On the other hand, there are “non-preventable” crashes. If a drunk driver stuffs his car up under the back of your bus at a red light, or a chunk of flaming space station falls through the roof of your bus, there’s not much you can do about that. On your driving record, your supervisor will read it as an official acknowledgement that you probably suck, but they can’t prove it. You, the driver, are allowed to retain the right to look at yourself in the mirror and know that it isn’t true.

My record is clean, of course. I take great pride in the way I drive my bus. So naturally, as I put my foot down and steered my big yellow Thomas Built into a game of chicken with a fat, greasy bald man, astride a six-legged horse slash armadillo, wearing shiny copper-tinted armor and brandishing a flaming sledgehammer, the question that ran through my head was, “Is this going to be considered preventable, or non-preventable?”

The answer was a toss-up. Of course, I didn’t have to attempt to ram an armored warlord with my bus. In fact, I probably shouldn’t, given the likelihood of damage to Tib (my bus’ name) and myself. On the other hand, I had no kids aboard–it was just me and a giant talking cat named Annaluna (who, incidentally, would probably also be injured in the crash). And I think the fact that I was jousting in an attempt to rescue the twelve kids who had boarded my bus to go home a few afternoons ago was worth some consideration. And really, the odds of my not living long enough to even see my updated driving record were high enough to render it a moot point, but I was still worried. Take from that what you will.

Maybe I’d better start at the beginning.

The reason it was Momo’s fault was because Momo always wakes me up fifteen minutes before the alarm goes off at four-thirty, usually around four-fifteen, because she wants to be fed. She figured out a long time ago that when I get up, she gets fed. She’s a cat who (like every cat) likes food and lacks a concept of patience or delayed gratification, so she pushes the wake-up time a bit farther back every day.

Anyway, for some reason she didn’t show up this morning, so I didn’t get up, didn’t really roll out of bed until five, since I was expecting the four-fifteen wakeup call.

I don’t know why my alarm didn’t go off. That wasn’t my problem.

Anyway, I skipped my shower and grabbed my stuff, put some food down for Mo and then scooted out the door. She didn’t come out before I left, though she normally pounces on the bowl. I figured she was sulking about something, as cats are wont to do. Politics are something we deal with after the sun comes up, however.

My car started right up, eliminating another potential morning hurdle. I drive an old Fiat Spider with no name. Most cars have names; this one has no name, and has been quite specific about this fact. It is merely The Fiat. In addition to the usual eccentricities conferred upon it by its Italian masters, it has no roof right now. Actually, it’s got a roof, but the latches are broken, so it’s down all the time, and I’ve got a nice tarp to keep the raccoons, dew and rain out.

There’s something very soul-affirming about driving a convertible at five in the morning with the top down, the sky turning blue and nobody else on the road just yet.

One nice thing about being a school bus driver is getting the roads to myself in the morning. There’s a truck stop on the way to the bus yard, so I went there first to get myself a Krispy Kreme and an orange juice, just the thing to keep a growing bus driver active. I buzzed in and buzzed out quickly; I like truck stops in the early morning, too. Actually, they’re pretty much the same from sundown to sunup; there’s no one in there except a cashier and there’s a TV that’s either tuned to ESPN or TNT. The aisles are all empty and full of candy and potted meat and cheap toys, just waiting for some traveler or trucker to take them home. The smell of the greasy-ass food from the appended restaurant fills the place, a reminder that the Krispy Kremes in their special glass-fronted case are a much safer culinary bet. They’re also best in the morning, which put me in a good mood.

I went right out of that mood on the way back to the car, when I remembered that the reason Momo didn’t wake me up is that she’s dead.

Putting Mo to sleep was not a happy day for me. She was only about nine years old, but cancer marched in and, well, that was all for the cat. Tumors started spreading all over her body and the only humane thing to do (according to the vet) was to put her down. I don’t know how humane it was to me, necessarily, but it made Momo more comfortable and I was good with that.

Anyway, remembering that took the sparkle out of the morning. I dropped my bag of no longer happy Krispy Kreme donuts into the footwell and forgot about them.

When I got to the yard, my car was the third or fourth one in the lot, and I pulled in right next to Rodger’s big blue pickup. Rodger’s the dispatcher. He’s been the dispatcher for about as long as I’ve been driving, which would be about six years now. Nobody else has ever successfully been the dispatcher. Rodger has actually retired twice, but he keeps coming back. He doesn’t take sick days and doesn’t ever seem to leave the desk, except for one legendary winter when he left the desk to sub for Route 81 in a blizzard. The middle schoolers talk about it to this day; he may not be a regular bus driver, but Rodger takes no shit from anything that breathes oxygen.

If you were to take one of those Styrofoam modeling heads, put a paper bag on it, crumple it up and stick eyes and a Brylcreem-black pompadour on it, it would look a lot like Rodger. His leathery, papery, crinkly skin has got to be downright terrifying to children, but underneath that sun-worn exterior and a tendency to snap at anyone who gets in his way, he’s a really nice guy.

Rodger didn’t say anything to me when I came in, and I didn’t have anything to say to him, either, just signed in and went out to my bus. If he cared that I was fifteen minutes later than usual (and rest assured, he most certainly did) he didn’t say anything about it. This was just fine with me, since I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

I walked through the dark bus yard to wake Tib up, trying to enjoy the dark sky and stars that were just beginning to pale toward daylight. The bus yard is exquisitely quiet in the morning, a flat expanse of blacktop that reverberates softly with the sound of one or two diesels idling. I closed my eyes and tried to let the familiar sound ease me into my day. It didn’t help as much as I wanted it to.

Yard regulations require a fifteen-minute pre-trip inspection, of course. That’s the daily (actually, trip-ly, since you make one in the afternoon as well) checkover to make sure that the brakes and lights are working, the seats are still attached, and so on and so forth. It takes me about five minutes to do my pre-trip, because I’ve been driving the same bus since I got here. “Tib” stands for “TBBEM,” which stands for “The Best Bus Ever Made,” which is what my faithful companion on Route 91 is. Tib is the oldest bus in the yard, and I drive him despite the fact that I’ve been here longer than most of the other drivers. You’d be surprised at how quick the turnover rate is for school bus drivers. Or maybe you wouldn’t, if you have kids.

So, if I have all of that seniority, why do I have the oldest bus in the yard, especially since they add four or five new buses each year and rotate the older ones out of service, and it’s generally the good drivers that get the newest, best buses, and I happen to be one of the best drivers?

Easy. I’m the weird one.

