Chapter 11

Susie was gone, so I started the seventh grade by myself. Riding the bus by myself. I had friends, but by that age girls had already paired off into best friends. I didn't feel like getting off the bus at the Middle School and just stayed on through the late route. That's how I met Dorky Dorkerton. I always sat near the back, where the hump was that covered the rear wheel well. About halfway through the route this kid gets on. All the little kids are crowded three in a seat in the front. Big kids in the back. I was the only person sitting alone.

This kid doesn't ask to sit, he just stands there, holding onto the back of a seat. "You can sit here." I tell him. It's so dumb it's an actual line from Forrest Gump, but that's what happened. I guess a lot of kids meet that way. He smelled horrible. "Jesus Christ, Dorky. Why don't you shower."

"You know my name?" He asked. Yeah, his mother was the Special Ed teacher as well as one of the cheer coaches. She'd have him sit outside of her classroom and sell these buttons to raise money for supplies or trips or whatever during lunch. School had been in session for about two weeks already, but this was the first morning he'd ridden the bus.

"Yeah, you sell buttons by the Special Ed door."

"I'm not in that class, my mom is the teacher, but I'm not in that class. I'm in regular classes. I'm not in Special Ed and she just makes me to that, but I'm not in that class." He just started babbling. I was a little stunned by it. I looked down at his shoes. The strings pulled so tight that the lace holes overlapped one another. My sister did that. My mother yelled about it daily to not do that. She said it was a sure sign of insecurity, that everyone would know if she did that. I wasn't sure of all that then, but I couldn't stand the look of it.

"Loosen up your shoe stings, they look bad."

"It's just because they're loose on my feet..." He tried to continue. I wasn't hearing it.

"No. You don't have rulers for feet. Loosen up your strings." He didn't seem to want to, but he did. Well, he tried. I ended up doing it for him with his feet between us on the seat.

"Can I touch your boobies?" He asked after a long silence.

"No." I just laughed. Since growing the things that was the first time someone had directly asked, most guys and Skanka preferred the accidentally on purpose method of touching then. "No. Put your feet down. And, if you want to sit with me, you need to shower."

"Allergic to soap." He replied.

"No you're not. No one is." Well, jokes on me. Thanks to ultra sensitive skin, I'm now allergic to soap, well fragrance and dyes. Maybe that's karma. Over the next weeks, I nonstop critiqued his hygiene. Everything from hair, to dental care, and how he should cut his nails. We also talked about a lot of others things, too. Our favorite album cover art and we would each bring in an album for school bus show and tell. Movies, both of us really liked Star Wars, and Empire was the first film either of us remembered seeing in the theater. Eventually, I did let him touch my boobies to the disapproving stares of Rat Face and Good For You (GFY) in the seat in front of us.

After that I told him he could touch my boobies under my shirt, but over my bra so Rat Face and GFY couldn't see. The over the bra was for about one day. Until my actual adulthood, this was the only age appropriate relationship I ever had.

Submitted April 27, 2019 at 06:55AM by heyuiuitsme http://bit.ly/2PxD7mW