THE WHEELS ON THE BUS by Bill Merklee

The handful of high school juniors talk like I’m not even there, like the bus drives itself. I put up with the rough language because, frankly, it’s all material. The only time I interrupt is to get them to turn the music down or to ask them to put in their earbuds. Sometimes they surprise me with Pink Floyd or the Pixies. But mostly, their music makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.

Almost all of them slump in their seats, so I don’t see them, I only hear them. I smelled one of them once, that familiar skunk funk he thought a cracked window would hide. He finds his own way to and from school now.

A different teacher is today’s fucking bitch. They argue and laugh about how one of them fucked up scrambled eggs in cooking class. Almost anything anyone says is turned into a sex joke. Then they start raving about Pokemon. Junior year is a fucking strange time.

Lena is an arsenal of f-bombs. But they’re cartoon explosions. Her voice is sweet and clear, all perfect diction and hard Rs. She’s a big girl, bear-like, her black wiry hair pulled back into a tight bun.

Talk turns to who is and is not marriage material. Lena blurts out she will probably marry her cousin. This elicits knowing snickers from the others.

“I’m serious,” she says. “That’s what we do. We’re all inbred.”

What she says isn’t shocking. It’s the matter-of-fact way she says it.

“Everybody where I live is related to everybody else,” she continues, like it’s some revelation. “I know that sounds fucked up. But I also know if you fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us.”

The other kids know this is true. Everyone in that part of town has one of four old-Dutch surnames. They are almost all freckled, dark-haired, light-skinned black. They supposedly have some Native American blood. You don’t start trouble with any of them.

When I drop off the next-to-last kid, Lena gets quiet, hibernates in a back seat for the ten-minute ride through the woods to the outskirts of town. The part that’s been in documentaries. She’s lucky to live on a hill, away from the slow death that bubbles up from the abandoned iron mines poisoned by that auto company long ago.

At her stop, Lena leaves without saying a word. I watch her trudge up the hill, past a tangle of forsythia and the yellow No Outlet sign.

Bill Merklee loves short stories, short films, and really short songs. His work has appeared in numerous journals, was included in Best Microfiction 2021, and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2024. Most recently, he was short-listed for the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award. He lives in New Jersey.