It’s true. I’m the weird driver at our yard; every yard has one. I don’t dress up like Santa Claus or teach my kids songs or fake epileptic seizures to get attention (though we have drivers who do all of those things), but of the sixty or seventy drivers on staff, I am the only one who weaves colored strands (usually white, orange, red and yellow) into my dreadlocks. There are a few other male drivers (not many), but I’m the only one who wears combat boots and occasionally floor-length skirts to work. I’m one of the few who weighs less than three hundred pounds and I think I’m the only person on staff who went to college. Nobody knows why I work here; they wonder why I don’t have a better-paying job, something more glamorous. When someone asks, which they usually don’t, I just tell them that I like it here.

So, anyway, the bus. I got passed over for new buses the first four years I was here, being the weird driver and all, and then last year I got the pick of the litter, a brand-new Thomas Built on a Freightliner chassis with an air-ride driver’s seat and a hydraulic loading door. Ah, that new-bus smell.

I got to drive it for two days.

I had to take a day off for jury duty, and before I could get myself rejected by one of the lawyers (which took a record ten minutes) the substitute driver managed to wreck the damn thing.

Luckily no kids were hurt–he managed to drive it up the back of a newspaper truck on the way to school to pick them up–but that was the end of that new bus. They hadn’t gotten rid of Tib yet, so I got him back. I would have been justified in complaining, but I chose to just look very sad instead, and the mechanics made it up to me by putting the crunched bus’ Caterpillar engine and that awesome air-ride seat into Tib before they gave him back to me. Now he runs better than ever, though he is very obviously the oldest unit in the yard. Tib is a 1977 Ford, with a Thomas Built 65-passenger body. He’s over twice the district’s mandatory fifteen-year retirement age, but I’m not going to complain if nobody else does.

This morning, I was happy to do my pre-trip and greet Tib, whose big steering wheel and comfy pleather driver’s seat wrap around me like a hug from an old friend. Unfortunately, when I opened the door, I smelled beer. In fact, the floor was greasy with beer, and the bus smelled like a Hooters at closing time. Ah, some days just keep getting better and better.

“Yeah, it was on a drunk run last night. Didn’t they clean it out?”

“No, clearly they didn’t. It smells like beer. What do you want me to do?”

“I haven’t got a spare bus for you,” Rodger said. “Just go on.”

Great. Few things are more fun than having to pick up elementary school kids in a bus that reeks of beer. The parents tend to raise eyebrows, you know?

I hate drunk runs. I stopped doing them about two years ago. Our bus yard occasionally contracts with the university to go out and pick up drunken fraternity rats and get them safely home from whatever party they’re having. I mean, granted, it’s nice to keep them off of the road, but I learned after two or three drunk runs that intoxicated fratboys are a step below middle schoolers on my list of least favorite sentient creatures. Needless to say, after a couple of late nights spent scrubbing a bus clean of beer and puke, I quit doing drunk runs. Unfortunately Tib is the least valuable bus on the lot and can’t talk, so he is pressed into service in this manner frequently.

Whoever had done last night’s run chose not to stay until three in the morning cleaning him out; even my trash can was full of red Solo cups. Because whoever it was had been lazy, I rolled out of the lot fifteen minutes late, which not only meant that I was going to get caught by the train, but that I’d be late getting to school. This is not one of my favorite things, but this was working out to be one of those days where bad stuff could keep happening if it wanted to because I wasn’t going to feel any worse.

Of course, that didn’t stop the day from trying to make me feel worse. My morning route sucked, as much as it’s possible for a morning route to do so: two cars ran my red lights and almost hit kids, the bus was chased by a psychotic Chihuahua (that actually happens almost every morning, but it was particularly hard to restrain myself from running the little bastard over, given my mood), a kindergartener decided he didn’t want to go to school and ran away from the bus, resulting in a merry chase, I confiscated a laser pointer after getting blasted in the eye through the mirror, we got stuck in rush hour traffic just in time for Kyle to puke his breakfast up in the aisle, I got to school half an hour late and incurred the wrath of a parent who claimed I had hit her car (I didn’t; there wouldn’t have been anything left of her Kia Sportage if Tib sideswiped it) and when I finally got out of the bus yard to attempt to tend to some of my real-world errands, it turned out that the junkyard had crushed the car they were purportedly saving for me, flattening the convertible top latches, door handles and emergency brake cables I had been looking forward to pick’n’pulling. The mouth-breather at the counter just shrugged, heedless of how difficult it is to find parts for Fiat Spiders these days.
Around noon I gave up on trying to succeed at today. I ran by the apartment, changed into a skirt (if I couldn’t be in a good mood, I was determined to at least wear my favorite clothes), grabbed a lackadaisical hot dog lunch, and then went to the crystal shop to visit the skirt’s maker.

It’s actually a Wiccan store, but I don’t know the name of it because its sign is gold flowery script on a bright purple background and I can’t read it. I think it starts with an “A.” I had dropped by to see my best friend and sometime therapist Moy, and I knew she was there because I saw her car out front. The store was empty, as it tended to be in the early afternoon.

Moy makes all of my skirts. Off-the-rack skirts don’t fit right, probably because of the lack of hips, so Moy slices the legs out of pants and sews new material in, turning them into funky, floor-length hippie skirts. She only makes them for me; she says she likes seeing them on me.

She works at the crystal shop not because she believes in anything there, but because she likes the smell of the incense. She’s a good worker, but they tend to schedule her during the day, when she won’t have to deal with as many of the hard-core New Age clientele, whom she is incapable of taking seriously.

“Did you bring your bus?” Moy asked as I came in the door.

“I haven’t been able to get them to put you on my route yet,” I replied. She gave me a little laugh and closed the comic book she was reading. Once upon a time, Moy had actually thought herself too intellectual for comics; she even turned her nose up at Sandman. It took Preacher, of all things, to change her tune, and these days she spent more at Hell Hole Comics than I did.

“So what’s up?”

“Not much. Shitty day.”

“Really?” Moy sat back in her stool and put her feet up on the counter, wiggling her toes inside of battered Blundstones. “Tell me about it. Make me glad I work here.”

“Well, you didn’t have to clean up puke today.”

“Isn’t that the fourth time this week?”

“Fifth. I’m thinking of renaming my bus the Vomit Comet.”

“Already taken,” she said. “Is it the same kid?”

“Different kid every time.”

“Maybe it’s your driving.”

“I’ll thank you to keep your ignorant fantasies inside your diseased brain,” I said.

Moy put her feet down and hopped up, leaning across the counter on her elbows. “Poor baby. What can I do to make it all better?”

“Give us a kiss and show us your tits,” I said, half-serious and half-joking.

She pretended to consider it. Unfortunately if she were really going to make a serious move, or wanted me to, she would have indicated as much long ago. “Mmm–naah. How about popcorn, donuts and a movie instead? What do you think, is it a Bruce Willis night, or are we more in a Jason Statham mood? I’ll make curry.”

I smiled. “Explody movies sound like fun.”

