Window #11

The boy who sniffs glue keeps the bottle of Elmer’s in the breast pocket of his button up. That way he simply bends his head and inhales. At first we thought he was the twin brother of the crooked neck girl, but once in awhile he raises his head and stares at us, his long, dark hair falling about his face. His eyes pulsed like music through the tinted air. Then one day he looks up and they’re glued shut. We don’t know how it happened. Maybe he brought his face too close to the glue bottle. Maybe the glue vapors did it. Or maybe he glued them shut himself. However it happened, things changed after that. The glue bottle is gone as far as we can tell. At least he doesn’t bend his head anymore. It’s like his neck is stiff the way he stares out over the rows of seats with those shuttered eyes. Sometimes, he sits quietly. Doesn’t say a word the whole ride. But other times, like today, he shouts things out at random, just starts spewing sentences as if he wasn’t in control of his own thoughts. “The sons of the serpent’s teeth are coming,” he says. “Dirty mobs of crooked hair will sew this bus up tight.” It’s spooky. Even the Bus Driver gets creeped out because every time the boy who sniffs glue turns his head toward the front of the bus, the Bus Driver adjusts His mirror so He won’t have to see him. “All this fraudulent magic is for naught!” the boy who sniffs glue says. “All your howling foolery will choke itself to death in a hairy nest. You who were once such heroes, such hopeful children, will soon be nothing but wandering mendicants.” We ask what mendicants are, but he pays no attention. We should “bewail our fate,” he continues. “Not hide it in sophomoric revelry. At least then we might bring honor to ourselves. Our tears would usher in the new age. We would need no spiky-haired boy, unarmed, to fall from the sky to save us.” Those in the middle rows shout at him, tell him he’s gay, he’s a spaz, tell him he’s sniffed too much glue. And then he shuts up. He doesn’t say another word.
There are a few of us who listened.