Bus

This bus is quiet.

Too quiet…

I picked up the first stop about thirty seconds ago, which is always the stop that has the most seventh graders in it. Andre gets on here. The Song twins get on here. And when you combine the magical annoyance powers of Andre and Craig, it sets the scene for the whole day.

But neither of them gets on. Michelle Song scurries up to the door, late as usual, this time without her brother accompanying her. She and this other dude – some football player who has a real preppy-sounding name – are the only students on as of now.

I pick up the microphone. “Where are your brother and Andre?”

The sound of my voice echoes throughout the bus and snaps them out of their morning daze. Michelle peeks her head up over the seat in front of her.

“I hear something happened yesterday,” the boy says. “I dunno. I wasn’t on the bus yesterday.”

“Um…” Michelle starts, biting her lip. “They…sort of got in trouble. Josh and Jack did, too.”

The names fly over my head. “Who and who now?”

As I turn the corner of Tren Rico, she scuttles up the aisle and takes a seat behind me. “Okay. You know that real loud boy with short hair and who cusses a lot? And all he talks about are video games? And he sits here behind you every day next to April?”

“Sort of,” I shrug. I knew who she was talking about too well, though I was too busy focusing on not getting lost to really pay attention.

“Okay. Well, that’s Jack,” she informs. “And you know the kid with the hair and the nose? And he always wears skinny jeans.”

“The one who’s always blasting that metal shit?” I ask. “That’s Josh, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” she mumbles. “Something happened yesterday. I can’t really explain it. The principal told Hector to do it anyway.”

Then she scurries back to the seat she left her backpack in, breaking off the conversation before it ever even started.

I’m not really mad. The ferocious anger in me has been boiling all night and it hasn’t flared up, since I pretty much already knew what was going to happen. I got nothing to lose…

Pollo Frito and Gata Tristeza is the next stop, and that’s all I’m trying to think about right now. I’m totally not thinking about all of the different ways the county can find to fire my ass, despite the fact that I warned these morons that they’d better avoid any sort of trouble. It’s not my fault, and I know it. But…damn my luck. I could just picture them throwing a big cake in my face with the words, “You’re Fired, You Jackass!” on it.

The only two kids standing at the stop are Cadence and Amy, two former almost-lovers I know too well to be comfortable. Since I talked to Amy I haven’t seen them standing side-by-side at the bus stop anymore. He’s on one side of the road and she’s on the other.

And the third kid at this stop is missing – Josh.

I let them on and Cadence slaps my shoulder on the way up, smirking and telling me, “Dude, yesterday was gnarly.”

Amy laughs and scrolls down her SkyPod, saying, “We told them it wasn’t your fault, Tater,” as she gets on.

I chew on my lip some more and press a little too sharply on the gas pedal, which makes the bus lurch forward and a few of them shout swears in my direction.

On to Cruce and San Jacinto.

There’s a gaggle of seventh graders who get on at this stop with the exception of some fat Cuban kid who speaks in broken English – he’s an eighth grader. There’s Sara and there’s Keke and there’s one dude who will not stop throwing things and there’s one boy who’s missing – Jack. The final one who’s supposed to be in trouble.

When the Cuban guy gets on (he always lets everyone else get on before him), he says, “A bunch’a kids got suspended. Dey got kicked off bus for a week.”

I refrain from saying, “Thank God,” and instead tell him, “So I’ve heard.”

Three more stops, Doug, and you can get to the bottom of this and get your firing over with…maybe you can start working at Mal-Wart again and it might be better this time…

That’s it. The four kids that were mentioned by Michelle to be in trouble would’ve been on the bus if they were here, so I’m just gonna assume that they either got kicked off or suspended. Either way, I don’t mind. Hell, I’d be happy knowing they got shipped off to boarding school.

This one kid who smells funny and this other girl April who always sits next to Jack get on next at Burro Malo, and then it’s off to Perro Tramposo. April looks kind of bewildered when she doesn’t see her seat-mate next to her in their seat behind me, but she sits down anyway and asks me, “Did you hear about what happened?”

“Yes, I heard about what happened. I don’t know exactly what went on, but I’m aware that something bad happened and that four of you…people, got suspended or something,” I grumble in one long breath.

The lonely little freak – the one who once jumped out the back of the bus during evacuations and nearly broke his nose – is at this second-to-last stop. He’s standing there kicking rocks in his beat-up high tops and happily skips up the steps with a big old grin plastered to his face. And like nearly every one of his peers, he tells me, “You’re in for a big surprise, Geronimo.”

