<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Back of the Bus<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m two seats away from the back of the bus. I\u2019m only here because there\u2019s no places at the front. And I\u2019m terrified of hearing anyone say my name.<\/p>\n For the last hour of this journey I\u2019ve been pretending to be asleep. I\u2019m gripping my bag, trying to block out the whooping and shrieking, and the pushing and shoving. I pull up my legs, draw in my shoulders, roll into a little ball in the corner of the seat and press my face hard into the cold window as if I can disappear.<\/p>\n I\u2019m thinking of the new puppy at home, its silky fur and its wet nose, and the puddle it made on the kitchen floor this morning. I\u2019m thinking of my brother trying to clean his trousers with soap and a nailbrush in the bathroom after a chocolate bar had melted in his pocket. I\u2019m wondering if I could learn a new prayer to say at bedtime.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m not thinking about is trying to open my parents\u2019 bedroom door and finding it locked, or the television programmes that are abruptly switched off, or the embarrassment of finding my father naked in the bath, or the blood in the toilet bowl one morning. I\u2019m not going to think of the word experienced.<\/p>\n I can hear them opening cans of coke that should\u2019ve been drunk at lunch time and playing Truth or Dare. And all of the dares are to kiss someone. Not a peck on the cheek. It has to be an open mouthed, tongue down the throat, full on, proper, girlfriend boyfriend, wet lips moving together, squidgy, taste each other, smell each other\u2019s sweat, intimate snog. I\u2019ve heard the girls talking about the shame of boys biting their lips or banging their teeth.<\/p>\n There\u2019s giggling and swapping of seats, and I know some of the girls are on the boys\u2019 knees and one of them will be Trisha Bell, she\u2019s the most experienced.<\/p>\n Why isn\u2019t Miss Marshall coming to stop them? I wish I could\u2019ve sat nearer the front. I know which boys are on the back seat and I think about which of them it would be the least excruciating to kiss. David Dolan is of course number one because everybody fancies him, second Antony Weir, although he\u2019s got a girlfriend so I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019ll even be playing. Third, it\u2019ll have to be Laurence Appleton, he\u2019s got nice hair and his clothes are always clean and he even sometimes talks to me at break. Tony Johnson is too tall and gangly. Michael Bryant is too tiny with buck teeth. Gary Cliff has ginger hair and he\u2019s fat, and I know he\u2019s at the front of the bus, probably deliberately saving himself from this humiliation. Peeping out of one eye we\u2019re passing the church on the hill. We\u2019re nearly back. I squeeze my eyes tight again, willing the bus to arrive back at the school.<\/p>\n \u2018Anne Marie,\u2019 someone calls my name.<\/p>\n I ignore it. They\u2019ll pick someone else quickly enough.<\/p>\n \u2018Anne Marie.\u2019 This time it\u2019s a few of them shouting.<\/p>\n I feel someone sit beside me.<\/p>\n \u2018Come on, Anne Marie.\u2019<\/p>\n I\u2019m pulled reluctantly to the back seat.<\/p>\n \u2018Truth or dare? Truth or dare?\u2019 The faces crowd round as I force myself backwards into the rough seat away from the pack.<\/p>\n \u2018Dare,\u2019 I say.<\/p>\n \u2018Kiss Martin Harper.\u2019<\/p>\n Martin Harper\u2019s got a tooth missing, he knocked it out when he jumped off a wall in the school playground so he wears a plastic palate with a piece of metal and a false tooth attached. He \u2018s got a funny smell. His skin\u2019s yellow and his hair\u2019s all greasy.<\/p>\n I shiver as the bodies on the back seat shuffle along and Martin Harper squashes in beside me. He doesn\u2019t seem to smell so bad today, maybe he washed especially. I turn my head towards his, close my eyes and open my mouth like I\u2019ve practised on the back of my hand. It feels like he\u2019s trying to eat me. His lips press hard and move fast around my mouth, and now I can feel his arm slide around my back and he\u2019s slowed right down. I open my eyes, the wolves have moved on. Martin Harper and I clutch each other tighter and carry on getting experienced.<\/p>\n Ledlowe Guthrie<\/strong> lives in Sheffield near a park. She lies awake at night hoping to be inspired by Tawny owls twitting and twooing outside. She has been published in The View From Here<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back of the Bus I\u2019m two seats away from the back of the bus. I\u2019m only here because there\u2019s no places at the front. And I\u2019m terrified of hearing anyone say my name. For the last hour of this journey I\u2019ve been pretending to be asleep. I\u2019m gripping my bag, trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7670,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7668\/revisions\/7670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}