a big deal because Thorn hasn’t been home since June—he did this hotshot political internship in DC over the summer. So the folks were all excited and happy—Dad didn’t build anything all month, and Mom hardly picked any fights with him—and Thorn met us at Breckinridge just like they’d planned, except…when he got off the plane, we didn’t recognize him.”

  The dying star on the screen pulses through its orange phase. “Why not?”

  “He looked like a homeless guy. He’d let his hair grow and he hadn’t shaved in a week and his beard was coming in all stubbly. My mom walked right by him before he called to her. We went to dinner right after that, and he told us he’d dropped out of Dartmouth. Just dropped out—in the middle of his junior year. Said he didn’t know what he wanted anymore but he had to get away, go find himself. He actually said that.”

  Go find myself, Matthew thought. What would that be like? How would you know where to start looking?