Summer on the Short Bus (16 page)

My hands are growing sweatier and my patience thinner with every step. Being sandwiched between these two on a perfectly good Thursday was definitely not on my playlist for this summer.

“Oh . . .” Claire pipes up several minutes later. “You have your period, right?”

“What?”

“It's okay. Girls are bitches on their period. My big sister said she'd kill me once.”

Claire getting a death threat. There's a shocker.

“I don't have my period, Claire,” I say through gritted teeth. “And what kind of question is that anyway? It's none of your business. Or yours”—I glare down at Meredith—“I'm having a bad day. That's it. Just a
really
bad day. Now please stop talking about it.”

They both go absolutely silent, and for the first time in twenty minutes I can actually hear myself think. Apparently letting them know who's the boss is all they needed.

“I know!” Claire says out of nowhere. “You need Midol! I have some in my bag.”

“I looooooove Midol.”

“Oh my God!” I shriek, shaking my hands free of theirs. “What is wrong with you guys? I don't need any freaking Midol!
I don't have my period!
” I stomp away from them, arms flailing like I walked through a spiderweb. Those two are insane if they think I'm going to let them try to mother-hen me.

Thankfully the activities in the craft shed are distracting enough that at least thirty minutes pass before either of them speaks again.

“Ta-da!” Claire says, stepping away from her painting easel.

“My, my,” Fantine says, her brow arched above a scrutinizing eye. “It's always the quiet, unassuming ones, isn't it?”

Curious, I walk over to survey the masterpiece under review. How Fantine is able to keep a straight face is beyond me. I'm about ready to pee myself when I see the anatomically exaggerated, pastel rendering of the world's biggest penis.

“Claire,” I say, trying my best not to snort. “It's . . . it's . . .”

“Huge?” she says encouragingly.

“Yes!” I erupt. “It's
huge
. Why did you paint that?”

“I wanted to make you happy,” she says, her round cheeks blushing. “A giant wiener makes everyone happy!”

The laughter in the tiny shed is contagious. Fantine is hinged over at the waist cackling, and Meredith is shaking so hard I fear she may topple out of her wheelchair. Normally, I'd be dabbing at the streaks of mascara staining my face, but today I don't care. The whole scene is a hysterical nightmare. Before I can stop myself, I throw my arm around Claire's wide shoulder and give her a hug.

“Thanks, Claire. I really needed that.”

“You're welcome,” she says, still beaming. “But I do have Midol.”

“Okay,” I say. “I'll keep that in mind.”

SEVENTEEN

I
t takes a solid twenty minutes for the giant purple penis experience to run its course, and now we're facing the arduous task of cleaning up our mess.

Since Fantine is busy showing the girls how to drape their paintings so the bugs don't attack them, I decide to rinse the brushes and palettes. Arms loaded, I head outside and shuffle toward the sinks at the backside of the building, carefully balancing the load I should have taken in two trips.

“Heads up!”

The scream coming from behind more than startles me, and I quickly look over my shoulder just in time to catch a blurry glimpse of Aidan and his wheelchair of death flying down a hill heading straight for me.

The impact is abrupt and knocks me off my feet and sailing into the tower of palettes. Aidan skids into the craft shed, denting its rusted exterior, though miraculously staying upright in his chair.

“Holy crap, Cricket, are you okay?” Aidan asks, laughing like he just climbed off a white-knuckler at Six Flags.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Couldn't you see me
standing there?”

“I'm sorry,” he says, still amused. “I was trying to beat my time down the hill and I lost control on some loose gravel. I tried to warn you, but I guess you didn't hear me.”

“Obviously!”

“Are you okay?” Quinn suddenly appears from behind me. He's completely out of breath and glistening with sweat. “Didn't you hear us yelling at you?”

“Yeah, I heard you,” I say. I'm too pissed to enjoy the fact that he's speaking to me. “About half a second before Speedy Gonzales over here ran into me. I didn't even have time to move!”

“I'm really sorry,” Aidan says again. “If it makes you feel any better, I think the shed took a harder hit than you did.”

I deliver him another scathing look before surveying my own injuries. No fresh blood and all of my limbs are intact, though they're covered in about a thousand different colors of paint.

“What's going on?” Fantine pushes her way through the growing crowd. I could smack her for the look she's wearing. “Damn, girl. You look like gay pride parade threw up on you.”

“Thank you!” I say, shooting her my best death glare. This time she actually flinches. What's worse is that Quinn is just staring at me, and now he's got this annoying little grin on his face.

“I really am sorry, Cricket,” Aidan says, straight-faced and focused on me. “By the time I came over the hill and realigned myself in the chair, I was practically on top of you. If I'd have
turned harder left to avoid you, I would've wiped out for sure.”

