by Raymond Bean
“You don’t look so good,” Mom said when we got off the bus and into the daylight.
“I’m fine,” I said.
There were so many other people on their way to walk across the bridge. How are all these people free on a Friday morning? I wondered. Each class was ordered to stay together. Each parent had a group of kids to watch out for. I was hoping I could finally see my friends and maybe find Aaron in the sea of people.
Since we almost missed the bus, Mrs. Cliff hadn’t assigned Mom any other kids. “Why don’t you just look after your own kids?” Mrs. Cliff told her.
I’m pretty sure Mom was insulted, but she didn’t say anything. We walked toward the bridge in this gigantic mass of fourth graders. I couldn’t believe the teachers were doing this because there was a good chance one of us would get lost. I was secretly hoping it would be Thomas or Stephen.
If you walk fast, you can walk across the bridge in about a half hour. We were moving so slow it was going to take us about a month. Everyone was stopping to take pictures, point at buildings in the distance, and just talk. Mrs. Cliff and the other teachers were like sheepdogs walking around the pack, nipping at our heels, trying to keep us moving forward. I couldn’t find Aaron, or any of the guys from my football team, anywhere.
We must have been walking for about ten minutes when the first kid in the group got stung by a bee. It was Shannon Little. She was a few people ahead of me. I saw her swat at something like a crazy person and then start crying. Instantly the kid next to her got stung too. Before I knew it, people were getting stung all around me. Kids started to panic and run in different directions. Mrs. Cliff blew the whistle she had hanging around her neck like a deranged referee. The sound of the whistle seemed to create more panic.
Becky and Mindy both freaked out, of course. They didn’t run, though. They stood in place and shrieked. I dug my camera out of my bag and snapped a few pictures of the chaos before I got stung on my neck. It was like being zapped by a laser gun. Before I knew it, I realized there was another one in my shirt. I tried to squash it, but it got me right in the middle of my back. As I was trying to wriggle it out of my shirt, a bee stung me right on the inside of my right nostril.
By the time it was all over, fifteen or twenty kids had been stung. Andrew Chulse ended up with the most bites. He had six in all. It was a complete and total bee freak-out.
For the rest of the walk, my body was throbbing in pain. “I think we have to go to the emergency room,” Mom said.
“I’m okay,” I told her.
“Justin, today you’ve been bitten by a snake, had three ticks in your ear, and now you were attacked by bees. There’s only so much the human body can take.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
Clearly, I wasn’t fine. I could feel my nose swelling up, and my neck already had a big swollen lump on it. Mrs. Cliff and Mom rubbed some kind of ointment on my stings, which was pretty weird, especially when she was putting it on my nostril. It’s a moment I’d like to forget, but it’s burned into my brain forever.
While Mrs. Cliff stuck ointment up my nose, Mom finally noticed that the lame sneakers she made me buy were the same exact sneakers Mrs. Cliff was wearing. “I think it’s so cute that you two have the same sneakers,” she said.
Yeah, this is really cute, I thought.
11
Throbbing
By the time we got to the other side of the bridge, it was one o’clock, and some of us looked like the walking wounded. When we got back on the bus my sister’s phone buzzed. She read the text and handed it to me. “Here, no charge this time.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the phone. In my reflection off the phone’s screen, it was clear that my nose was really ballooning. It looked like I had just lost a heavyweight boxing match.
It was a text from Aaron: Where were you? I didn’t see you on the bridge!
I texted back: I was there. I got stung three times. Mrs. Cliff put ointment on me with her stinky old fingers. Did you get stung?
He texted back: Man, you’re having a bad day. No stings here. Somebody’s mom just handed out bags of candy. We’re on our way to the Statue of Liberty! I’ll see you there.
Not only was the sting in my nose throbbing, but it itched really bad, too. I must have been scratching it and not paying attention to how far up my nose my finger was going, because from behind me, Stephen shouted, “Nose picker!”
Thomas added, “Finger licker!”
