Caroline lay in the dark, listening to the remnants of the evening’s earlier rain shower as it dripped off the roofline. She couldn’t sleep. She opened her eyes and looked up at the paper crosses hanging on the wall above her bed. The moonlight coming in through the curtains coaxed a slight sparkle out of the ones she’d outlined in glitter. She thought about God. She thought about creepers. She thought about what being sick in the head would feel like.
Then she thought about Charlie Maxfield.
Charlie was a boy who rode the school bus with Caroline. He lived in the same neighborhood, just around the corner. She was in the fourth grade and he in the sixth, but he was nearly as tall as their bus driver, Moby. Charlie wore a brown windbreaker zipped all the way to his chin. On the back of it was a big embroidered bowling ball with the name “Mount Wesley League” stitched in red thread. Caroline didn’t know where Mount Wesley was. Most of the kids made fun of Charlie because he talked slowly, and because he always had a clump of brownish hair sticking up at the back of his head. Charlie usually sat by himself in the middle of one of the seats and looked at National Geographic magazines. But once, bus number 112 broke down and all the kids from there had to ride Caroline’s bus instead, crowding it to capacity. Caroline was the last to get on. Looking down the aisle, she saw Charlie slide over next to the window and point at the empty spot next to him. Reluctantly she sat down, scooting as close to the edge as she could.
Halfway to their stop, Charlie opened up his backpack and took out an open package of gummy bears. He put one in his mouth and chewed. Then, he reached back into the bag and set a red bear down on the seat between him and Caroline. She looked at it out of the corner of her eye.
“You can have it” he said slowly, “I don’t like the red ones”.
Caroline glanced up toward Moby. They weren’t supposed to eat on the bus. She saw reflected in the oversized rearview mirror that his eyes were on the road. Then, she looked around to make sure none of the other kids were watching her. Everyone seemed involved in their own conversations or in looking out the windows. Quickly, she picked up the gummy bear and popped it in her mouth. Charlie smiled, reached into the bag, and placed another red bear on the seat. Caroline snatched that one up too. They kept this up—Charlie placing the bears, Caroline eating them—until the squeal of bus breaks told them they’d reached their stop. She stood up, gathered her bag and lunchbox, then paused,
“Thank you” she told Charlie.
“You are welcome” said Charlie with a lopsided grin, “I love you, pretty girl.”
That was two months ago and Caroline hadn’t gotten anywhere near Charlie since. She sat in the front of the bus, right behind Moby—where the first graders usually sat. She didn’t care. It had scared her to hear Charlie say that he loved her. Her mom had told her once that when two people loved each other, they got married. Caroline worried that maybe Charlie thought she loved him too since she’d eaten all his red gummy bears. She didn’t want to marry anyone—ever. Especially not Charlie Maxfield. At their bus stop, she would make sure to be the first off, then run home as fast as she could so Charlie couldn’t try to talk to her or walk by her.
The muted whooshing of a street sweeper working in the distance overtook the dripping rain sound. Caroline looked up at her collage of paper crosses again. “That’s it” she whispered out loud. “Charlie Maxfield is the creeper! Charlie Maxfield is the sick in the head creeper, and I have to prove it!”
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