Spiky-haired boy: Discussion 2, Row 11

Her round belly proves her guilt. She’s going to have his baby. Whose? The spiky-haired boy’s. I heard he came to her in the back of the School Bus. Yeah. It was after school, and the bus was empty, but it wasn’t the spiky-haired boy, it was the Bus Driver. That’s creepy. The Bus Driver set it up, but he didn’t do her. He came to the girl in the form of an old maid, wrinkled with whitened hair. He sat with her and told her all the graces of the spiky-haired boy. How he skates at night where he’s not supposed to. How he has a tattoo of some line from Beckett on his shoulder: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Go on. How she’d be mother to a king. By the time he came knocking, she was ready. Astronaut head’s too smart for that. Besides, she’s not one of us. I can tell. She’s even smarter than the Bus Driver. What do you mean? I mean that He probably did come around thinking he was going to play Pandarus, but she knew he’d be there, and she let him talk and talk all the while shifting closer to him, grinning that gap-toothed grin of hers until at last she asked him to teach her how to woo and be wooed so she might be ready for the spiky-haired boy. You mean she seduced him. That’s what I think. And after, out of spite and rage that she was promised to the spiky-haired boy, he took the half-formed child from her womb and sewed it up in his thigh. I thought it was some sort of tumor. It’s his baby. I think you’re wrong. I think the baby is the spiky-haired boy’s. The Bus Driver wanted her for himself, and when he learned of their love, he took their child and sewed it up inside him. Then there’s still hope. I think so.