A Bus as Big as a Bus

Abstract

A Bus as Big as a Bus Rob Ehle (bio) The book report could be anything he wanted to read that was not a magazine or an internet article, that had chapters and at least one hundred pages and not too many pictures, and on Monday she would look at everyone's choices and say whether they could do their report on it, which if they couldn't she would choose, which would be awful because she chose books about pets or children of farm workers, and if he had to read one more story with a lost goat or anyone named Asunción, Joe would quit fifth grade and become a damn farm worker himself, "damn" being his swear of choice, which he picked a) because it had a little class and b) because if his mother ever heard he had used the F-word, she would forget she was a San Francisco liberal and just stick a bar of soap in his mouth and tell him to bite a chunk off, which sounded just creepy enough that Joe believed she'd do it, so he stuck with "damn" and had a little class. They had four weeks to read the book and then write a report (entitled "You Have to Read This Book!") with an introductory paragraph, a setting paragraph, a characters paragraph, a main events paragraph, a problem slash conflict paragraph, and a paragraph for the conclusion. Six damn paragraphs or, as far as he could tell, a whole damn book, so why not just write a book, since that was pretty much how long the report was going to be, so he wandered among the stacks and picked something up and put it back, picked up something else, put that one back, too—all too long, some 115, 120 pages, and as he wasn't getting extra credit for the extra 15 or 20 percent, he spent the ten minutes allotted looking for a book exactly one hundred pages long, something you'd expect wouldn't be that hard in a damn library, but no, it was surprisingly difficult, and when she told them it was time to go, he still hadn't found anything and grabbed a narrow-spined something-or-other, did a quick flip to the last page—108, which would have to do—and had it checked out before he looked at the title, May We Keep Him, Poppi? Joe left the book at the desk and decided he would ask his mom for a trip to the downtown library on Saturday, which would simultaneously earn him points for initiative and give him twenty-four more hours, during which time he'd be able to think longer about what the perfect book might be for himself, besides short. He was not a book kind of guy was the problem, he was more of a mathy skateboard carnivorous plant person. He had recently been given a Venus fly trap for his birthday, and he was doing experiments on it. After waiting a week for it to catch something, he lost patience and fed it one of his boogers. It seemed to be thriving. [End Page 105] What book could compete with a plant that ate things? That afternoon he went to Nathan's house and he and Nathan practiced kickflips on their skateboards in the garage until his sister yelled at them to quit it, it sounded like a fucking construction site, and Nathan whispered that she was on the rag, and Joe said "God," having a vague and queasy idea what Nathan was talking about, but mainly impressed with his sister's verbal flourish. They went out and sat on Nathan's porch. They were there an hour later when Joe's mom came by to pick him up. Nathan was just about to tell him something about his girlfriend, Amanda, and said he'd tell him later—Nathan always did that, threw out a little cliffhanger, which was never anything, really (Amanda had seen The Rise of Skywalker and said it was terrible), but Joe couldn't help it, it still drove him crazy waiting to hear, only because the whole...