by Abby Koop

“Bus!” came her mother’s frantic shriek from her position beside the
dining room window.

It was precisely 6:57 a.m. on Wednesday, February 21, and Katie
Hardestin was in the process of pulling her second, brand-new,
just-like-the-pair-she’d-lost-three-months-ago pink earring out if its
position in the flimsy piece of cardboard. She expelled a heavy,
exasperated sigh.

“Coming!”

The bus would have to be early on the one day she wasn’t ready.
With one last tug, the earring slid free and dropped into her hand.
She clenched her fist tightly and sprinted to the living room, where
she hauled her bookbag over her right shoulder.
Her mother came over to stand behind her.

“Do you have your keys?”

Her voice was bizarrely shrill, as if she feared the bus might go off
and leave her even as she trudged down the driveway.

“Yeah,” Katie replied. I think, she added silently to herself. She
walked toward the door and reached for the handle, her fingers
unlocking the backwards lock automatically.

A blast of freezing air hit her in the face as she stepped out onto
the porch. The high-pitched whistling of the bus brakes pierced
through the air. Steeling herself against the wind, she took a step
out onto the snowy hill.

She once again found herself resenting the freezing monsoon of the
previous week. It had left behind nearly a foot of snow, which had
finally begun to melt the day before, before proceeding to freeze
solid again overnight. As a result, she found herself pitted against
the equivilent of a very large, sloping white ice cube. She
definitely should have gone through the garage.

Her lopsided backpack was throwing her off balance. She could feel
her feet moving against her will. Desperately, she shifted her weight
to the tips of her toes and managed to remain standing.

CRACK!

But her left foot had broken through. Her surroundings tilted
dangerously again–

CRACK!

Her right foot sank through the ice as well as she leaned to the
opposite side. The tedious process continued all the way to the icy
mound at the edge of the yard. She paused. Did she dare risk it? If
it was any less solid than it looked, she could well find herself
submerged in ice up to her navel.

The bus was waiting, halting traffic with its hinged stopsign and
gaudy flashing lights. She took a deep breath. Clenching her hand
more tightly around the earring in her left hand, she climbed atop the
icy mound with as much dignity as she could muster. Determinedly, she
avoided the staring eyes of the driver in the pickup truck to her
left. Its whistling engine seemed to mock her as she hopped down from
the pedestal, just missing the other icy side on her descent.

Straightening up, she adjusted the shoulder strap of the backpack and
moved on. She was nearly there– just a few more steps….

“Good morning.” She swore he raced her to get the words out. If she
made an attempt to beat him to it, the sounds would overlap each other
awkwardly. “G’morning,” she muttered as she sauntered past.

The floor of the bus was slippery underfoot. If she was to make it
all the way to her seat in the very back without falling and making a
fool of herself, she’d have to be careful. Her backpack swayed and
knocked into the seat to her right. With a sigh of annoyance, she
adjusted the backpack yet again and picked up her pace.

Her shoes squeaked against the strange ridged aisleway, and it was
with great relief that she finally dropped into the brown leather
seat. She left the bulky pink camouflage backpack in the aisle,
knowing from experience that it wouldn’t fit anywhere else. It wasn’t
like anyone else came back there anyway. Not for the first 50
minutes.

The earring was trying to poke through her skin. Unclenching her
hand, she found small round and crescent-shaped indentations. She
picked it up and examined it before pulling off the back. Carefull,
she rotated it around until the hole faced outward. With her
remaining hand, she held the earring between her thumb and index
finger. In seconds, she had the tiny piece of cheap metal hanging
from her ear. The back would be more difficult.

It took her three stops. When the miniscule piece of cylindrical
rubber was finally in place, she breathed deeply and allowed her eyes
to close and roll up in her head as she fell back against her seat.
Blindly, she reached over and unzipped her backpack. It was time for
English. As she opened the heavy, primary-colored book to page 483, she heard
the telltale signs that they had arrived at the Zeffer family
household. James boarded first, furiously asking Daniel why he hadn’t
taken the trash out. Zed argued that James had trash duty this week,
not Daniel. Brandon merely stated meekly that Pop was going to kill
them all anyway, so it didn’t matter whose week it was.
Katie pursed her lips. The bus driver hadn’t even made an attempt to
greet them, so busy were they with their heated discussion. She shook
her head and scrawled a #1 in the top left-hand corner of her English
notebook page.

1. The team (is/are) practicing in the gym after school. She
growled. Collective nouns were the worst. Was the sentence referring
to each team member individually, or was it talking about the team as
a whole? It was probably using it as a group… but what if one team
member forgot? It wasn’t a whole group then, was it? She flicked
herself impatiently in the temple and circled the first choice.
English homework was never graded.

She glanced out the window. They were speeding down an extremely
long, narrow country road.

WHAM!

Long, narrow, and bumpy. She flew off the seat and hung suspended in
the air for a moment.

“HEY!”
“SLOW DOWN, YOU IDIOT!”
“WHAT THE HELL!”
“HE’S A MADMAN!”

James, Daniel, Brandon, and Zed Zeffer howled in unison, as though
they’d practiced, praying for that exact moment to come so that they
could their skill in the art of being obnoxious.

“Sit down and shut up,” Mr Lloyd said dryly, glaring into the mirror
that we knew could easily show him all corners of the bus. Her spine
tingled and hair rose up on the back of her neck. He was so creepy.
She readjusted herself on the seat.