You dropped me like a hot potato.
All day we shared the journey together, carrying knowledge, moving meaning. And then you dropped me without a sound. Cast away like a castaway. Thanklessly dropped onto the floor.
But I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, you’re twelve years old and I’m your backpack. I’m a tattered blue Jansport, of the classic canvas varietal. I’m scuffed and patched. Battle-tested.
You might look at me and think I fell into a ravine and went bobbing down the river until someone fished me out of the lake. You might think that. I might think that too.
Your brother Steve took much better care of me. He wiped me down every Friday night. He sprayed me with something that masked the bad smells. Which were many. He hung me carefully. He didn’t drop me in the bottom of the locker. I never touched the school bus floor.
I know. You’re tired of hearing about Steve. I heard what you said to the woman. Enough about Steve, you said. Steve is perfect. No more why can’t you be like Steve. Steve this, Steve that. You stormed out of the kitchen, kicked at his door, a hollow thump into a hollow room in a hollow house.
A brief note here. The floor of the school bus is disgusting. Yes, I said it. Disgusting. I know we aren’t supposed to say disgusting about things. But I’m saying it and I’m owning it. Generations of chewing gum, rags of fluids, grime from fifty pairs of shoes. Dickie’s shoes are the worst. On one hand I feel bad that all the kids call him Stinky and Pig Lover and badger him because he’s the son of a hog farmer, but he does need to learn to wipe his shoes before he gets on the bus. That could help his chances socially. He smells like an outhouse. My compassion for him is in a straight up free fall.
I heard you kick Steve’s door as you went by. I heard the woman yell at you, tell you that you needed to follow his example. Be like your brother Steve. Honor Steve.
But we know things, don’t we? Things they have no idea about.
Yep, Steve hung me up. Yep, Steve kept me clean. I carried his books and his perfect report card. I carried his extra allowance for being so perfect.
And I carried the cigarettes he stole from Nick’s party store. I carried the glasses he swiped from the new girl. I carried them all the way to the tracks and listened as he threw them in front of the train and laughed as they vaporized. Poof! Gone.
I was with him at night. When Perfect Steve was sleeping Perfect Steve would be easing through the window, one leg after the other, then sneaking across the lawn. His spray paint went in my big pocket. To my shame. He vandalized the monument in the cemetery, looping words and symbols—spewing hate. Things too terrible to repeat.
They never suspected him for that. He laughed about it.
No one knows why he ended up on the trestle that day when the train came early. No one wants to admit they know. He’d chased Luis down there after school, slinging rocks at him. Hey fatso, he yelled. Hey scumbag. Hey wetback. And worse.
Then he got stuck. Those shoes that went missing from Alex’s locker, Steve was wearing those and they got wedged in the track. I’m not going to say a word about karma. Now isn’t the time. Let’s try to focus on the good things if we can. But circle back around later after some necessary healing and you might draw some life lessons from this. A signpost to guide you in a different direction perhaps. Don’t follow in his footsteps. Literally.
You know the rest. The train, a hurricane of sound, and I slipped onto the rattling trestle and then fell down into the ravine and went bobbing down the river until someone fished me out of the lake.
And now, Young Bobby, you have me, mixed bag gift of a backpack. A strange inheritance by complicated means.
You dropped me like a hot potato. I hear your grief as you lay on the bed, tissues rustling like leaves.