“You don’t look like that sounds like fun,” Moy said. “Don’t sound like it, either.”

“It does. Sorry, just missing Momo.”

“Come over tonight, and we’ll think about other things.”

“I’d like that.”

“Me, too. Want to see the new daggers? They got some really stupid ones in this week,” she said, heading for the large carved-oak cabinet where the shop displayed the various athanes and other ceremonial knives that they stocked. I followed her over to get a look at the latest metal. “Check it out. I like the Hindu-looking one, but the Disney-themed dagger is just painful to look at.”

She was right, it was. “Is that the witch from the Little Mermaid on the handle?”

“It is. And the bad guy from Aladdin is on the other side. I swear if someone comes in and buys it while I’m working, I’m going to laugh in their face.”

“I wonder how the gods would feel, if you performed a ritual with a knife like that?”

“I wouldn’t want to find out.”

“So how’s everything else?” I asked Moy.

She returned to her spot on the stool behind the cash register. “Pretty groovy in general. The parents are still pissed about my dropping out of grad school, of course, but they’ll get over it.”

Moy quit the graduate chemistry program when her advisor grabbed her ass and she broke his nose. She chose to stay in town instead of flying back home to Phoenix however, a decision for which I am grateful. “Well,” I told her, “you’ve got your burgeoning career in the crystal-selling business.”

“That I do,” she replied with a grin. “And I like that skirt on you, by the way. Even though I messed up the hem.”

“Nobody ever notices your so-called mistakes but you,” I told her. “And note the convenient loop for this hammer I found at the junkyard today.” I showed her the battered ball-peen hammer I’d liberated from the junkyard. This particular skirt had started life as a pair of carpenter’s pants, and the hammer looked right at home.

“Very nice,” she agreed. “Someone left that in a car?”

“That they did. I found it, and a refugee,” I said, and took out a palm-sized stuffed turtle that someone had left to be crushed with the remains of the family Audi.

Moy squeaked happily. “Coo, look at you!” she said to the stuffed animal, taking it gently from me. “Did someone abandon you in a car? Did they? It’s okay, you have a new home now. Moy’s gonna take good care of you, okay? And we’ll wash that nasty oil smell right out–dude, this thing smells like a burning clutch.”

I shrugged. “What do you expect? It came out of a junkyard. I thought about washing it first, but figured it was best to get it into your hands as soon as possible.”

She gave me a raised eyebrow. “Indeed it was,” she agreed. You have done well, soldier.”

“Glad to be of service,” I replied, saluting her and the turtle. “That, and the hammer, were the only things that I took away from Covert’s, unfortunately.”

“Oh, no. You didn’t get the parts you needed for your roof?”

“Nope. Some nudnick crushed the car.”

“Weren’t they supposed to be saving it for you?”

“That they were. But I’m not talking about how much this morning sucked any more. What time do you want me to come over?”

“I get off here at six. How about seven or so?”

I was fifteen minutes early, so I did my afternoon pre-trip, snagged a bottle of water, a bag of roasted almonds and an orange out of the vending machine in case my appetite kicked in while I was out, and headed out to the school early. Early meant that I’d be first in line, which is always a bonus. The kids tend to be bubbly and hyper in the afternoon, and I prefer to get away from the school as quickly as possible, without getting caught up in the tide of parents picking their little ones up and other buses hitting the road.

“91, did you just leave the yard?” Rodger called as I was doing so.

“Ten-four.”

“I missed you on the way in. Carolyn wants to talk to you when you get back.”

Ugh, with a capital U. Carolyn is the general manager of the bus yard, and where Rodger generally sides with us, Carolyn seems to be bent on being every bus driver’s worst enemy. It was almost a sure bet that she was going to drag me into her office and grill me about the woman who’d claimed that I hit her. She’d make grand statements about how we had to be professional because we’re in the public eye, and about all of the responsibility we carried, and then she would make dire threats about firing me. She liked to talk magnanimously about how she had “decided to let you keep your job” at the end of a lecture.

Now I couldn’t even look forward to finishing my route. I concentrated instead on the sheer pleasure of driving Tib. It’s a good feeling, being at the wheel of a big yellow bus–at least to me. The visibility is nice; there’s a sense of being a minor celebrity on the road. Even though I’m not a huge fan of the kids, I like to drive Tib. It’s no sports car, but it is as familiar as an old war buddy. When I put the pedal down, I can imagine the throttle opening, the big diesel spinning and twisting the drive shaft which then turns the rear duals. That little flex of my ankle causes an almost immediate reaction twenty feet behind me, at the rear axle, and Tib moves forward. Spin the big wheel, and the bus changes direction. It takes some skill to move Tib quickly and efficiently through the masses of smaller vehicles on the road, and to avoid clipping curbs and trees, and to splash through the occasional puddle of course. I’m reasonably good at this, and it feels good to be good at it.

I rolled up at school. The bus drive faced due west, and I could see that the steel-gray clouds had moved overhead and were deepening toward black outside of town. The green of the trees and the yellow of the McDonald’s sign across the street stood out starkly against the halftone sky, as if the entire landscape was badly superimposed on a sea of gray. Somewhere, there was a faint rumble of thunder in the distance.

It was going to be a good storm, from the looks of it. I took out my crossword (I was halfway through the good weekend New York Times version) and pondered the possible solution to 17 Down, which was five letters meaning “Special football strategy.”

I didn’t get it, but I did get 19 Down (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and 22 Down (termite) before the first kids started boarding. I recognized the stompy steps of the younger kids, but didn’t look up to see who was getting on. “Bus driver, do you think it’s going to rain?” Jason asked.

I looked out through the windshield and gave him my, “that’s a dumb question” look. Driving the bus, I had learned that yes, there are such things as dumb questions, and third-graders are just old enough to know how to ask them.

Jason said, “I think it’s going to rain,” and headed for his seat. Richard was right behind him, with Mark in tow, and both of them were all full of gangster swagger this afternoon.

Richard asked, “Bus driver, are you a girl?” and Jason giggled.

I didn’t even look at him. Richard often acted like the world’s smallest thug, but ever since he’d been running late one morning and rushed out to the bus in his Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers pajamas to ask me to wait for him, his micro-thug routine had lost what meager power it held.

“You’re wearing a dress, so you must be a girl,” he said again.

I sighed calmly, and filled in “Meryl” at 100 across, “Academy Award winner Streep.” Getting into arguments with elementary school kids is as pointless as bickering on the Internet.

My lack of response was of course anathema to his fifth-grade gangsta heart. It certainly wasn’t as funny as the exchange must have been when he imagined it. “Bus driver,” he said again.

“You’re in the way,” I said, looking up at him long enough to nod toward the kids piling up behind them. Marcus was trying to push his way past, because kindergarteners wait for no line. “Go to your seat, please.” I find that I only say please to the kids when I’m actually annoyed with them. I don’t think they’ve figured this out though.

