Emmy Laybourne - Monument 14

Your mother hollers that youre going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You dont stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You dont thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course notyou hurdle down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if its the last time youll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish youd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street so I ran.

As I raced down the driveway I heard my mom yell for my brother, Alex. His bus was coming down Park Trail Drive, right behind mine. His bus came at 7:09 on the dot. Mine was supposed to come at 6:57 but was almost always late, as if the driver agreed it wasnt fair to pick me up before 7:00.

Alex ran out behind me and our feet pounded the sidewalk in a dual sneaker-slap rhythm.

Dont forget, he called. Were going to the Salvation Army after school.

Yeah, sure, I said.

My bus driver laid on the horn.

Sometimes we went over to rummage for old electronics after school. I used to drive him before the gas shortage. But now we took our bikes.

I used to drive him to school, too. But since the shortage everyone in our school, everyone, even the seniors, took the bus. It was the law, actually.

I vaulted up the bus steps.

Behind me I heard Mrs. Wooly, who has been driving the elementarymiddle school bus since forever, thank Alex sarcastically for gracing them with his presence.

Mrs. Wooly, she was an institution in our town. A grizzled, wiry-haired, ashtray-scented, tough-talking institution. Notorious and totally devoted to bus driving, which you cant say about everyone.

On the other hand, the driver of my bus, the high school bus, was morbidly obese and entirely forgettable. Mr. Reed. The only thing he was known for was that he drank his morning coffee out of an old jelly jar.

Even though it was early in the route, Jake Simonsen, football hero and all-around champion of the popular, was already holding court in the back. Jake had moved to our school from Texas a year ago. He was a real big shot back in Texas, where football is king, and upon transfer to our school had retained and perhaps even increased his stature.

Im telling yallconcessions! Jake said. At my old high school a bunch of girls sold pop and cookies and these baked potatoes they used to cook on a grill. Every game. They made, like, a million dollars.

A million dollars? Astrid said.

Astrid Heyman, champion diver on the swim team, scornful goddess, girl of my dreams.

Even if I could make a million dollars, I wouldnt give up playing my own sport to be a booster for the football team, she said.

Jake flashed her one of his golden smiles.

Not a booster, baby, an entrepreneur!

Astrid punched Jake on the arm.

Ow! he complained, grinning. God, youre strong. You should box.

I have four younger brothers, she answered. I do.

I hunkered down in my seat and tried to get my breath back. The backs of the forest green pleather seats were tall enough that if you slouched, you could sort of disappear for a moment.

I ducked down. I was hoping no one would comment on my sprint to catch the bus. Astrid hadnt noticed me get on the bus at all, which was both good and bad.

Behind me, Josie Miller and Trish Greenstein were going over plans for some kind of animal rights demonstration. They were kind of hippie-activists. I wouldnt really know them at all, except once in sixth grade Id volunteered to go door to door with them campaigning for Cory Booker. Wed had a pretty fun time, actually, but now we didnt even say hi to each other.

I dont know why. High school seemed to do that to people.

The only person who acknowledged my arrival at all was Niko Mills. He leaned over and pointed to my shoelike, Im too cool to talkhe just points. And I looked down, and of course, it was untied. I tied it. Said thanks. But then I immediately put in my earbuds and focused on my minitab. I didnt have anything to say to Niko, and judging from his pointing at my shoe, he didnt have anything to say to me either.

From what Id heard, Niko lived in a cabin with his grandfather, up in the foothills near Mount Herman, and they hunted for their own food and had no electricity and used wild mushrooms for toilet paper. That kind of thing. People called Niko Brave Hunter Man, a nickname that fit him just right with his perfect posture, his thin, wiry frame, and his whole brown-skin-brown-eyes-brown-hair combo. He carried himself with that kind of stiff pride you get when no one will talk to you.

So I ignored Brave Hunter Man and tried to power up my minitab. It was dead and that was really weird because Id just grabbed it off the charging plate before I left the house.

Then came this little tink, tink, tink sound. I took out my buds to hear better. The tinks were like rain, only metallic.

And the tinks turned to TINKS and the TINKS turned to Mr. Reeds screaming Holy Christ! And suddenly the roof of the bus started dentingBAM, BAM, BAMand a cobweb crack spread over the windshield. With each BAM the windshield changed like a slide show, growing more and more white as the cracks shot through the surface.

I looked out the side window next to me.

Hail in all different sizes from little to that-cant-be-hail was pelting the street.

Cars swerved all over the road. Mr. Reed, always a lead foot, slammed on the gas instead of the brake, which is what the other cars seemed to be doing.

Our bus hurdled through an intersection, over the median, and into the parking lot of our local Greenway superstore. It was fairly deserted because it was maybe 7:15 by this point.

I turned around to look back in the bus toward Astrid, and everything went in slow motion and fast motion at the same time as our bus slid on the ice, swerving into a spin. We went faster and faster, and my stomach was in my mouth. My back was pressed to the window, like in some carnival ride, for maybe three seconds and then we hit a lamppost and there was a sick metallic shriek.

I grabbed on to the back of the seat in front of me but then I was jumbling through the air. Other kids went flying, too. There was no screaming, just grunts and impact sounds.

I flew sideways but hit, somehow, the roof of the bus. Then I understood that our bus had turned onto its side. It was screaming along the asphalt on its side. It shuddered to a stop.

The hail, which had merely been denting the hell out of our roof, started denting the hell out of us.

Now that the bus was on its side, hail was hammering down through the row of windows above us. Some of my classmates were getting clobbered by the hail and the window glass that was raining down.

I was lucky. A seat near me had come loose, and I pulled it over me. I had a little roof.

The rocks of ice were all different sizes. Some little round marbles and some big knotty lumps with gray parts and gravel stuck inside them.

There were screams and shouts as everyone scrambled to get under any loose seats or to stand up, pressed to the roof, which was now the wall.

It sounded as if we were caught in a riptide of stones and rocks, crashing over and over. It felt like someone was beating the seat I was under with a baseball bat.

I tilted my head down and looked out what was left of the windshield. Through the white spray outside I saw that the grammar school bus, Alexs bus, was somehow still going. Mrs. Wooly hadnt skidded or lost control like Mr. Reed.