I still don’t know why he calls me that.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I see Hector standing with the two other last kids to get on the bus at Aseo Timido. At least he’s supposed to tell me what’s up…God, I hope it’s not that bad. I hope he even remembers what went on. I can just picture him blowing me off and pretending like nothing ever happened.

The brat who ripped the sign off that one time gets on in front of some loser who believes in UFOs. And behind them is Hector, who nearly misses the first step because he’s too busy skipping songs on his stupid mp3 player.

He almost passes by me without a word, but I touch his arm and say, “Hey, what happened yesterday?”

The kid yanks the earbuds out of his ears and goes, “What?”

“Didn’t the principal -”

“Oh! Yeah. That’s right.” He looks behind him, taking a seat next to the fat Cuban kid when he’d normally be sitting somewhere in the middle. I pilot the bus out of Alta Vista and start heading toward Yuma Middle.

I glance back at him. He’s turning off his music thing.

“The principal, he told me to tell you to, um, look for him in the bus loop. And he said he’s gonna lead you to the front office of the school, and you and him will discuss the matter and decide what is going to be the discipline for, um…the kids who got in trouble. Yeah. That’s what he said.” Hector covers his mouth with a hand and kind of looks off in the distance. His eyebrows, permanently stuck in the “Who, me?” position are twitching. They look like caterpillars.

“That’s great,” I say. “But it’d be even better if you could tell me what the hell happened yesterday that caused it.”

“Mr. Doug, how did dey not tell you about it? Don’t dey call you whenever someting like dis happens?” Cuban fat kid says, leaning over the seat.

April chimes in, waving her skinny little arms and smirking. “I know! It just seems sort of odd.”

“Will somebody just tell me what the hell happened?!” I fume. I don’t say it through the microphone, but everybody hears me and goes quiet. Then I realize that I didn’t even turn the radio on this morning; it’s so silent.

One brave soul, Cadence himself, stands up and casually walks up – not even minding the fact that he’s breaking at least two rules – and he takes the empty seat next to April. “Alright, Tater, dude. I’ll fill you in on what happened.”

He pauses, clearing his throat.

“We had a sub yesterday. But I think you might already know that. Anyways, he was this real old dude. Like, I’m talking seventy or eighty years old. Real old dude. He didn’t hear real well and we got lost in this place a few times. The guy even almost ran over Mikey. Probably didn’t help that Mikey was pretending to be an airplane in the intersection, though. But anyways, he’s a total noob, right? And we’re yelling at him to take a right or take a left whenever he needs to.”

A minor wave of laughter breaks out over the kids. I’m just doing my best to balance between paying attention to this little ditty and to the road.

“And we’re at the main road that leads us to the junior high, right? We’re almost out of Alta Vista and he asks us which way he has to turn. So we yell, ‘Left!’, ‘cause that’s where the school is. I mean, everybody yells it. But the dude turns right! And that’s like the opposite of where we’re supposed to go,” Cadence continues, a big smile taking over his face. He tells the story with hand motions, too. I can see them through the rearview mirror.

I cock my brow. Somehow I find it hard to believe that they knew the way to the school, what with all the time they spend with their noses buried in their cell phones.

“So everybody starts yelling when he pulls out onto the main road and goes right, ‘cause it’s only a two-lane road and traffic is total crap, and we’re the last neighborhood until the next county! The dude looks back at us and asks if he went the right way, and all the girls start going, ‘No, no, you’re going the wrong way!’ and then Andre comes up and yells, ‘Man, what the hell are ya’ll saying? Stop fooling him – this is the way to school! I’m sorry, Mr. Old Guy, we won’t do that again!’”

Apparently, everybody feels some sort of big rush of nostalgia, since they all start laughing so hard I can’t even concentrate on the road anymore, hardly.

Cadence clears his throat again and tells everybody to shut up. “Craig starts giving these real specific directions to get to school, but he’s making up all of these fake road names and that confuses the crap out of the old guy. Andre’s going along with it too, and him and Craig seem like they’re just pulling all of this random crap out of their butts. And then a half an hour goes by and we’re supposed to be, like, fifteen minutes into first period, and then we’re into the next county over! The sub says, ‘Are you sure this is the way to your school?’”

My anger is starting to simmer, boiling up and up until it bubbles into a devilish concoction. None of what he says surprises me. I saw all of this coming…I knew this. So why am I getting so worked up?

