Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous (24 page)

He tucks the radio inside his poncho and nods to Jay. “You guys watch for help.” Then he's gone; it's like he dived down the slope headfirst in his hurry to get to the bus.

Jay limps a little closer. “What?”

Bender looks like he just went through a car wash: soaking wet, his clothes askew, and his hair every which way. “I couldn't do it—I just—” His voice sounds funny, and it takes Jay a moment to realize he's sobbing. “I tried—to save her—I—”

“Who? Your mom?”

“The—the—the current's too fast. I stepped in—and—it knocked my feet out from under me! I almost didn't get out.”

“Is her car in the creek, is that what you're saying? And she's in it?”

“Couldn't even
get
to it.” Bender is waving one arm mechanically, like the handle of a car jack. “I tried—I tried—I—”

“Good Lord!” The driver of the other vehicle, an old guy in overalls, has joined them.

Squinting down the slope, Jay can make out something white crunched up next to something gray. In a flash, he interprets this as a top of an SUV partly wedged under the bridge. “Dude,” he says.

“I hear a siren,” says the old man.

The noise is coming at them like a distant parade, a sound that makes your ears stretch and your eyes strain to see it. The violent flash of LED lights show first—red, blue, white—as a patrol car and an ambulance sweep around the curve, as fast as they dare. They slow down on the descent to the river. The water seems to have boiled over the bridge. At its edge, the lead car pauses and a highway patrolman gets out with a stick. Wading carefully into the water, he stretches forward to measure its depth, then waves to the ambulance driver to proceed with caution.

“I'll tell 'em about your mom,” the old man says, starting down the hill. “You show 'em where the bus is.”

Jay suddenly feels awkward, standing next to a boy he's known all his life and never liked, whose mother is in peril right before their eyes. It's even worse when the boy makes a noise like a calf stuck in a cattle guard and drops in a heap on the highway.

“I
tried
to save her!” he sobs again.

Jay remembers how he tried to pull his grandfather back from the brink and failed. The memory heaves up a mound of sorrow inside him and he doesn't feel awkward anymore, just sad. He sits beside Bender, clutching his swollen ankle, and discovers he's crying too.

“Hey, dude. I know you tried. I believe you. I tried too.”

“I
should
have saved her,” Bender chokes out and then adds, “Thorn would have.”

“Who?”

Jay remembers Thorn—his sister Jessica had a crush on him all through high school. He just can't figure what the guy has to do with anything. Bender gives him the strangest look—did he think his brother was the center of the universe or something?

“Hey,” Jay says, “it's probably better you didn't get to her now. That car's the safest place to be, as long as no water's getting in—”

“It shouldn't be there!” Bender kicks at the asphalt. “It's
stupid
! It's Myra Bender Thompson, the real estate go-to gal out to be number one in sales. Stupid! Always. Crash and burn. Knew it would happen someday. Wanted to tell her, but—we never
talked
.”

Jay isn't sure he wants the whole backstory. “Yeah, well, talking…that's hard.”

“So what? Everything's hard. Everything real, anyway. Big frickin' deal.” It sounds like Bender is mad at
him
now.

“Okay, okay.” Jay wipes his nose on his sleeve and stares down at the raging water with the SUV stuck in it that they can't do anything about.

Funny to think that on a normal morning, they'd be at school by now, starting another day that feels a lot like the previous day. But for all the motion that doesn't seem to take them anywhere—back and forth on the bus, around and around the track, on and off the honor roll—there's this huge current, carrying them forward. And just now, almost, swallowing them up. Almost.

The bumpy asphalt is digging into his butt. Everything is hard—and right now, he's glad of it.

He shouldn't feel this—should he?—but something like ecstasy is tingling in his bones. The accident that swept over them didn't kill him. It opened his eyes. For one endless moment, he can see the years ahead of him, taking him someplace real, not fuzzy and fading like the NFL. It doesn't matter if he ever plays football or runs again:
life
itself
, the throb of his ankle and the cold rain in his face and the thump of his eager heart, is totally amazing. And it's just been handed back to him on a silver platter as wide as the world. For a moment, he's dizzy with gratitude.

The first ambulance has crossed the bridge and is now heading slowly toward them, lights blinking. Jay painfully stands up again, using Bender's shoulder for leverage and knocking pebbles off his shorts. He points repeatedly to the bent speed-limit sign. The vehicle pulls over and stops.

He wants to pass some of his gratefulness on to Bender but isn't sure how. “Look…” he begins. “I'll bet your mom's all right. I hope so. But whatever… We've got things to do.”

Bender heaves a huge sigh and pulls himself up. Jay reaches out to him, lays a hand on his shoulder—and since Bender doesn't shake his hand off, it stays there, and anybody approaching would have thought they were the best of friends.

• • •

Within a week, they were all famous, in a way.

Kids
on
Wrecked
School
Bus
Rescue
Themselves
was the local headline written by Maribeth Grand and picked up by Associated Press. It was an exaggeration, of course; nobody was really “rescued” until the emergency vehicles arrived. But the kids had to take care of each other until then because their driver was unconscious. What made their story grow and sprout wings and fly to news outlets all over the country was a very important fact: they all survived. Some, like Spencer, had to spend a lot of time in therapy. Some, like Matthew and little Crystal Applegate and Myra Bender Thompson, came close to actual death. But all survived, and none were ever quite the same.