Every fiber in my body begs to throw a tantrum, but it dawns on me that this could actually be a
just do it
moment—and Quinn's here to witness it!

I take a deep breath before hoisting my colorful body off the ground. “It's okay,” I say, pushing a clump of purple hair from my eyes so I can see him. “I know it was an accident, Aidan. I'm sorry I yelled at you. Are you okay?”

“Oh, I'm all good. I've been looking for an excuse to get close to you for the last week. I guess I know what it takes, huh?” He leans back in his seat so the two big wheels support the entire weight of his chair, and spins around in a perfect circle on the colorful dirt.

The crowd bursts into applause, earning Aidan several high fives from his new fans. Everyone's having a great time now—everyone except Quinn. He just fired a lethal glare right at me before storming off in a huff.

After an hour with my loofah, I finally emerge from the shower as my regular Caucasian self, not a drop of paint left anywhere on my body. Rather than take the time to blow-dry my hair, I tie it back in a pony and slip on my Ed Hardy rhinestone cap.

I stroll out of the bathroom and back into the world of blue curbed parking, and find Aidan waiting for me with a fistful of
wildflowers in his hand and a hopeful look on his face.

“A peace offering,” he says, handing me the sad-looking bouquet.

“Oh, that's sweet, Aidan. You didn't need to do that.” I take the flowers with a strange combination of trepidation and pleasure while scanning the perimeter to see if we still have an audience.

“They're all at lunch,” he says. “I wanted to hang back and make sure you were okay.”

“Oh right. Yeah, I'm good. The whole getting knocked on my ass thing threw me a little. But seriously, I'm fine now.”

“You sure about that?” he asks, his dark eyes narrowing into thin lines beneath the afternoon sun. “'Cause it seemed to me like the second Quinn took off, so did your good mood.”

“What are you talking about? Why would I care that Quinn took off ?”

“Come on, Cricket,” he says as he folds his tan arms across his chest. “There's obviously something going on with you two. Quinn's a cool guy and everything, but I'm more than willing to kick his ass for you.”

I laugh. “All right.” I sit down on the nearest tree trunk bench. I'm not sure if it's the wilting flowers in my hand, or if it's because his overly confident attitude reminds me of all the guys I know back home, but there's something about Aidan that makes me want to trust him. “I'll fill you in, but it has to stay between us, okay?”

“Of course,” he assures me, rolling closer. “Just between us.”

“You have to let me get it all out first, okay? Because you're going to want to yell at me, or hit me or something, but just let me finish.”

“Sure,” he says. “But I'm not going to hit you.”

“Don't bet on it.”

It's sort of sad how long it takes, but when I've finally unloaded all my emotional baggage, Aidan says, “Wow. You're the biggest bitch I've ever met.”

His words are harsh and pierce at my insides, but the grin slowly inching across his face leads me to believe he might not actually mean them. “We should have you arrested, or I don't know, tarred and feathered in the center of town—”

“Ugh, don't be a jerk,” I say. “You asked me to tell you and I did. You could at least take it seriously.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I promise I'm taking you seriously. I just think you're being way too hard on yourself, that's all.”

“You do?”

“Well, it's not like you're the first person to make fun of handicapped people.” He recognizes that his response catches me off guard. “What?” he says. “It's true. And until two years ago, I probably wasn't much different from you,” he says in a slightly softer tone. “I had a normal life; I had just turned seventeen, was playing varsity baseball, hanging with the all the right people, until one night I made a really bad decision and screwed it all up.”

“What happened?”

“A buddy and I were at a party and we were too drunk to drive home. A couple of seniors said they'd take us, so we hopped in the car with them. Unfortunately we were too faded to realize they were as drunk as we were. One minute we're rocking out to an old Metallica song, cruising through the Taco Bell drive-thru, and the next there's the loudest noise I've ever heard and the whole world goes black. I woke up in the hospital a week later. My spinal cord had been severed in two places.”

“Oh my God. You could have been killed.”

He nods.

“What happened to the other guys?”

“My best friend ended up with a punctured lung and a few broken bones, but the other guys walked away perfectly fine. I got the worst of it.”

“I hope somebody took care of that driver in a dark alley. What a dick! He should have known he was too drunk to drive. You need to sue him or something.” I pause to take a breath. “What's so funny?”

“You,” he says. “And it's not that you're funny, you're just . . . cute. I mean—the way you're responding is cute,” he says, quickly trying to cover his slip-up. “Look,” he says. “I appreciate you wanting to defend me, but it doesn't bother me so much now.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“Because I wanted you to know that being uncomfortable around disabled people doesn't make you a horrible person—it
makes you honest. It makes you real.”

Once again, his simplistic response catches me by surprise.