The 10 P.M. Question Read Online Free

alternative to sighing. He didn’t really feel like analyzing his schoolmates in Chilun. Usually it was a great way of passing the last half of the bus ride to school, but this morning his litany of worries was causing an irretrievable gloom to settle on him, heavy as a saturated beach towel.
    It was strange the way this happened. He’d noticed it before. One week he’d be bouncing along relatively happily, only a couple of minor problems bothering him. A week or two later, the problems would have burgeoned and multiplied until the list of matters to solve dominated his thoughts and none of his usual pleasures could give him a scrap of comfort.
    He sank lower in the seat and frowned at the semicircle of rolled-up bus tickets describing the wide arc of the seat-back in front of them. There were hundreds, jutting like white porcupine quills from the gap between the seat leather and the aluminum frame. He and Gigs had been building the quills for four years now and it was quite a sight. It was another example of Cassino’s extreme tolerance; he’d never mentioned the bus ticket stash, but he’d never interfered with the display, either.
    “February the fourteenth,” said Gigs suddenly. “Hot damn, it’s Valentine’s Day. We might get cards.”
    “Fat chance,” said Frankie with infinite pessimism.
    “Norbo B, Norbo B,” whispered Gigs. This was their Chilun name for Bronwyn Baxter. Gigs was convinced that Bronwyn Baxter had her eye on Frankie.
    “Shuddup,” said Frankie. “I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day. Loada crap.”
    Months later, remembering that moment, Frankie would smile to himself. He liked to go back over that little exchange, drawing it out, remembering his bleak mood, enjoying the before and after. Having declared his disgust with Saint Valentine, he was just preparing to submerge himself fully in his slough of despond when the new girl got on the bus.
    Months later Frankie liked very much to remember that February the fourteenth had begun badly and shown every sign of becoming a real horror, but — as the benefit of hindsight proved — it marked, ultimately, a turning point in his mood and fortune, because at 8:36 a.m., the new girl boarded Cassino’s east-west school bus.
    The new girl tripped up the steps in her beige Ugg boots, flashed a bus card, gave Cassino a wide smile, tossed her long, hefty dreads —
dreads!
— and strolled down to the rear of the bus, where Gigs Angelo was ruminating on the possibility of valentines and Frankie Parsons was prostrate and maudlin on the brown bench seat.
    The new girl was smallish and round and had a very tanned face. She wore jeans and a bright red T-shirt, which read
You gonna
?
I’m gonna
. She wore gold hoop earrings, and a tiny diamond stud in her left nostril.
    “Is this the dormitory, or can people actually
sit
here?” she said to the slumped Frankie. Her voice had the faintest of accents.
    “I’m Sydney,” she added. “Can you believe this is my fourth school in nine months? No? I’m having trouble with it myself. Want a salted licorice?” She held out a small brown paper bag, and the bangles on her hand made a brief musical rattle.
    “Ta,” said Frankie, raising a languid arm and digging in the bag. He looked at the black pebble candy, then put it in his mouth. It was as odd as its donor, but he quite liked it.
    “You?” said Sydney, passing the bag over Frankie to Gigs, who was staring a little defiantly at her.
    “No, thanks,” said Gigs. “Hate that stuff.”
    Sydney sat down and Frankie slid up the seat until he was quite straight again. Gigs gave him a look.
    “Nogis golody callistus freakano. Dispatchio presto,” he said. (What colossal nerve. Have to get rid of her fast.)
    “My dad sent me this stuff,” said Sydney. “From Holland. You can get it here but I don’t like to rain on his parade. Not a bad breakfast substitute, if you’re in a hurry. Which I usually am.”
    “Nollis gannat negey comadonatus,”