Junkyard Girl by Carlyn Montes De Oca

Author:Carlyn Montes De Oca [De Oca, Carlyn Montes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780999781234
Publisher: Carlyn Montes De Oca

One spring afternoon in the sixth grade, while I daydreamed of Shawn Winslow’s platinum mop and our religion teacher, Mrs. Diamante, spoke of saints and sinners, a mysterious thought interrupted both. Mrs. Diamante’s words became ambience, present but indecipherable, lost to the dictate of a deeper power. And that’s when it spoke to me: an unfamiliar voice; the same voice I would hear again later in life when big decisions required the guidance of something greater than myself. As Mrs. Diamante informed us that all good souls go to heaven, the word reincarnation popped into my head. I didn’t remember having heard the word before, but somehow, I knew immediately what it meant: all good souls may go to heaven, but eventually, they return to earth.

After school, as our bus cruised toward Carpinteria along the coastal freeway, my mind was so engrossed in thoughts about life after death that I hardly noticed we were driving past the beach enclave of Summerland. If I had paid attention, I would have sensed the dead calm spreading over my fellow passengers—an unnatural stillness tinged with the anticipation of an oncoming tsunami.

“Nudies!!!” Johanne, an otherwise well-behaved boy with a European accent, sprang up from his brick red seat and bellowed like a foghorn.

As if summoned by a higher power, thirty kids vaulted from their bus benches, and like a battalion of locusts consuming a wheat field, they torpedoed the right side of the bus with their combined weight. Through open windows, they screamed the word together—“Nudies!”—their wails competing with the roar of traffic and the pounding surf as they pretended to spot naked sunbathers on the beach. The unified heft of the pre-teen gaggle rocked the old bus to the right, then to the left when the hoarde dived in the opposite direction.

Panicked by bedlam, our elderly bus driver yelled for order. The kids obliged with maddening screams—a mob lost in the haze of their own insurrection. School papers floated through the air like slow-moving confetti. Younger kids began crying. I just sat in my seat, eyes closed in reflection, my head leaning against the window, basking in the warm sun.

This was not the first time I’d experienced the mayhem that the idea of naked bodies unleashed in the parochial school bus, but it was the first time I had not taken part. Today, I focused instead on a new and more interesting thought: reincarnation and the daydream of past lives.

Ten minutes later, the bus pulled into the parking lot of St. Joseph’s Church. The first to exit was the driver, who gave us all a departing glance of equal parts rage and fear as he marched toward the priest’s rectory—where, we later discovered, he promptly quit.

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