Lay It on My Heart by Angela Pneuman

and the high drone of the engine as it works harder. Tracy’s eyes have closed, and she sways, trancelike, every time we make a turn. She smells like cigarettes. I feel the sway of the bus, too, but I sit carefully, not wanting to touch the girl’s arm or leg in case it wakes her up.
    Then her eyes pop open so fast it’s hard for me to believe she’s been asleep at all. “You know who’s kin to me?” she says.
    â€œWho’s kin to you?” I repeat, stupidly.
    â€œThat’s what I’m asking.”
    â€œHow would I know, though? I don’t even know you.”
    â€œIf you knew, you’d know it,” Tracy says, and closes her eyes again. Her thin lips twitch into a smirk.
    When the bus stops next, Ravenna gets up and pulls a sheet of plywood from behind the driver’s seat. She bangs it down on the steps and latches a latch. There’s a heavy first step on the plank, then it’s step and shuffle, step and shuffle.
    â€œHere he comes,” Tracy says. “You better not stare at him like you’re staring at me.”
    â€œHey there, Cecil Goode,” says Ravenna, peering down the ramp. “You got it, baby?”
    If there’s an answer, I don’t hear it. There’s a couple of thumps and some more shuffling and then the boy’s standing at the head of the aisle. “Child of God” is what I heard him called at church once. His head and abdomen are normal-sized, but his legs look like they’ve been cut off below the knees, and instead of a right hand, a metal claw pokes out of the cuff of his plaid shirt. The other sleeve, the empty one, is tied into a knot right above where the elbow should be. He ignores the handicapped bench behind Ravenna and moves down the aisle toward the back of the bus, yanking his shoulders with a powerful effort that slaps the claw into the back of each seat he passes.
    Is it worse to look or to look like you’re trying not to look? He has the face of an adult, with a heavy ledge of a brow and a mustache trimmed close to his lip. Everything about his head is golden, from his burnished skin to his blond, wavy hair. He even breathes heavily through his nose the way a golden lion might, if you got close enough to hear.
    â€œCecil,” Tracy says hopefully beside me. “Hey there, Cecil.”
    He nods at her. Then he lifts his chin and looks down his nose at me, and I feel my mouth stretching into a wild, encouraging smile, as if a smile can convey that I don’t really notice anything different about him, or that, like Jesus, I see only what’s inside.
    That’s when he stops himself by our seat. As he leans over Tracy, a golden curl falls into his eyes. Then his face is in mine, and he smells of pine needles and sweat, and his light amber eyes are hard. What he says is: “I can smell your pussy.”
    I swallow, my face stuck in the smile. “What?”
    He says it again, separating the words with his smooth voice, a higher voice than I would have expected. It sounds golden, too. Musical. “I. Can. Smell. Your. Pussy.” Then he rears back and makes his way on past. Tracy shrinks down in her seat with a proud little yelp, and I turn my burning face to the dirty window and cross my legs as tightly as I can, in case what he said could possibly be true.
    Â 
    I have worn the homemade Levi’s to school, to please Phoebe. Once inside, however, I duck into the first bathroom I find and dig the dirty Jordache pair from the bottom of the butt purse. I give them a thorough smell in the crotch before I put them on, just in case, but all that comes through is a trace of damp earth.
    The only person from East Winder in any of my classes the first half of the day is Mary-Kate, in homeroom and second period, but her assigned seats are far across the room. The rest of the kids, from the county or from Clay’s Corner, have all gone to school with each other for years, and after