School Bus: Window #4

by Peter Grandbois

Window #4

You wouldn’t know it from looking at her but the girl in the green dress is a dancer. She doesn’t carry herself like one, at least not on the bus. With her lowered head and shoulders curled in, she reminds us of prairie wheat when the wind blows. But we who sit in front of her hear the tap, tap, tapping of her foot and sometimes feel the pulse of her knee against our backs as she works through an axel turn or a catch step. Amy says that once the girl’s foot tapped her own under the seat and gave birth to an orchid that grew from the tongue of her shoe. It was such a brilliant blue she didn’t pick it for days and actually kept her shoe by her pillow at night. She said its scent reminded her of islands in the South Pacific where girls ran naked and boys watched them bathe from behind bushes. Each day after, we smile politely at the girl in the green dress as we sit, then push our feet back as far as we dare beneath the seat.

posted by Peter Grandbois