One more interesting sideline to the story was how Jason Stanley Hall raced to the scene to rescue his daughter and stayed to pull Spencer back from oblivion and revive Mrs. B—who happened to be his mother-in-law! His very name heaved up unhappy memories of the class of '85 and their infamous graduation ceremony. No wonder he didn't want to be seen or recognized, but putting personal concerns aside to lend a hand made him a hero. For a while, anyway.

All the riders were heroes, for a while. But their fame quickly faded.

Mrs. B's, however, grew and grew.

First, she was fired—not for the accident so much as for all the other little irregularities that came out during the investigation. Irregularities like making an unauthorized stop every day for four months, allowing Christmas decorations on the bus, failing to report the snake incident, and (possibly) going a little too fast on the downhill slope just before going off the road, even though she swore she wasn't.

The good thing about being fired was it gave her time to devote to her secret project. By November of next year, it was done: a book. A novel for children based on her experience as a school bus driver and titled
Somebody
on
This
Bus
Is
Going
to
Be
Famous
.

There is just enough fiction in it not to be sued and to keep readers guessing about how much of it really happened and how much not. Only her former riders knew for sure.

And they're not telling.

• • •

No
fair!
you say.
You
tricked
us!

We thought all along it was going to be one of the
kids
who'd be famous, but it turns out to be the only grown-up.

But wait a minute (I say). They've got lots of time to be famous. Or not. And anyway, fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. I still have to get up and get going and deal with aches and pains and grown-up children who can't seem to make up their minds and furnaces that stop working and drivers who cut me off in traffic and repairmen who don't show up and booksellers who don't return my calls and librarians who forgot they asked me to come and talk to their students. Being famous doesn't fix any of that.

As for Shelly, Bender, Miranda, Kaitlynn, Spencer, Matthew, Jay, Igor, and Alice—they have plenty of time for becoming who they are.

That doesn't happen by accident.

It'll take a lot of thought and experience, of charging down the wrong path and backing up again, of screwing up and then doing what they can to get unscrewed. Mainly it'll take years of bouncing off each other and their families and the important people in their future, because that's how you find your limits. And your potential.

But they'll get there. Oh, they're going all kinds of places! This world has its bumps and falls, and nasty surprises too. But it's not boring, unless you stop looking.

Everybody on this bus got picked up and shaken pretty hard on their way to school one May morning. It changed their lives—it changed
them
, but now they're on the road again and closer to becoming who they really are. The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise (excuse the expression), they'll get there.

And so will you.

Next August

The gazebo needs a paint job and the loose railing still needs to be fixed, but it's ready. The kids are ready, too. Some of them have been through a long, difficult summer, and for others, the three months went by like a bullet train and sparkled like a firecracker. But one unchangeable fact of life seems to be that you're always ready for a change. Seven miles away, school buses are lining up outside the barn to turn on to the highway, and doors are opening all around the loop at Hidden Acres. The first person to reach the gazebo is…

Are you wondering what comes next for Shelly, Bender, Miranda, Kaitlynn, Spencer, Matthew, Jay, Igor, and Alice? Visit
books.sourcebooks.com/somebody-on-this-bus
OR
www.jbcheaney.com/SOTB-epi
for an EXCLUSIVE additional chapter and educator materials to go with it!

But first: you know these kids pretty well by now. What do YOU think happens?

I've never ridden a school bus in my life—except once, as an adult. In my early drafts, I imagined them as having a front entrance and a rear exit, like a city bus, but then someone mentioned that school buses only have one door.

Oh.

So I stopped along my rural highway about two miles out of town at the house where I'd sometimes been stalled by school buses going in and out. There I talked to Russell Martin, part-owner and all-operator of the buses that prowl our local R-I school district. He answered all my questions and allowed me to walk around and take pictures, so I know exactly what Mrs. B's bus looks like, inside and out. And he hasn't heard from me since, until now. Thanks, Russell!

This manuscript took its own sweet time finding a home, during which I tried it out on my long-suffering critique-mates, Vicki Grove and Leslie Wyatt (both outstanding authors in their own right). Our critique sessions always included food—as they should!—for which Vicki was mostly responsible, while Leslie slogged through an entire early draft and pointed out some major weaknesses I'd missed. They were both on hand when I decided to put the ending at the beginning, and both gave the idea a thumbs-up. “Like
The
Bridge
of
San
Luis
Rey
!” remarked Vicki and promptly handed over her own copy of Thornton Wilder's classic. She mentions a book and it (almost) magically appears! Thank you both, sweet friends.

Dr. Julie Bryant at Southwest Baptist University was the first to read the revised copy. I had emailed it to her in three parts, and somehow she didn't get the last one. After reading parts one and two, she frantically tracked me down (I was on vacation) and begged for part three,
now
. Such unfeigned enthusiasm at that point was a shot in the arm for me.

After I signed with Erin Buterbaugh at MacGregor Literary Agency, she had a publisher on the hook within four months. And speaking of publishers, Aubrey Poole at Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky generously shared her encouragement and enthusiasm while whipping this manuscript into shape. I've been surprised and delighted by the whole team at Sourcebooks, who know how to get behind a book. High fives all around!

Thanks most of all to God, from whom all blessings flow.

J.B. Cheaney was born sometime in the last century in Dallas, Texas. She did not want to be a writer—all the years she was growing up, her ambitions belonged to the theater. But since a life onstage didn't pan out, building a stage in her head, where she gets to play all the parts, has been a pretty good substitute. She's the author of two theater-related novels (
The
Playmaker
and
The
True
Prince
), as well as
My
Friend
the
Enemy
and
The
Middle
of
Somewhere
. She resides in the Ozarks of Missouri with her husband and no dogs or cats.