“Pedophile,” he repeated with a cunning grin. “A person who wants to have sex with little kids.” He wiped his sticky hands on his jeans and retrieved more candy from his lunchbox. The school bus jolted and a couple raspberry sour patch kids fell onto the seat but he either did not notice, or did not care. He laughed, his breath sweet as he listed increasingly complex configurations of deviance with a gleeful, pre-school-like repetition: sex with dogs. Dead dogs. Dead puppies. Dead puppies on fire. In bondage!

“Do you know any?” he asked.

“Any what?”

He scrunched his face. “I forgot the word.”

“Pedophiles?”

He nodded, biting off the pale ursine torso of another gummy candy, its head squished between his fingertips.

“Actually, I do know one.”

He licked his sugar stained lips before popping the bear head between them and chewing. “Who?”

“Just a girl.”

His reaction showed no hint of disgust, only curiosity. “What's she like?”

“Pretty ordinary. I mean, she's like any other high school senior except she fell for a boy still in primary school. Then she tried to commit suicide.”

“Why?”

“Well, she knew it'd never work, and she was, like, totally obsessed with him.”

“How'd she do it?”

“I heard she swallowed half a bottle of Tylenol.”

He chewed some more before concluding: “Unserious.” Such a merciless, scornful little mouth!

The bus hit a pothole. His head bobbled mindlessly on his neck like a blob of watermelon jell-o.

“Okay, your next word is sodomy.”

KAWAI SHEN is a writer based in Canada. You can find more of her work at kawaishen.com.