Window #7

No matter how hard we try to see him, we can’t get the kid in focus. It’s like he isn’t really there. Thomas says there’s no kid, that we’re imagining him. But we argue it’s impossible to imagine the same kid in the same seat each day. Mornings, before the bus arrives, we ask around, but no one knows anything about him. We realize we don’t even know if he’s a boy or a girl. We just got used to saying he. Those in the front take this as evidence that the kid is in fact a he, but others aren’t convinced. Nancy argues that it’s our very attempt to define the kid as a he that proves he is a she. She talks like that sometimes. She’s already in AP English. The more we talk, the more he seems to lose focus. Forget trying to decide on a name. We don’t go there any more. It’s only when we close our eyes and picture our ideal school bus that each of us remembers him sitting there, staring at us.