The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [3]
I’d have to look for the escaped hens outside, but not now. I barely had enough time to get ready for school.
As I ate my cereal, I stared at the eggs in the basket, wondering if they were hard like the one that went BUMP. I didn’t dare try the drop test, for obvious reasons. While I was staring, my arm started aching again with those twitching pains along the bones. I screamed and grabbed my elbow.
“Oh, puh-leeze, Sebby. Cut the melodrama. Just give me your dirty rotten dish so I can wash it before we miss the bus.” It was Barbie pulling on my cereal bowl, which was still attached to my arm.
Grum hushed us again and said, “Your sister’s right, boy.”
I moaned sincerely to prove my pain. It hardly had anything to do with the fact that I didn’t have my homework. Signed. “But, Grum, I honestly don’t feel good. I ache all over. Even in my teeth.”
“That so?”
I nodded.
“Well, open your mouth and say ah.”
I did a real good job of that while Grum shone a flashlight down my throat. “Hm, I wonder . . .” She stuck a finger in my mouth and probed my gums in the back.
“Ow!” (She’d definitely hit a sore spot.) “Ow! Ow! Ow! See? I’m in agony, Grum. I can’t possibly go to school today.”
She removed her finger, put down the flashlight, and pronounced, “You’re getting your twelve-year-molars is all. You’ll be fine. Congratulations.” She patted my cheek.
“What? That can’t be! We’re only eleven!” Barbie grabbed the flashlight and ran into the bathroom to look for molars in the mirror.
Ha! It killed her that I’d finally gotten ahead of her at something. But this was no time to gloat. I still had a mission. “Grum, what about the rest of my aching body?”
She lifted her head and eyed me under her glasses this time, stopping at my ankles with an Aha! smile. They stuck out under my frayed jeans like white bed knobs beneath a short bedspread.
“You’re an inch taller today than yesterday. They’re just growing pains. Now go change into your school clothes, young man.”
But it was too late for that. The Rust Bus already sat at the end of our driveway, flashers blinking. I grabbed my bag and raced Barbie for the good seat.
2
B.O., or Before Odum took over Kokadjo Gore, a regular big yellow school bus used to take us to school with a bunch of kids from there. Now that all those families had moved, we rode in a rusty blue Ford Escort with a yellow sign in the back window that said SCHOOL CHILDREN ABOARD. The driver lady, Miss Rosalie, worked as a cashier at WalMart and picked us up in her own car on her way to and from work.
“Hey, now, Sebastian, quit mauling your sister and let her in the car,” Miss Rosalie greeted me fondly. “You rode shotgun yesterday. Plunk yourself down back there in the middle to save room for Cluster. And fasten your seatbelt.”
So I gave Barbie a shove into the good seat and grumbled my way into the back next to the car seat that held Miss Rosalie’s drooling baby. He grinned and bonked me on the head with his rattle.
Little Rico wasn’t the problem with the back, though. I sat next to him gladly on the way home in the afternoon. The problem was the ugly view out the window on the left side of the car when we drove across Kettle Ridge in the morning. From that high up, the strip mine looked like a skeleton with scabs and tumors. The graveled backbone road was nicknamed “The Gash” because that’s what it looked like in the scarred land. Rib roads ran down between slag piles and stagnant water holes.
One time Jed brought home some girl he’d met at a rally for peace or the environment or the protection of animals or something. She asked us what strangers to these parts always ask: “Kokadjo Gore? What kind of a name is that?” And Grum answered as always: “A gore is a triangular piece of land that got left out somehow when the towns around here were surveyed, back in the Colonial Days.”
From Kettle Ridge you could actually see the triangle shape, like a giant wedge had been cut into the earth. The ridge rose straight up at the widest end, with the stripped