Bubblegum Boy

A short story and song by Lewis Aldanis: Origami

The boy was always chewing bubblegum. Hubba Bubba, Double Bubble, Juicy Fruit, his tongue was blue or purple or orange depending on what flavor he felt like chewing that day.

He waited outside his house, already at work blowing out bubbles larger than his fists. The orange-yellow school bus creaked open, and the boy put on his headphones and played on his favorite playlist before he walked in, a mix of Synthpop and Afrobeats. His ethnicity was suspiciously vague, not quite the colors that the kids called the others, a weird beige that confused everyone, even the adults.

His age was somewhere between getting punched in the stomach or being tripped while walking by the other kids. He had reached the second. The older boy smirking over him was Tony. He had tripped him, and his glorious bubble of blue sour raspberry gum had burst over his face.

The other kids laughed and asked why he was so blue. The boy tried not to cry, and huddled in his seat. The bus ride lasted a year.

During this year the kids, out of boredom, as they did not sleep or eat in the bus, played games. These games included musical chairs, hide-and-seek, and the boy’s greatest fear, tag.

Because the bus had little space, there was only the long hall between seats, stretching as far as the eye could see, grooved marks of metal painted with yellow safety boundaries the boy could never cross. The others always had a head start of at least a day. They explained the rules carefully to the boy, making sure he understood their game of tag.

After the boy would count the seconds, minutes, then hours, he would turn from the very end of the bus and face the hall between seats.

Ever since that day his bubblegum burst over his face, the boy had never chewed a single one. His phone had lost power after two days, so he had no music and only the games to play. He played the games because he believed when he would finally reach a person, the game of tag would end, and he would talk to the other kids, and be friends.

There was no light in the school bus, but it was always a sunny day through the windows that the bus driver said to never open. You could see green grass and a maze of houses that seemed to blur with the next. Strangers whizzed by outside as the boy ran through the long corridor, trying to make up time for the day he had counted before he was allowed to run after the others.

His skinny legs burned with acid, his lungs wheezed for air. Day after day the boy ran, until he saw the faroff shapes of the other boys walking. They saw him behind, and burst off in the other direction, the boy following even though his body told him he shouldn’t run.

The chase took several days, the group and the boy both limping forward, towards the front door of the school bus where the other kids sat.

The boy was determined to no longer be It. He spotted Tony, the boy who had first tripped him and caused his bubblegum to burst, and decided he would be the one to be It. The others ran, and the boy saw his chance, Tony lagging behind.

He lunged forward, managing to graze his back.

“You’re It!” the boy proclaimed, excited that he could finally rest, finally talk to the other kids.

Tony continued running towards the front of the school bus, and so did the other boys. That’s when the boy realized they weren’t running with the game of Tag. He was It, and it was just him the whole time.

The boy stopped, his exhaustion creeping in, sinking into his toes and bones and making his eyes water. He sat down on a bus seat.

Looking out the window, the boy realized the bus was driving in a long-winding circle. He had seen the same houses and lawns and cars since he’d been here.

He took out his phone, cracked and lifeless from the fall when Tony had tripped him, so he left it on the bus seat. He took out his pack of blue-sour-raspberry gum, still there, paper wrapped, ready to be opened and chewed.

Every packet he opened, squishing the soft blue chewing gums into one big ball, then squashing it into his mouth. Then he chewed. He chewed and chewed, grinding his molars into the mass of sour raspberry bubblegum. Running for all this time had made his lungs strong, and he sucked in as much air as he could into his expanding chest.

It was hard for the boy to pull off the safety switch of the window, but in the end it gave way, and the window slot dropped open. He peeked his head out the open window like a dog feeling the wind for the first time, leaning forward until he was dangerously close to falling out.

Then he blew. He blew and blew, a bright blue bubble stretching out that grew bigger and bigger, until the boy felt his feet lift up, and the bubblegum bubble pulled him out of the school bus. He kept on blowing until he had no air left, the bubble now the size of a small house, paper-thin and the same color as the sky.

The boy tied the bubblegum neatly between his fingers and drifted up to the clouds. He felt the sun, pink and orange and finally setting.

Then the bubble popped.