Suddenly Sam reaches up and grabs the edge of the window and climbs the side of the bus. It rocks under his assault. Inside the girls shriek. All at once the entire boys’ team is climbing the sides of the bus with him. He shoves his head through the window. The Mutant holds her ground, kneeling on her seat within his reach. Sam looks around the girls’ bus, which is in hysteria. He grins.
“Thanks,” he says. “You loosened us up.”
The Mutant regards him coolly.
“Asshole,” she mutters.
Up and down the bus, boys have their heads and sometimes shoulders through the open windows. Some of them are getting kissed—the M & M’s are being particularly generous. Other guys are being shoved back out.
“Take’m,” the Mutant suddenly shouts. “Go for their pants.”
Screaming girls hurtle themselves off the bus as the guys wriggle back through the windows. The ones closest to the bus door are in immediate trouble as girls haul at their jeans or sweats before they can escape.
Since his shoulders prevent him from getting more than his head in the window, Sam drops easily to his feet. Rick Woods, Billy Rank, Tim Kasten and Bither are not so lucky; their pants are variously somewhere between their hips and their ankles.
The girls’ coach bellows through a megaphone she has found somewhere on the bus, “Any student not on the bus and in their seat at the count of ten is suspended!”
As girls scramble to their seats, the boys are either frantically hauling up their pants or diving for their own bus, just ahead of their coach and the bus drivers, who move among them like game-beaters in a grouse shoot.
Retreating toward his bus, Sam glances back and waves at the Mutant. She still kneels in her seat—the only girl to stay put during the melee. The girls’ coach can be heard raving at them. The windows on their bus slam closed in a toneless crescendo.
The Mutant’s window alone is still open when the girls’ bus jerks into motion. Turning away as her bus passes the boys’ stationary bus, she calmly hikes her oversized shirts and drops the tights underneath to flash her bare bottom at them. No tattoos.
Roaring with approval, the boys lunge to Sam’s side of the bus to catch the view. Coach goes nuclear and the poor bus driver hunches forward over the wheel and covers her eyes. On the girls’ bus, their coach plunges down the aisle toward the Mutant. Before she can get there, the Mutant has her tights back up and is sitting down.
Rick Woods writhes in his seat, his laughter becomes a loony, breathless hooting.
Coach’s bugged eyes are suddenly in Sam’s face, causing him to start violently. “Jesus Jumping Christ! You two are supposed to captain this team!”
Eyebrows raised, Sam spreads his hands in mystification, as if he has been listening to his Walkman all along and missed the whole thing.
It takes a while for the girls’ bus to settle down. At the front, their coach flops wearily and closes her eyes. Quietly the Mutant begins to move around the bus, speaking softly. Meeting. She indicates the back of the bus, beyond Coach’s hearing thanks to the chatter of the cheerleaders. Some of the girls are reluctant but curiosity gets the better of them, especially since it involves something the Mutant wishes to keep secret from Coach. As much as they loathe the Mutant, her mooning the guys has given her a momentary authority.
“We’re the captains,” Melissa Jandreau protests. Melanie adds, “We should call the meetings.”
“Anybody can call one,” the Mutant points out. “You’ll wish you had when you hear this.”
She tells them about Sam’s initiative.
“All right, all right,” Melanie admits. “I never thought about it before but if anybody’d ever offered me the option, I’d have been there.”
“Is it worth it?” Melissa says. “It’s gonna take some hassle to get permission. We can’t even be sure it will make any difference.”
“It all comes to one thing,” the Mutant says. “You want another try at that state this year?”
The girls look at each other.
The answer comes out of Melissa in a throaty growl. “Jesus, yes.”
The Mutant grins. “Then here’s how we do it.”
His teammates are shouting objections before Sam finishes. Even Rick shakes his head in disbelief. Arms crossed, Coach glowers at Sam. Everywhere he looks, Sam sees negative body language.
“You take this up with them?” Todd Gramolini demands.
Sam nods.
“You oughta lay off the cheap drugs, Sambot,” Pete Fosse says. “They need more time, let’m take it in the evening.”
“When? After both teams have played games? After they’ve taken two hours’ practice and waited another two hours for us to take ours?” Sam counters.
Rick Woods hugs his elbows and studies the floor.
Unsurprised when the vote goes against him, Sam slumps into his seat and stares out the bus window. He sees the reflection of his own face, like the ghost of a moon traveling over the hulked, spiky black fractals of woods, the bumpy geometries of walled and fenced fields. A heavy ceiling of snow cloud blinds the sky. The Mutant’s moon, already set, is the only solid one to rise tonight—an upside-down heart, not moon-shaped at all. She has beautiful dimples at the narrow base of her spine. Hanging it out the window on a night this cold—that took some iron.
“I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness,” Sam murmurs to his reflection.
“Do that,” Rick says.
Sam glances at him, raising an eyebrow. “Are the consolations of God small with thee?”
“Shut up, preacher, and read your Bible,” Rick says, “or you’ll be consoling with God bigtime.”
“Shall vain words have