Judging by the noise, almost everyone was aboard. I looked up, saw that this was true, and started the engine. This was the daily cue to sit down and get ready to go, and most of the kids did so. I had to yell at Max and Bree; the weather had everyone excited. The sky was almost pitch black, and had taken on a greenish tint. It was definitely time to go. I checked the mirrors to be sure there were no kids running wildly to reach my bus before I left them behind–because I would, and they knew it–then reached over and closed the door like I was just another part of the bus. To them, that’s pretty much what I am. Name the parts of the school bus: Tire, steering wheel, light, seat, bus driver, bumper. Paradoxically, what I really wanted was for one of the kids to ask me what I did at night, where I went, where I lived. And I probably wouldn’t tell them, of course, but I was just suddenly in the mood for one of them to give a shit, as much as an eight year-old could give a shit about anything, anyway.

If there was one thing worse than missing my cat, it was getting all sappy because of it. I pulled away from school and tried to leave the thought behind.

The weather was messing with the rest of the drivers; everyone seemed to be in a hurry, headlights blazing against the unusually dark afternoon. I clipped quickly through the lights, got Tib up to speed on the freeway and back down the off-ramp again, and the sky was even greener by the time I reached the apartment complex stop. I rushed through the complex, bouncing everyone over the speed bumps, and as I was pulling out of the complex there was a shout piercing enough to get my attention. “Bus driver, Mazie’s changing seats!”

I glanced up in the mirror just in time to see Mazie’s pink tennis shoe disappear into Claire’s seat, and she ducked her little head down. I looked for Dira, who sat with her younger sister and generally kept her in line, but didn’t see her. Older brother Edward wasn’t there, either. “Mazie,” I called out, “you know you can’t change seats without asking first.”

Mazie’s head popped up. Her dirty blond hair was a mass of cowlicks, and there was dirt on her chin. “Bus driver, I didn’t want to sit by myself.”

“Where’s your sister?” Shit. Had I left the rest of her siblings behind?

“They didn’t get on the bus. My mom came and picked them up.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged.

“Well, you need to go back to your seat when I stop at the traffic light.”

“I don’t like to sit by myself.”

“I know, but you have to ask before you can move. You will have to ask again later.” Enforcement of the rules on the bus can be sort of esoteric, but I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. When I pulled up to the next light and stopped, I gave Mazie a look and she obediently went back to her assigned seat.

Kyle bounced up at the same time. “Bus driver, can I change seats?”

“Not until we’re at a stop.”

“But she moved.”

“And I made her move back, didn’t I?” Kyle started to say something else, but the light changed and he sat down when the bus started moving.

I was halfway through the route when the radio crackled. “All routes, the weather service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch. All buses are to remain at your schools,” Rodger said. “I repeat, all buses, remain at your schools. Do not leave.”

Immediately the airwaves filled up with chatter; drivers who were on the way to their schools wanting to know if they should come back to the yard, drivers who had just pulled out wondering if they should go back, and the usual five or six drivers who were so clueless that they weren’t sure if “all buses” meant them or not.

Rodger cut through the noise as quickly as he could. “I’m saying this once more. All buses, remain at your schools. Administrators will come and take everyone inside. If you have just left your school, you need to return immediately.”

I picked up the radio. “91 to dispatch.”

“Go ahead, 91.”

“Rodger, I’m halfway through my route, and it’ll be just as far for me to go back to the school as it will to get everyone home.” I was pulling up at Mark’s house as I spoke, banging the door open.

Rodger didn’t answer for a few moments. I waited, watching Mark run home and hoping that he’d tell me to keep going. The last thing I wanted was for today to go on much longer. I rushed to Stacia’s stop, figuring that the farther along I was, the better chance I’d have of getting him to let me keep going. “91, go ahead and finish your route,” the order finally came. “Watch the weather and be careful.”

“I remember the drill,” I told him. We had specific instructions as to what to do if there was a tornado. Evacuating the bus into the nearest ditch didn’t sound like fun though, so I resolved to get everyone home before that could happen.

Right on cue, the first raindrop cracked against the windshield. Looking forward, I could actually see the downpour marching up the street toward us like a silver curtain.

There are occasions on which the prohibition against standing up while moving can be temporarily lifted, and this was one of them. “Close the windows, everybody,” I said loudly, sliding my driver’s window shut with one hand. “It’s going to rain!”

Mariela put her window up, and then there was a rattling, hammering roar like a drumline as we drove into the downpour. The bus’ roof vibrated with countless impacts of big, fat raindrops, and the kids flew into a shrieking, giggling frenzy to get the windows closed. Mazie actually closed her window and then climbed halfway over the seat behind her to try and close the one behind her. Mariela, Stacia and Richard were the most effective, being the oldest. I kept my eyes on the road, which was suddenly awash; it wouldn’t do to bump into something with everyone out of their seats, after all. For a few moments, we were a team, a school bus driver and his crew getting the hatches battened down against the sudden storm. Then Mazie jumped across the aisle into Max’ seat–actually jumped, and I had to snap at her to get back in her seat and stay there.

The windshield wipers flailed away at the rain but didn’t make much headway; it was coming down too fast. I turned gratefully off of the main road and down the road for Stacia’s stop.

Stacia paused at the doorway, considering the effect that the rain was going to have on her clothes. She seemed to come to a decision, and bolted off into the silvery air. Mariela was suddenly at my shoulder. “Bus driver,” she said quietly. “Larkin is crying.”

“What’s wrong–” I started, but didn’t need to finish the question, realizing that I’d missed her stop. Shit. It had been a total brainfade, while I was talking to Rodger, and I’d driven right by. Shit shit shit. I thanked Mariela and sent her back to her seat. “Larkin,” I said loudly enough that she could hear me. I couldn’t see her–kids seem to get smaller when they’re upset, and if she was in her assigned seat, I couldn’t see her. “I’m sorry, I missed your stop. Don’t cry, I’ll get you home.”

If she responded, I didn’t hear her, but a little brown-haired head poked up where there hadn’t been one before, and it seemed to nod. Good enough. I reflexively checked outside the bus to make sure Stacia had made it back into her house, then closed the doors.

As we pulled away, there was a flash of lightning so close that I felt the heat and an almost instantaneous explosion of thunder. Everyone on the bus screamed except me, and I let out a pretty good gasp. The older kids subsided into giggles immediately afterward; everyone else went silent.

The green in the sky had given way to nearly black, and the wind had kicked in fiercely. The curtain of rain was moving almost horizontally, and Tib was getting kicked around a little bit. I crossed Mainline and discovered that the intersection had about five inches of standing water in it; the resulting bow wave came up high enough to shower the windshield with a thunderous roar. Tib didn’t hesitate, though. It takes more than five inches of water to slow my bus down.

