Window #16

He says we can fold him up and put him in a box, which is what we do. He doesn’t like school. He hates the school bus. Of course, we all hate it. We shout it out the windows in spring and write it on the seatbacks in winter. He simply asks to be folded and stored. Amy offers up the shoebox she was going to use for her rainforest diorama. We stuff him in and slide him under the seventh row seat. The front rows seem too close to the Bus Driver. He might find out and do something about it. The back rows. Well, we all know what goes on in the back of the bus. Too dangerous there. He’s a skinny kid. He never really filled out, so he’s pretty easy to fold. He has the kind of body that’s bent naturally anyway. His too-tight collar makes it easy to crease him at the neck. The too-short tie marks the fold in the middle, and the flood pants allow us to roll the feet up nicely. Some of us are disappointed that we don’t have to saw off the feet like we’ve heard about in the Old West when they couldn’t fit the bodies in the coffins. He doesn’t give us any other instructions, though Jill swears that just before we seal him in he whispers to her a hope that we’ll keep the dust bunnies off his box and that we’ll tuck him against the side so that he won’t get kicked. We don’t think until later to ask him when we should take him back out of the box.