Thumbs by Roger D’Agostin

Twiddling your thumbs doesn’t get you high.  I lied to John Zolinsky because I didn’t want to get my ass kicked.  I mean, even if he lost his last fight against Scott Holmes, and he did, that hasn’t changed anything.  Scott doesn’t take the bus home anymore but waits in Ms. Kohl’s office after school for his brother, who goes to the high school and then walks.  If his brother’s early and our bus is still in the parking lot, John screams, “Your brother can’t walk you home every day,” then returns to his seat, over the left rear wheel, and sits by himself.  

The next morning John sat next to me on the bus and asked if I can come over his house and show him, but I lied again and said, my mom makes me do homework after school.  Then I added, “You don’t get really-really high.  Just a little.  Relaxed.”

And that’s sort of true, well at least for me.  I do the same thing with my feet, rubbing them against each other at night, to help me fall asleep.  But I don’t tell him this.  You never know with John.  

John beats up all his friends.  It’s been that way since sixth grade.  He used to be friends with Scott and before that it was Dan Grant.  He sat next to Dan on the bus and asked him about his Dungeon and Dragon books.  Then he invited him over his house.  Everything seemed fine for two months.  

Dan was the first one that deserved it.  Someone asked him why he was friends with John and Dan said he felt bad for him because he wears that REO Speedwagon shirt where the band’s name is spelled out in glitter.  Supposedly someone told John Dan said he looked like a faggot and John said, “We’ll see who’s the faggot.”  Dan didn’t know.  He probably wouldn’t have ridden the bus.  But once the bus started moving John sat right next to him, blocking the aisle, and said, “We’re going to see who’s a faggot now.”  

The whole bus emptied at Dan’s stop, except for me and the Kaechel brothers.  They were the last stop and the younger brother, Rich told John he didn’t want to walk all the way home.  He made the right decision because it wasn’t much of a fight.  Dan fell down right away and John punched him until some adult came and told them to break it up.  

John asks if I can come over on the weekend but I tell him I have church on Sundays and we go at noon and then my mom drops me off at home and goes to lunch with the other parishioners.  My dad works both days too so it’d  be tough to get a ride.  

He doesn’t give up.

Monday, he sits next to me on the bus and twiddles his thumbs and tells me he did the exact same thing for an hour on Saturday night and nothing.  “I don’t know, maybe it’s just me,” I say.  “It might be hereditary.  My dad does it.  My grandpa.  Maybe something else works for your family.”

He says there’s a knife game his uncles and dad play.

John’s MIA the next week and there’s a rumor he doesn’t have any fingers.  I imagine him pummeling me with his bandaged stumps and start taking the first seat behind the driver.  I sit close to the aisle and pack extra books so my backpack takes up the rest of the seat.  There’s no way John’s going to sit next to me.  But it turns out he can’t ride the bus.  One thumb was severed and the other partially.  The doctors reattached both and now his hands are in casts, paper mache mittens, and he walks around with his arms stretched down at his sides like a nutcracker.  He gets let out of every class ten minutes before it ends so he can walk to the next one and not get jostled in the hallway.  On Tuesday Mrs. Kohl (the counselor Scott Holmes stays with after school) calls me in to her office and says John asked for me to be his helper.  “You’re in almost all the same classes except science and art.  You’ll sit next to him, carry his books, basically help him with anything he needs.  And lunch.  You’ll need to help him for lunch.  He said you’re his best friend.”  The last part makes me hesitate.  But that afternoon, in English, he tells me the doctor thinks he might be able to make a fist in two years if everything goes as planned.  We’ll be in high school by then and I’m going to Lafayette Prep which is three towns over.  Even if we are friends and try to stay friends it will be tough.  I tell him how the bus ride takes an hour each way and if I play basketball I have to either get picked up or take the seven o’clock bus home.  He nods solemnly.

That’s why I agree.  In two years, I don’t think he’ll have the energy to track me down even if he can make a fist and the way things are going for him in middle school this might be the only chance he gets to have a best friend and then lose one the normal way.  

Artist’s Statement

For me, creating a story is more of a feeling, like writing a song, than a literary endeavor.

Roger D'Agostin is a writer living in Connecticut.  His most recent work has appeared in BULL, Washington Square Review LCC, and Third Wednesday.  He is currently working on a book of short stories.