Mazie was sitting sideways in her seat again. “Mazie, turn forward please.”

“But I’m playing with Max.”

“You can’t play with Max today, Mazie, I need you to stay in your seat and stop jumping around.”

She stood up in the aisle so she could see me better, and I threw out an arm reflexively. “Why not, bus driver?”

“Because I am busy driving, Mazie. There’s a big storm, in case you hadn’t noticed, and it’s hard to drive in the rain, and I really want to get you home before we get sucked up by a tornado!”

Mazie’s eyes went wide and filled with tears of terror. “Tornado?”

Okay, well, it hadn’t been my intent to make a seven-year old girl cry. There are things even the most misanthropic bus driver doesn’t do.

“There’s going to be a tornado?” Kyle asked. Half a dozen apprehensive faces looked at me in the mirror.

“No. There’s not going to be a tornado,” I said. Of course the sky chose that moment to let loose with another apocalyptic roll of thunder, and that started Mazie crying for real. Claire and Jessica had also teared up, and Max looked like he was considering it. “Everybody be quiet and sit down!” I announced. This did not improve the mood, but it at least kept them in their seats.

The wind hadn’t lessened; debris was skating across the road ahead of us, and I realized that the traffic lights had gone out. There wasn’t any other traffic on the road and the wind was gusting hard enough that I probably would’ve found shelter if I wasn’t driving a 21,000-pound school bus.

The turn to get to Richard’s house was decisively blocked. H&R Blocked, to be specific; the tax agency’s sign had blown into the road, and the sparking power pole that had come down with it suggested that a different route was advisable. There were two other ways to get to Richard’s house; going all the way around to where his street met the next crossroad, which was about three miles out of my way, or by backtracking a little bit and taking the road that cut through from Eric’s neighborhood. The road was paved, but only a single lane wide, and it cut through the undeveloped woods between the two newish subdivisions. The road had actually been there for a long time. It was a spur off of Mainline that had paralleled some long-lost railroad tracks at one point, if my local history was correct. It was generally off-limits to buses because of an old stone bridge in the woods that was steeply crowned enough to high-center a transit bus. Tib’s conventional chassis provided somewhat more ground clearance, so I figured I could probably make it over, assuming the old bridge would hold the bus’ weight.

Of course it would. I pulled into the 7-11’s parking lot to turn Tib around and headed back that way.

“I have to go the other way to get to Richard’s house, because the road is blocked.”

“Are we going to go across the fairy bridge?”

I’d never thought of it as that, but it was poetic enough. “Yes, I guess we are.”

“Why are we going this way?” Kyle asked.

“Sit down, Kyle,” I replied. The rain was coming down so hard I almost missed the turn to the unnamed road through the woods. If it hadn’t been for the break in the curb, I might have rolled right past.

The road was framed by trees, and it occurred to me somewhat belatedly, as we were passing into them, that with the wind as violent as it was, driving under tree cover might not be the best plan. In fact, the road to the fairy bridge might already be blocked, and there was no room to turn around in here. Of course, if that were the case I could just back out. It wasn’t like anyone was likely to be coming up behind us, and having a chance to perform a difficult driving maneuver in the bus is something I rarely pass up. I stopped competing in the obstacle-course “bus rodeos” they have all across the state every semester because they were too easy.

The trees stretched above the road provided almost no protection from the rain, which lanced through the leaves and rendered vision negligible, in spite of Tib’s wipers flailing away at full speed. I kept my speed down and my eyes on the leaf-strewn road ahead. I saw the pavement rise–that was the fairy bridge, coming up. Perfect. I knew it was at about the halfway point of the road, where a little stream ran through the green belt between the subdivisions.

Max eyed the bridge like it was a ramp. “Go fast, bus driver!” he said, bouncing in his seat.

“Not this time,” I replied, slowing down. I wanted to see the stream itself, which was no doubt swollen with rain. The stone bridge arched over fast-moving, debris-heavy water that had taken on some of the angry gray tint of the sky, but the area wasn’t seriously flooded. I crossed my fingers that the road wouldn’t be blocked past the bridge–backing over the bridge would prove difficult because of Tib’s rear overhang. For that matter, we were likely to scrape coming down the other side of the bridge; I hadn’t considered that.

Hell, I still wasn’t sure that we wouldn’t get high-centered, if the front of the bus came down on the other side of the arch before the rear wheels started going up. There was no time to worry about that any more, though; I eased off the brakes and let Tib roll forward, onto the bridge.

The concrete made no indications that it was going to give way, and the bus crept up the incline quickly. I felt the rear bumper touch the ground, just barely, as Tib reached the crest of the fairy bridge, and then we were climbing on over the top. I looked out the side window and saw the water below, speeding under the bridge. It was a pretty little bridge, actually; it was sad that it was stuck out here in the woods where no one could see it. The way things were going in this town, it’d be torn down for a more modern construct in a few years, when someone decided to build condos along the little stream’s floodplain. I was glad to be using it, but the circumstances kind of sucked.

As we reached the center of the bridge, the rain picked up. And when I say it picked up, I mean that it came down. The water formed a solid curtain of silver on the windshield, and the roof sounded like we were driving through the world’s biggest car wash. The outside world turned to smears of grayish color, and the thrashing windshield wipers might as well have been flailing away two inches above the glass for all the good they were doing. The rain was coming down so hard that my instinct was to stop until I could see better, but we weren’t going that fast to begin with so I kept rolling gently, figuring that was better than stopping halfway over the bridge and getting stuck there somehow.

I hadn’t seen anything ahead of us, but I held my breath as Tib came slowly off the other side. There was a rut I hadn’t seen on the way over, and the bus gave a big, stomach-lurching jounce as we finished crossing the bridge. The bumper hit the ground much harder this time, a concussive impact that made the windows rattle and caused the radio to go silent for a moment and then kick into static. But the fairy bridge hadn’t collapsed, and that was the important thing.

On this side of the bridge, the road turned to gravel. I didn’t remember that; could’ve sworn it was paved all the way through. Thanks to the rain, the road was more mud than gravel of course, and we pushed forward with the shush of mud misting off of the tires.

The rain slackened all at once, as if someone had shut off a switch, and the trees seemed to close in. The rough surface of the road set Tib’s rear axle to bouncing, and I eased off the gas. Had they torn out the concrete since I was through here last? I surely would have remembered if the road were this bad, because it would’ve hammered the heck out of the Fiat.

My possibly flawed memory quickly became the least of my worries. The road reached an acceptable level of “bad,” but the trees abruptly thinned out and we were driving across a field of tall yellowing grass that brushed along Tib’s sides. I could see at least a quarter mile ahead, and Richard’s neighborhood was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the city beyond it, or–it took me a moment to notice–were there any power lines. And the sky had cleared completely. Oh, and there were mountains.

