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There were two brothers on our school bus my eighth grade year, Robert Michael and Michael Robert, though most of us called them the Hendrix Boys or, more often, the twins. They lived with their grandfather and three cousins on the same wild and uncharted dirt road I lived on, and both had oily skin, crew cuts and a short, stocky build. I had the feeling they would end up some day serving time in jail or the Marines, but as sixth-graders they were mostly annoying, the types to loudly blame you for a creeping and anonymous fart or offer you a brownie that stood a good chance of having been baked with goat turds. They were both drummers in the elementary school band and it was usual for them to carry their sticks onto the bus and smack the living bejesus out of the seats for most of the hour-long ride along the dirt roads and hollows leading up to Winslow Public Schools, home of Squirrel Pride.
The twins' three cousins rode the bus as well, big girls, all three largeboned and heavy, with wide hips and melon-breasts, big hair and big feet. I had skipped third grade and was small for my age, and everyone seemed bigger than I was, but these girls were high-schoolers, another species altogether. They were haughty, angry, inscrutable. They always had their hair done up in intricate braids or ambitious new styles, feathered or swept back, bangs sprouting like fountains from their foreheads. Their hair shone when it caught the sunlight, and the scent of hair spray lingered in places they had been.
One of the cousins, Penny, had deep red hair and a prettier face than her sisters. I nursed a secret desire for her, this girl who wore braces and outweighed me by at least seventy pounds. I was heartsick for her freckled skin, her soft-looking arms and hair. I wanted to kiss her, braces and all, cradle her breasts one at a time in my arms.
On school mornings the bus passed the Hendrix house first, and by the time I got aboard, the girls were camped out in the back, the most prized seats on the bus. My friends and I resented having to...