A Book and a Bus Ride Mason Pettit

Dustin couldn’t read. He knew letters, but not words. I saw him throw his book on the floor, a tired copy of Little Critter, as I plopped down in bus 75 seat 11, the unforgiving Mississippi sun burning through the left-hand window. I looked over to my right and saw Dustin gritting his teeth as he slumped in the corner. I leaned over and picked up his book. “You dropped this.” He looked at me and slapped the book back down to the floor.

Again, I leaned over and picked up the children’s book. “You don’t like this book? This is one of my favorites.” He shot child-sized darts at me, but I kept going. “If you’re not gonna read it, I will.” I slid across the aisle next to him and began to read aloud. Dustin crawled out of the corner and looked over my shoulder at the book. The next day, Dustin had a new book that he wanted me to read, and I did, this time with a stipulation: he had to read one sentence on each page. Eventually, his afternoon readings shifted to whole pages, then whole books, and I began to look forward to my bus rides home.

As I moved away from home and went to the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, I felt the blessings of an amazing faculty willing to stay hours after class, but I still heard stories...