I shut off the windshield wipers.

Mountains?

The closest mountain to us should be about eight hundred miles away, but the horizon ahead was most definitely defined by purple mountain majesties, complete with snow capping the tops.

“What the shite?” I said, barely remembering to use the British pronunciation so the kids wouldn’t go all wide-eyed. No more wide-eyed than they already were, at least.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw only the woods receding quickly behind us, and the trail Tib was breaking. At this point I had to admit that there really wasn’t much of a road ahead of us; we were making our own road across the tall grass of the prairie, which was thankfully smooth.

It was also sloping downward. Tib was beginning to pick up speed, and the hill was steepening. I eased the brakes on to bleed off some speed, and that’s when I saw the knights.

I guess they were knights, anyway. There were men in gleaming bronze plate armor partially surrounding a small stand of trees off to my left. They had weapons of some kind, which they were swinging rhythmically, though I couldn’t see what they were fighting. Their actions were haphazard enough that it didn’t look like any kind of practice–something was really going on. They weren’t fighting each other, either. As we passed them I wondered what SCA was doing out in the woods, and hot on the heels of that I wondered why they’d been out in a violent rain storm. Even though said storm had disappeared.

As had the road. Tib was really starting to accelerate down the hill now. The lack of familiar visual cues masked our speed, but the speedo indicated we were going thirty-five and speeding up. The surface was getting rougher and really starting to kick the bus around, and I couldn’t see the bottom of the hill we were rolling down. I braked harder, and the rear tires locked up on the loose surface, ripping up swaths of grass. Tib’s rear end started to fishtail around.

The kids! In my confusion about the sudden, inexplicable change in scenery, I had actually managed to completely forget about them. When I tuned in, I heard a chorus of birdlike chirps of fear and crying; a glance in the child mirror told me that some of them had fallen out of their seats as the bus bounced and the rest were huddled and trying not to hit the floor.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just let them scream. What I had to do was keep the bus on all six wheels so that nobody got hurt for real, that was my job right now. I tuned the kids back out, and concentrated on getting Tib slowed down. The steering wheel jumped in my hands as the front tires crashed through ruts, and I struggled to keep a grip on it. We were bouncing so much that I could only make out where we were going as a series of blurred snapshots through the windshield. I cranked the wheel to avoid a broken tree stump, and then back the other direction to get past a rock.

The bottom of the hill lurched and bounced into view, about two hundred yards farther down. It was lined with trees–literally, a ruler-straight line of trees marched along the base of the hill, and I had to get the bus stopped before we hit them. Trees don’t yield, not even to school buses. I risked locking up the brakes, then let them go as the back end started to sway, then locked them up again, pumping them aggressively. My right hand went instinctively to the shifter and clicked Tib down into first gear; the transmission kicked down with a brutal backward lurch and the engine roared like a dinosaur in a blender, but we bled a lot of speed.

The bus bounced through a rut that jerked the wheel hard enough to nearly break my wrists, but I held on, pumping the brakes and watching the trees get closer and closer. They were pine trees, and they looked very, very hard.

The tires slid on greasy undergrowth, and I could tell that we weren’t going to get stopped in time. Scanning the trees quickly, I saw an opening that looked wide enough to accept the bus, and started steering for it as best I could. We might lose a side mirror going in, but it was better than hitting a tree straight on.

We had lost a lot of speed but were still going too fast to risk a glance at the speedometer. Tib bounced, lurched, and skidded into the piney woods carrying too much damn speed anyway. I made a last-minute correction and bit the inside of my lip as the bus slipped between two thick-trunked pines, then cut the wheel slightly as the front tires locked up, sliding on accumulated pine needles. A second rank of trees set staggered inside the first, and I had to turn to keep from plowing into them. The dodge put me on a diagonal to the row, and Tib slid neatly through the gaps between several more rows of trees before stopping.

The moment we stopped, I pulled the air brake and put the bus in neutral, thought about it for half a moment, then shut Tib down and pocketed the keys. The standard shutdown procedure felt good, a little island of normalcy from which I could try to figure out what was happening. The sound of whimpering children pressed in immediately.

I unbuckled my seat belt and stood up. “Is anybody hurt? Everyone sit up, okay? Let me see you.” Twelve tear-streaked faces looked back at me. Even Richard appeared to have been crying, though he was wiping his face hastily to conceal the evidence. “That’s better. Is everybody okay?”

“Hiep fell out of her seat,” Vicki said.

I went to Hiep’s seat. The girl was cradling her arm, and I held out my hand. “Can I see?” I asked her. She looked back at me but gave no indication that she understood, as usual. Hiep is in second grade. She’s Vietnamese, I think, and I’ve never heard her speak. I’m not even sure she speaks English, because the AP program includes some bilingual classes. I held out my hand, motioned for her to show me her arm, but she just cradled it closer and turned slightly away. “Hiep, let me see,” I said. No response. Dammit.

“Bus driver, I bumped my head,” Claire said.

“I think everybody did. Is it bleeding?” I hadn’t seen any blood and nobody was screaming loudly enough to indicate broken bones, so I assumed we were safe on that front.

“No, it’s not bleeding,” Claire said.

“Good. Stay in your seat, okay?” I didn’t smell diesel or smoke, so the bus wasn’t likely to abruptly burst into flames, and I felt safe keeping all of the kids on board. I had never had an accident, but the procedures had been drilled into all of the drivers’ heads for so long that they were instinct. Get everyone settled, make sure there are no serious injuries, determine if the bus needs to be evacuated, and then call dispatch. Actually, we’re supposed to call dispatch first, so I had technically missed a step.

I slid back into the driver’s seat and grabbed the radio handset. My hands were shaking, and I clenched my free hand to make it stop. “91 to dispatch.”

Static.

“91 to dispatch, do you read, Rodger?”

Static again. I checked the radio to make sure it hadn’t been bounced off of its proper station (it hadn’t) then checked the antenna wire to make sure it was attached (it was). Then I wished that I’d bothered to spring for a cell phone some time, because there was no way that I was walking back up to the road to get help.

That was beginning to feel like an empty concern, though. I wasn’t entirely certain there still was a road to walk back to.

Motion in the mirror caught my eye. I focused on it; Kyle was standing in the aisle. “Bus driver!” he screamed urgently.

“What?”

Kyle’s response was puke. He said, “bloogh,” and vomited all over the aisle and down the front of his coat. Great googaly moogaly! How could so much puke come out of one kid?
Vicki shouted, “Kyle’s throwing up!” I’m not sure what prestige there is in being the first to point out the screamingly obvious, but I have seen the need in kids and adults alike.