“So, of all people, Josh stands up and turns his SkyPod off,” he goes on, “and then he tells the sub that the traffic is bad so we normally take that long way instead. The stupid sub didn’t even know we were nowhere near the school. He didn’t know that we weren’t even in Yuma County anymore. So an hour goes by and he doesn’t say a word, until he finally asks, ‘How far away is your school?’ So Jack gives him an answer and he says, ‘Oh, we’re an afternoon school. We don’t start class until noon. You’re on time.’ But then three hours go by, and then at that point we’re in New Mexico. The sub doesn’t even see the big sign that says, ‘Welcome to New Mexico!’”

“Oh my God,” I gasp. And even though this really isn’t the right situation, I can’t help but to smile a little bit. In some weird, twisted sort of way, I’m impressed. I’d never have that kind of courage. “Are you kidding me?”

Even Hector shakes his head. “That’s what happened yesterday.”

“I’m not finished,” Cadence yells, holding a finger high. “So we’re working our way through New Mexico, right? And we’re pretty much letting go of all of the rules at this point – Jack and Andre and Josh and Craig especially, since they’re the ones leading the sub on – when the bus gets a phone call or something. Somebody says through the walkie-talkie thing that they sent out police to look for our route, and the sub says everybody’s with him, and he’s so confused. And the lady talking to him asks where he is, and he’s like, ‘I dunno,’ and the lady says we were supposed to be in school like three hours ago. So he yells at us and then turns around, and when we get back to school there’s only half of sixth period left, so he sends us all to the office and blames Josh and Jack and Craig and Andre for the whole thing. And that’s it.”

I’m at the final stoplight before the bus loop, and I’m just sitting there staring at Cadence through the rearview mirror with my mouth hanging open.

I expected at least a few murders…maybe somebody with an arm torn off, a few pregnancies, but nothing like this. I wasn’t thinking about them leading the sub into the next freakin’ state. I can’t really say whether I’m pleasantly surprised or mortified. I mean, I’m glad nobody’s dead or anything, but with such a big lead-up, I’m kinda shell shocked.

“Are you…you’re kidding me.”

“No, he’s not,” April whimpers. “It’s all true.”

“Those idiots are a bunch of freaking dumbasses,” Amy shouts from the very back seat, laughing her head off. “They’re so dumb. I couldn’t believe they actually did that.”

I grab the microphone. “Well, why the hell didn’t any of you stop ‘em?”

Nobody answers.

“You know, I had a feeling something was going wrong when I wasn’t at work yesterday,” I tell them. “I should’ve listened to my gut and went anyway. I told you guys to be good for the sub and this happens.”

Sara pokes her head out from behind the seat in front of her, saying, “Well, it wasn’t like he’d be able to turn around when he was going away anyway. The road was packed.”

Everybody shares a nice, “Yeah,” in unison.

I sneer and grumble to myself all I want, but there’s a part of me that’s actually glad. Only four morons got themselves into trouble, but what kind of trouble did that get me into? I’ve yet to find out. And as I pull into the bus loop, back to the old grind for another thundering Thursday, my hands start sweating all over the steering wheel.

