Loretta Humphrey opened the door to the school bus. She held one high-heeled foot on the brake and the other on the clutch as she leaned out over her seat to push the door crank with her right hand.
Loretta Humphrey was tiny.

Her bell-bottom jeans swooped down over high platform shoes, elongating her legs. When she sauntered down the hallway between classes, she looked like the female version of Rod Stewart or Steve Winwood only cooler. Much cooler.

Loretta had chestnut brown hair that hung across her shoulders in curls. Every now and then she’d sweep a stray tendril back with fingers bejeweled in rings. Her deep brown eyes were lined with black kohl.

She was my idol.

We’d both been passengers on the school bus, not but a year ago, when her brother Jimmy was the driver. Not that we shared a seat or anything. She always sat in back with her best friend Mary Stevens.

They were both cool.

Mary had raven black hair and bangs that covered a brow as fair as bone china. Her round cheeks were cherubic and naturally pink. Mary’s black eyeliner was even thicker than Loretta’s and by the end of classes had smeared into panda-like patches. Even so, I thought she was beautiful.

Mary had a buckskinned jacket with fringes on the arms that shimmered and swayed every time she moved. She and Loretta went to concerts at Dorton Arena and the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium down on Fayetteville Street all by themselves without parents sitting discreetly a row or two behind. On the bus they would talk loudly about their adventures.

“Jimi Hendrix looked right at me when I screamed his name,” Mary announced.

“Are you experienced?” Loretta screeched from the back of the bus.

The boys snickered.

“Get back home, Loretta,” the bravest in the bunch sung out as he turned around and leered.

Loretta rolled her eyes. Her glare was enough to make the boys shut up and face forward.

Loretta had that kind of power.

I ran into her once at the Oak Park Pharmacy. Debbie Perkins and I were sitting on the high stools at the soda counter eating a grill cheese sandwich and drinking the sweetest ice tea imaginable. Loretta sat down next to us and turned to me.

“Didn’t I see you at the pool in Glen Forest last week?” she asked.

“Probably, we go all the time.”

“You really put Randy Biggs in his place!”

She had seen me square off against the neighborhood bully when he kept calling a younger kid “fatso.”

“The next time he gives you any grief, let me know. We girls have to stick together.”

Loretta was cool and nice.

When she turned sixteen, Loretta took over Jimmy’s bus route, and I sat in the back of the bus with Debbie Perkins and Becky Street. We thought we were cool, too. But there was no touching Loretta.

She always had a transistor radio with her tuned to 88.1 WKNC—the station run by students at NC State—playing the latest rock-n-roll.

Loretta kept a pack of cigarettes on the dash and when the last kid stepped off the bus at Sanderson High School, she’d light up as she drove off to the parking lot.

After her route, she’d park the school bus in her front yard under the tall pines that nearly concealed the family’s modest ranch-style house off Highway 70 West.

I’d stare at the bus every Sunday when my parents drove my brother and me to and from church. I don’t think Loretta went to church.

I wanted to drive a school bus, too.

I wanted to be like Loretta. Fearless in her lumbering school bus and beautiful in her black eyeliner.