By now everyone was out of his or her seat, most of them yelling. Larkin and Vicki and Claire were truly distressed, while Richard and Jason were trying to out-quip each other the way kids raised watching sitcoms will do; no situation can be allowed to go past without a wisecrack, usually a stupid one. Kyle was hunched over his mess, looking like he felt about two inches tall and everyone in a seat near him was trying to escape, as though he’d barfed up toxic waste. Mazie was leaning toward him and asking, “Are you sick?”

“Sit down!” I shouted. This did not have much effect on the growing pandemonium. Exasperation found its way into my voice, and a deep, rolling roar that I refer to as the Bus Driver Voice came out. “Everybody sit down!” it said, and the kids dropped into their seats as if they had a group mind. I never could summon the Bus Driver Voice at will–there were some drivers who could, but I had to be really pissed off and frustrated before it would make itself known. This was one of those times.

“Bus driver, Kyle threw up,” Mazie said in a helpful kindergartener way.

“Thank you, Mazie,” I said, and got out of my seat again to break out my least favorite piece of equipment; the biohazard kit. The kids watched in rapt interest, the terror of the trip down the hill and the mysterious disappearance of their hometown apparently forgotten, as I sprinkled hospital-scented kitty litter on the mess, donned latex gloves while I waited for it to dry, and then carefully swept it up with the tiny whisk broom and dustpan from the biohazard kit. The operation gave me a few minutes to think about what had happened as well. Where were we? What had happened to, well, everything? No, seriously, what the hell?

As I swept up the partially liquefied and now kitty-litter-clumped remains of Kyle’s lunch (bologna, cheese, crackers, juice, chunks of apple and, if I was not mistaken, a Little Debbie Swiss Roll), I only managed to come to one conclusion: It’s tough to like a kid who can’t hold his bologna.

“That’s an excellent observation,” I told her. “Do you want to help me pick it up, or would you rather go back to your seat?” Her choice was predictable.

“Where are we, bus driver?” Mariela asked, looking out the windows at the piney forest we were in. That was exactly the question I didn’t feel like addressing, so I looked out the window. The trees were old–some were at least ten feet in diameter. If we had hit one of them, the bus would’ve rolled up like a taco. I shuddered inwardly.

“I don’t know where we are, Mariela,” I replied. The rest of the kids were looking out the windows now, except for Mazie who appeared to be trying to comfort Max, who didn’t need it, and they had gone completely silent. Without the noise of the children, the needle-muted nonsound of the woods pressed in.

“What happened to the rain?” Kyle asked finally.

“Maybe we went up in a tornado,” Jessica suggested. “Are we in Oz, bus driver?”

I spotted a bright red lizard on the tree next to my window. It had wings. “We are most definitely not in Kansas,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Stay in your seats, you guys, so I can go look outside. Mariela, Richard, Vicki, make sure everybody stays in their seats, please.” Giving Richard something to do was usually a bad idea, but he was also one of the oldest kids and the younger ones would listen to him. I trusted Mariela and Vicki to keep him in line, since I wasn’t going far.

“Can I help them?” Larkin and Claire asked at the same time.

“Yes, but stay in your seats.” I opened the door and stepped out, realizing belatedly that, if we were indeed not in Kansas (so to speak), I might want to check the terrain more carefully before leaping out into it. After all, the first step in the precocious kids’ coming together to find their way home was for the lone adult present to disappear or knock himself unconscious, and I had no interest in being in that story.

Thus mindful of potential danger, I did lean back into the bus to grab my tire stick. Not the stoutest weapon ever wielded, but better than nothing.

I did a slow walkaround of the bus, checking Tib for body damage (there was none, other than green smears and scratches from the vegetation) and looking out into the quiet piney woods for some sign of civilization. Apart from the tire tracks we’d left in the carpet of needles, there was no indication of human habitation. The red lizard was gone when I got to that side of the bus, but I was beginning to hear faint bird cries and other forest noises that were completely unfamiliar to me. I don’t pretend to be any great outdoorsman, but I didn’t hear any animal noises that I recognized, and certainly nothing native to the suburbs.

Climbing back aboard Tib was somewhat reassuring. The situation hadn’t improved, but the outlook was nonetheless better from a familiar environment. I dropped into my seat and picked up the radio to call Rodger again. I didn’t expect it to work.

It didn’t.

The kids were occupying themselves, like they generally will if left alone. The younger kids had gravitated toward the older ones, except for Kyle and Mazie who were sitting directly behind my seat, waiting for me to come back. Kyle’s presence wasn’t a surprise. When he’s not kibbutzing with his best bus buddy Jason, Kyle likes to sit behind me and talk to me. Some days this is almost pleasant; others, it’s a chore. I made a mistake once, encouraging him by showing interest in the idiotic kids shows he watches and the toys he has, and now every time he gets a new toy he has to bring it on the bus to show me. Unfortunately, attempts to retract my interest have generally failed. I get the feeling that Kyle’s not particularly popular in his class. The fact that even Jason will ignore him in favor of Richard sometimes suggests to me that they don’t talk unless I make them sit together, and since he had just humiliated himself by repeating his lunch, the other boys were probably just making fun of him. I didn’t know why Mazie was sticking close.

“Bus driver, do you know where we are?” he asked me.

“Not a clue.”

“So how are we going to get home?”

“I don’t know that either, Kyle.” I took out my crossword puzzle, not that I expected it to make him stop talking. It rarely did.

“Bus driver, I’m scared,” Mazie said.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I told her. I looked in the child-view mirror, to see what the other kids were up to. Bree was leaning over the back of her seat so she could see Vicki, and the two of them were singing an ear-grating pop song to each other with all the skills that third-graders can muster. Jessica and Claire were trying to join in, and they kept getting into arguments over the words.

Claire saw me looking in the mirror and waved. “Hi, bus driver,” she said. Claire bears a creepily striking resemblance to the caterpillar from “A Bug’s Life”–close enough that it amazes me the other kids don’t make fun of her for it. She’s only in third grade, but I think Claire might outweigh me.

In the seat across from her, Mariela was sitting with Larkin, and their heads were bent down in a way that suggested a book was involved. Mariela dresses like a miniature Miley Cyrus, and when she’s had about ten minutes of puberty she’s going to be one of those kids who looks seventeen at age twelve. Since she was the only fifth-grade girl on the bus, it wasn’t surprising that Larkin had gravitated toward her. Larkin is an elegant little second-grader. “Elegant” is an odd word to use, but it’s true. Her parents dress her in neat, fashion-catalog outfits that she never seems to get dirty or torn–and second-graders can destroy anything–and she rarely gets involved in silly kid-hijinks on the bus. She tends to watch the other second graders like they were strange, inexplicable wild animals. If I wrote a yearbook for my bus, I’d vote Larkin “Most Likely to Grow up to be Winona Ryder.” She looks a bit like Beetlejuice-era Winona, too.

