Free Prettiest Doll by Gina Willner-Pardo Page A

hundred times. You get to look down at clouds and the world as it slides away behind you. I couldn’t even imagine how that would feel: like magic, or when Pastor Templeton talks about the ecstasy of knowing Jesus. The bus passengers were looking out the window with tired eyes. If they knew Jesus, it wasn’t showing on their faces.
    Danny and I headed toward the back of the bus, where it was emptier. We had to wait in the aisle while the old couple fussed with overhead storage. “Where’d you put my pills, Doris?” Ed asked, standing in the aisle, not even noticing that we were waiting to get past him. “I gotta take two at ten thirty.”
    â€œThey’re in the toiletries bag,” Doris said. She was standing over her seat, trying to ease one shoulder out of her powder blue Windbreaker. “Honestly. Can you help me, please?”
    â€œPills aren’t toiletries, for God’s sake. Toiletries are shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash. For God’s sake, Doris.”
    â€œWill you pull this, please?” Doris offered him a bony shoulder.
“Honestly.”
    Ed shook his head at Danny, trying to rope someone else into the conversation. “Pills are medicine, for God’s sake. You don’t just throw them in a toiletries bag. Don’t you know that?” He pulled Doris’s Windbreaker off her arm and winked at Danny, showing him that this is how you talk to women. “Last time I let
you
pack the pills,” he added. “Now move over. Let me sit down. My knees are killing me.”
    We found seats and settled in. Danny tucked a brown paper sack under his seat. Then he looked backwards down the aisle, making sure no one was close enough to hear. “Ed and Doris are like my grandparents before my grandfather died,” he said. “Always arguing.”
    â€œMy grandfather’s dead, too.” It was nice, finding out we had something in common. “But they didn’t argue. I don’t think they were very happy, though.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œEverything was hard. They were always working. It’s hard to be happy when there’s so much work. And my grandmother is still working, and she’s almost sixty.”
    â€œWhat did they do?”
    â€œGrandma’s a nurse.” I didn’t say anything about Grandpa doing taxidermy. I’m used to not telling. It’s a secret I always keep with me, like a locket I never take off.
    Danny leaned back. He was so short that he didn’t even come up to the headrest.
    â€œI’m going to be a doctor,” he said. “A pediatrician. That’s a doctor for kids.”
    â€œI know that,” I said, irritated that he thought I didn’t. “Everyone knows that.”
    â€œI want to be the kind of doctor kids like. The kind who gives out lollipops and makes jokes and doesn’t lie,” he said. “The kind who, if he has to do something that hurts, just tells you straight out.”
    I thought about Dr. Parker at the clinic. He’s old and seems tired of kids. Whenever he gets out a tongue depressor, I remind him that I can open my mouth really wide and don’t need one. He always nods and says “Can’t hurt to save a little scratch” as he slides the tongue depressor back in the glass jar.
    â€œI guess you want to be a beauty queen or something,” Danny said. “A model. A
spokes
model.”
    â€œI haven’t decided yet.”
    I’d thought about it, though. All the things I could picture myself being had something to do with looking pretty. It was what I was good at, what I knew how to do. What good was all that smiling and eye contact if I was just going to be making cakes in a bakery?
    I felt the bus engine vroom under our seat. For a second, I thought about Mama, who would be waking up in ten minutes and calling for me to come out for breakfast. It would take her another few minutes to realize I wasn’t