My Name Is Not Easy (26 page)

M I L I T A R Y T R A S H / C h i c k i e
does by the way she looks out the window and frowns. Amiq is lucky Father Mullen’s not here.

“Stay put, girls and boys, stay put,” Sister says, wringing her hands and glancing nervously out the window of the bus.

“I need to assist Father.”

Evelyn makes a funny noise, and Rose covers her mouth with her hand. I fi gure pretty much any Indian girl in the world knows more about engines than Sister.

Of course as soon as Sister steps off the bus, the boys start going crazy as loons. Sam Pete grabs my diary with his grubby little paws, and just as I’m getting ready to pound him to pieces, he tosses it back to his brother, Leo, but Leo misses it and it hits Junior, hits him right square on the head. Junior looks up, annoyed and owlish, but before he can fi gure out what’s happened, Leo slides into Junior’s seat like it’s home plate and grabs the diary. Th

en he and Sam start playing catch

with it, lobbing it back and forth the length of the bus, and the harder I holler, the faster they throw.

All of a sudden here’s Bunna, popping up in the middle of it all like an Eskimo jack-in-the-box, grabbing my diary midair.

“You lose something, Snowbird?” he says, tucking my diary into his stinky old armpit and throwing himself down onto his seat where he sits, slowly opening it up and sticking his nose right inside the front page, right into the part where it says,
“Property of Chickie Snow. DO NOT OPEN.”

He lifts the page and gives me an evil grin.

“BUN-NA!”

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

“Hey, I saved your old book, didn’t I? Least you could do is let me read it.”

I fl y at him like a banshee, hollering my head off . “Bunna, you dirty animal, I’m gonna choke you.”

He’s laughing so hard he almost
is
choking, ducking his head like he’s avoiding a blow and holding his hand in front of his fat face.

“I jokes,” he says, handing me the diary. “What do I want your silly old book for, anyway?”

I grab my diary, fl ying backward and bashing into

Junior with a force strong enough to knock his big black-rimmed glasses clear off his face. Junior looks up just in time to watch his second eyes go sailing across to the other side the bus, where they dash into the window next to that new white kid, Michael O’Shay. O’Shay leans down a long arm and starts groping around on the fl oor for them.

“Sh . . . sh . . . SHAVING CREAM!” Junior cries.

Rose and Evelyn start giggling.

“Th

at’s right, Junior, let it all out,” Amiq cooes.

Rose and Evelyn are laughing so hard, they’re almost crying.

Junior glares at me like it’s all my fault. “What are you trying to do, k . . . kill me?”

Right then Michael O’Shay emerges victorious, handing me the glasses.

“Look, Junior, they’re okay,” I off er.

Junior grabs them defensively, adjusting the nose piece as he shoves them back on his face.

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M I L I T A R Y T R A S H / C h i c k i e

“Jeez, Snowbird, create a ruckus, will you?” Bunna says.

I spin around, ready to deck him, and he raises his hand again.

“Hey! Don’t ruffl

e your . . .”

He stops midsentence. We all stop because we all realize, suddenly, that Sister Mary Kate is standing at the front door of the bus, glaring at us. Well, maybe you wouldn’t really call it a glare. Sister doesn’t know how to glare. But that’s what she intends, I’m sure.

“Ladies! Gentlemen! Please!”

I slink back to my seat.

Sister sets her hands on her hips like she wants us to believe she means business, when of course we all know Sister doesn’t have the slightest idea how to mean business. Especially not with a bunch of kids nearly swinging from the rafters of a rickety old piece of a military-trash bus.

“Father has suggested that you children need my guidance more than he does right now,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me and Bunna. “And I do believe he’s right.”

She stands there, arms crossed, looking at us with what she probably fi gures is a stern expression, and all of us make a real eff ort to settle down, even though we all know Sister couldn’t hurt a fl ea.

“Children, let’s recite the Twenty-third Psalm,” Sister says, launching into it with fervor.

“Th

e Lord is my shepherd,” she announces, looking at us girls, waiting for us to catch up with our good voices, which we do, of course, because we know full well that the boys
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couldn’t manage the words to the Twenty-third Psalm to save their sorry souls.

“. . . and I shall not want,” we all chime in.

Right then the door to the bus opens with a breath of cool air, and Father steps inside, brushing snow from his sleeves.

“Behold the shepherd,” Amiq announces, like he’s a narra-tor in a Christmas play or something.

Sister drops the psalm like a hot potato, crying, “Father!

You fi xed it!”

“God willing, Sister. God willing.”

Th

e boys give each other looks that say,
God’s will wouldn’t
touch a project like this with a ten-foot pole.
Th en there’s total

silence as Father takes to the driver’s seat. When he turns the key, we all strain right along with that engine.

“Come on girl, you can do it,” Bunna says. Like he was talking to a dog or something. “Come on.”

Father keeps right on cranking away, but that engine doesn’t make a sound, not even a mutter.

Th

at’s when I remember just how long a walk it is back to the school. “Come on,” I whisper. “
Come on.”

Father lets up on the brakes, and the bus starts to roll down the hill, easy at fi rst, then bouncing a little on the rocky road. Th

e engine gives a little sputter like a dog sneezing, and then it starts to kick in. As the bus gathers speed, Sister orders us all to pray, clutching the side of her chair with her eyes clenched shut like she’s afraid to even look.

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil . . .”

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