“At least only four of you really screwed up,” I say to no one in particular.

~~~~~~~~~~

The principal is waiting for me at the bus loop. He’s dressed all officially with a walkie-talkie in his hand, and when he sees my bus pull in, he says something in it and motions for me to stop and I see him mouth out, “Let them off first.” So I do. The gaggle of preteens scurries off the bus as I put it into park.

When it’s empty, the principal climbs on and says, “You can just leave the bus here or pull it up and over so that the other drivers can get around you, and you’re needed in the front office. I’ll take you there.”

He runs a hand through his graying comb-over and sighs in stress. I can’t say I wouldn’t feel like doing the same.

As strange as it sounds, I’ve never really been around this school. I think the furthest I’ve ever gone into campus is near the locker rooms by the bus loop, but that’s it. So it’s kind of weird to be led to the front office, passing by crowds of rambunctious kids in ridiculous fashions and even stupider conversations.

Some of them give me weird looks, like they think I’m some sort of creeper who decided to visit the single most shitty school in existence, but whenever I see somebody furrowing their brow at me, I shoot them a dirty look right back. And the best part is that since I’m behind the principal, he can’t see me scare his precious little munchkins.

I wonder how much he hates his job. I bet we’re one in the same.

My nerves are comfortable jumping around when we make it to the office all the way on the other side of the school. He jabbers some nonsense to the lady behind the front desk and he says I’m the bus driver who normally drives the kids in trouble, and then before I know it I’m sitting in a chair in front of the principal’s desk. I feel like I’m in junior high all over again.

Except this time, Josh, Jack, Andre, and Craig are all sitting next to me.

With his hands folded on top of his desk, the principal frowns deeply and asks, “Can you tell me what went on yesterday, one of you?”

Jack, with his arms crossed, slumping in his seat and looking like a three-year-old who didn’t get the video game he wanted, grumbles, “We led the sub out of the state.”

Principal Someone Or Other turns to me. “Did you let them know you were having a substitute?”

“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact,” I grunt, turning to them. “And I told them to be on their best behavior.”

They all scratch their heads and cough like they know they’re gonna get their asses handed to them.

“Is this true?” the principal questions the troublemakers.

Josh nods and says, “Yeah, he told us to be good. Whatever.”

Okay, good. Are we done yet…?

“The four of you will have your bus riding privileges suspended for two weeks,” he goes on, rolling back in his chair and grabbing a file folder filled with paperwork. “You will need to find your own means of transportation for those two weeks, and today you will be put in in-school suspension as punishment as well.”

They share a collective grunt.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” Andre laughs weakly.

Out of some crazy instinct I sort of smile as well.

“Young man, you don’t seem to realize what the four of you have done,” the guy goes on. “You fooled your substitute into thinking your school was three hours away from where it really was, and you wasted an entire day of school just to lead him on like that. We had the police surveying the area for your route. Not only did you go blatantly against common sense, but you also disrespected your bus driver by breaking his wishes.”

I need to get out of here before he explodes. The guy’s face is turning red and puffy like a tomato, and I can see in Craig’s face that he’s just waiting to bust a nut laughing.

“I’m sorry and it won’t happen again,” I finally say. “I apologize for any trouble they caused you or the school district and I’ll make it clear next time that I mean true business.” I glare over at the four of them and they’re glaring right back at me.

“Thank you, Doug,” the principal tells me. The crimson in his face leaves. “I assure you that this is in no way your fault, but this could have easily been prevented.”

Well, what the hell was I supposed to do? Point a gun at them and tell them to behave or else I’d shoot them all? Nice passive aggression there, buddy. I just sit there with a stupid grin plastered to my face – maybe the fakest one I’ve ever had.

Whatever. Apparently I’m not getting fired and that’s all I really give a flying shit about, anyway.

“Did that young man tell you what happened yesterday when he got on this morning?” the principal continues, asking me.

“Oh yeah, Hector told me. He wasn’t the one who told me the story, but he told me you’d be waiting in the bus loop,” I answered. Hector probably wasn’t even paying attention to yesterday.

Josh said, “Who told you what happened, then?”

“Cadence.”

All four of then start snickering. “Dude!” Jack exclaims. “Cadence is the best storyteller ever. I wish I could’ve heard how he told it.”

Really? ‘Cause to me, he sounded like a stoner. Whatever. Maybe it was a relative thing.

The principal looks at the clock on the wall behind our heads and puffs out his cheeks, forcing out a grin. “Okay, so we have this settled. We’ve discussed the punishments and any further precautions you will take to ensure that this will not happen again, Mr. Tater,” he sums up.

Well, that was fast. I’d have thought I’d have at least a little more of a say in what the hell happens. I’m a little bewildered and raise an eyebrow at the guy, but he shoos us out of the room and tells the four idiots to go to student services and begin their day of ISS. And my job isn’t in trouble, which is all I really care about.

Before I leave, though, he calls my name quietly. “Doug.”

I turn around. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry this had to happen. Those four are always getting themselves into some sort of trouble,” he chuckles, shaking his head nervously. “It wasn’t your fault and I apologize for bringing you into this. As a matter of fact, I sort of envy your patience with these kids. Half the time when they’re up here, I just get the vice principal to talk to them because I know I’ll end up going off on them if I talk to them.”

Is this a dream?

“I couldn’t be a bus driver. I’d get fired on the first day for hurting somebody,” he laughs. It’s a hearty laugh that makes me smile too.

I shrug. “Well, it’s a wonder I haven’t gotten booted yet, then.”

“We need more drivers like you. People who can just take all of that abuse and face it with optimistic eyes.”

He’s totally bullshitting me and I can see it. Who the hell does he think he’s talking to? Was my fake smile that convincing? Still, I keep on laughing a little because I’m still not over the fact that I’m not being reprimanded over something this stupid school district got all up in arms over.

“Anyways, have a good day,” the principal tells me. “And I apologize, again.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’ll learn their lesson,” I bid farewell, closing the door behind me.

And then it dawns on me – I don’t have to deal with those four jackasses for a whole two weeks.

Well, this is something positive I can tell Carrie…