The other boys had gravitated toward the back of the bus. Jason, Richard and Max were indulging in an animated conversation that probably had something to do with Dragonball Z or wrestling, as near as I could tell. Richard’s a fifth-grader and the biggest kid on the bus. From the driver’s seat can be a bit intimidating with his crew cut, micro-thug attitude and his narrow, angry-looking eyes, and he’s twice the size of any of the rest of the kids I drive. Of course, perspective has a lot to do with it; I used to be a bit intimidated by him myself, until one day I stood up to talk to him and realized that he’s barely five feet tall. Still, big bones promise that he’ll be a monster of a high school senior. Because of his size, the younger boys like Jason and Max want to hang out with him, of course. Jason is in third grade and clearly wants to be just like Richard, or at least to be the most important member of his posse. Max is in first grade, and last year when the kindergarteners made Christmas scenes out of candy, I watched him eat his entire graham-cracker gingerbread house diorama in about five minutes. He has been on a sugar high ever since. I have called him “Monkey Boy” more than once, because he reminds me of an animated sock monkey.

At the moment, all three of them were laughing and bouncing around, probably charged-up by nervousness. They were being louder than I’d normally allow, but given the situation I figured it was probably okay to let them be noisy.

To keep them occupied, I got them started doing things. As it started to get dark and kids began to complain about being hungry, I got Vicki and Bree to find out what everyone had left over from lunch, and offered up my box of Triscuits as well. There was some contention from the kids who didn’t want to share, but ultimately everyone got something to eat. Water was a different story.

“Can I make a campfire, bus driver?” Richard asked. “We should have a campfire, and sing songs.”

“Do you even know how to make a fire, Richard?” I sure as heck didn’t.

He nodded. “I got a merit badge in it.”

“You’re a Boy Scout?”

He nodded again, and actually looked proud.

“Well, I don’t think we should make a fire right now. But I’ll keep it in mind for later, okay?” I figured ‘later’ would be some time after the police had found us and the whole weird experience was over, and I wouldn’t have to worry about a campfire. Yes, I was lying to myself in light of the prairie and hills and mountains and cultivated pine trees that seemed to have replaced the nice, familiar subdivision that the road (ha! What road?) was supposed to take us into. I was willfully not thinking of that, in fact, because I needed to be in control of the situation, or at least appear to be so, so that the children on my bus would continue to listen to me. A panicking bus driver lead to panicking kids, and dealing with twelve freaked-out children was not going to make the situation easier.

“I have to go to the bathroom, bus driver,” Jason said.

Oh, crap. No pun intended. I hadn’t even thought of that; usually if a bathroom break is needed, the kid in question can just wait until I get him to home or school. I stood up. “Who has to go to the bathroom?” I asked. Several hands went up. “Okay.” What to do, what to do? “All the girls who have to go, stand up and come with me.” Most of the girls got up, and we went to the front of the bus. I opened the door, letting the still-yet-noisy sound of the early evening forest in. “It’s getting dark, but you guys are going to use that tree over there for a toilet,” I pointed to a good-sized tree that was close enough to be in sight but far enough away that any smell wouldn’t make it back to the bus, “I’ll let you go one at a time. You can go around on the other side of it, so no one can see you.”

“We have to go on the ground?” Vicki asked, horrified.

“Do you see a toilet around here anywhere? If you don’t want to, you can wait, but I don’t know how long we’re going to be here.” I didn’t add that I wasn’t sure exactly where we were, either.

“I’m not going to pee on the ground,” Larkin said, and went back to her seat. Vicki went with her.

“Well, anyone who has to go, that’s what we’re going to do.”

“What about you, bus driver?”

“I’m going to stay here, so you have privacy.” Actually the whole plan was starting to sound like a really terrible idea, but I didn’t have another right at the moment.

The girls who were bold enough or desperate enough took turns at the tree, and didn’t seem to be particularly happy about the situation when they returned. Once they were finished, and Richard, Jason and some of the other boys started making fun of them, I announced that it was the boys’ turn.

The laughter died. “Do we have to use the same tree as the girls?” Jason asked, and something in his voice suggested that this was a very important distinction to him.

“No, you don’t,” I said, and designated a different tree for the boys. He looked relieved. All four of the boys had to go, but they had less trouble with the concept of peeing on the ground than did many of the girls, for obvious reasons.

“Hey bus driver,” Richard asked while we waited for Max, “which tree are you going to use?”

That was pretty subtle, even for a fifth-grader. Impressed though I was, I still didn’t feel the need to dignify his wisecrack with a response.

As night fell, I turned on the clearance lights, to help any rescuers locate the bus. I also switched on one of Tib’s overhead lights, because Max and Claire were making noises about being afraid of the dark.

“I’m cold, bus driver,” Larkin said.

I shushed her as gently as I could. I had been with these kids for about five hours longer than normal, with no end in sight, and I was getting heartily sick of them, even the nice kids like Larkin. The solution for the moment was to keep everyone as quiet as possible. The older kids took out their homework and worked on it, and the younger kids watched them. I finished my crossword and stared blankly out the windshield at the dark, which was cut for some distance by the yellow exterior lights but still overwhelming. Only a couple of the closest pine trees were lit up by the glow, and then only faintly.

Shit. I turned up the radio again, got only static, and switched it off. The lights could stay on all night without running the battery down, since Tib had four of them, but it was getting stuffy inside the bus. I popped the roof vents open, noting as I did that some of the kids were falling asleep, and cracked the front door as well, to get some air flowing through. I expected a swarm of mosquitoes, but no bugs were forthcoming, that I noticed. Small favors.

The next time I checked on the kids, everyone except Mazie was asleep.

“Go to sleep, Mazie,” I said. “I’ll wake you up when somebody comes.”

“I want my mommy,” she said.

“Yeah, me too. Maybe she’ll come and get you.”

“No, she won’t. She can’t get to Oz.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” I said. She didn’t seem amused. I resisted the urge to try and wipe the dirt off of her forehead.

“I want mommy,” she said again.

I almost rolled my eyes. “Well, all you have right now is me, sorry. You should lie down and go to sleep.”

“It’s too cold to sleep.”

It was at least seventy-five degrees. “Pull your jacket over your shoulders like a blanket, and you should be okay.

“Okay. Good night, bus driver.”

“Good night, Mazie.”

Once Mazie had bedded down, the bus got quiet for real. I checked my watch; it was past ten.

Damn. I owed Moy an apology.

I turned the inside light off, put my feet up on the steering wheel and stared out at the dark woods. In a few minutes I was nodding, and drifted seamlessly into a restless dream that I couldn’t remember much of when I woke up, except that it involved pistachio nuts.