Skid Mark
by Amy Braun
We were sardines on that school bus, lined up and crammed into tin, eyes wide with the threat of being consumed by something larger. Back-leg sweat formed against green plastic seats. It lingered, awaiting the chance to evaporate.
Mark, a second grader, slid past me in the aisle that afternoon. His hair covered his ears; once-a-month trips to the barber unaffordable.
I wonder now if he felt afraid that afternoon. For the next day we would all come together again, trapped and restless.
Doors opened to let him out.
Psssst.
He stepped down.
Then Pssst. Closed.
Bus doors are locked with air and that’s the sound of it escaping, displacing, going wherever it is that air goes when it leaves us. Is it up?
Out?
An eighth-grader raised a window and shouted through the opening, “Good riddance, Skid Mark!”
Kids laughed.
Mark didn’t turn around as he crossed to his trailer and slipped inside.
And me?
I tried to remain as still as possible to contain the smell as we drove on to my stop on the far side of the apple orchard.
At home in the downstairs bathroom, I emptied contents from my underwear until the bowl. It dropped. Splashed. I stared.
Flushed. Watched it disappear.
Shame has the stench of a farm animal’s pen. I went to the pigs. Their snouts greeted me, sniffing, snorting, hungry. My soiled undies fit through a hole in the fence at waist level and I used a long stick to push them deep into the muck.
The name “Skid Mark” stayed with him through middle school.
In the fall of his freshman year, alone in his trailer, Mark leaped from his father’s unused recliner and hung himself from the ceiling fan.
What sound does air make when it’s trapped?
Amy lives and teaches in rural Vermont serves as president of the League of Vermont Writers. She has been featured on VPR and NPR several times as an advocate for teachers, her students, and their families during Covid19. Some of Amy’s published nonfiction and fiction include: “The Plastic” for Apple in the Dark, “A Passing Glimpse” in The Heart of New England magazine, “Solstice Saturday” on ESSAYDAILY.org, first prize with “Rare Coins in a Red Bucket” and ”Hospice Holiday” for two of The Herald of Randolph newspaper’s holiday contests, and “Vanilla” on Brilliant Flash Fiction’s website. Several of her original plays have also been performed virtually and in person. Amy can be found on Facebook as Amy C. Braun, Instagram @myblagz, and both Twitter and Tik Tok @mykinderquotes.