My finger flew back out of my nose instantly. I turned to face them and said, “I wasn’t picking. I got a bee sting in my nose. I was just rubbing it!”
“You’re a picker,” Stephen said, pretending to twist his finger up his nose.
“And a finger licker,” Thomas added, pretending to lick his finger.
“I was…” I tried to explain.
“You was pickin’ your schnoz, Justin,” Stephen interrupted.
“Whatever. You guys know I was just scratching my bee sting. Stop being such jerks!” I said. Only, I sort of shouted it.
The bus immediately fell silent. Mrs. Cliff turned around instantly. “We do not use hurtful language in my class,” she warned. That’s when she spotted the phone in my hand. “I’ll take that, Justin.”
“Oh, no, this is my sister’s.”
“Yeah, it’s mine,” Becky said.
“The phone,” Mrs. Cliff insisted.
“But it’s my phone,” my sister said for the second time.
“I’m not talking to you, dear. Justin, hand me that phone.”
“Careful, Mrs. Cliff,” Stephen said. “It’s covered in boogers.”
I handed it to her. Mrs. Cliff scrolled the texts, and from the look on her face, she didn’t like what she read. “I’m sorry my stinky old fingers were so bothersome, Justin. I was only trying to help. Trust me when I say I did not plan on sticking my finger up anyone else’s nose today.” She looked like I’d hurt her feelings.
“I was just kidding around,” I said.
Mom looked like she was going to blow her top.
“I was just kidding around,” I tried to tell her. I knew she was angry because she was really quiet. When she gets really quiet, it means she’s too angry to speak. That would definitely mean big trouble later.
For the moment, though, I was only in trouble with Mrs. Cliff. She asked the driver to use his radio to call one of the other buses.
I heard her say, “Hi, it’s Mrs. Cliff. Aaron Wilson on your bus is texting with a child in my class. I’ve confiscated his phone. Please ask Mrs. Fiesta to do the same.”
I felt terrible that Aaron was going to have his phone taken away. Hopefully he wouldn’t be mad at me too. My sister was crying hysterically and complaining about how it wasn’t fair. Mom told her she shouldn’t have had it out in the first place and she could have it back later on.
She got super upset. “All my music is on there. If I don’t get it back, I’ll go crazy.” My sisters are the biggest Jason Freeber fans on the planet. “Mom, I just downloaded his new album this morning. I’ve only listened to it once. I’ll go crazy if I can’t listen to it. Please, Mrs. Cliff!”
Mrs. Cliff hardly even looked at her. She was too busy eyeballing every kid she thought might start to misbehave in the back. “Sorry, dear. I’ll give it back when we return to the school. The Justin Freeber album will be there later.” I thought it was strange that she knew what album Becky was talking about. Maybe she saw it on Becky’s phone, I thought.
Mrs. Cliff was looking like she had had about enough field trip fun for one day. The bus was making its way downtown to reach the ferry terminal for the Statue of Liberty. Some of the kids on the bus were singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which Mrs. Cliff clearly did not like. I couldn’t believe that most of the parents were singing it too. Mom did not look happy.
They were down to seventy-nine bottles of beer on the wall when one of the front tires burst and the bus swerved hard to the right and rolled over a fire hyd
rant, which popped off and bounced down the street. The bus was stopped directly on top of the hydrant opening, which was gushing water. We couldn’t see it at first because the water was hitting the bottom of the bus. You could hear it, though. It sounded like, well, a fire hydrant spraying the bottom of the bus. It was really loud. Water was all over the street outside, making puddles and small streams rolling in all directions.
Mrs. Cliff blew her whistle again. I’m not sure why because it just made everyone panic even more. The bus driver hit the alarm, so the bus was blinking and bleeping like a spastic yellow robot. She rushed to the back of the bus and threw open the emergency escape door. We’d done the drill where you sit and hop out of the back of the bus a million times at school, but I never dreamed I would actually ever need to do it.
One of the dads was trying to prop open the escape hatch in the ceiling when the bus driver told him to stop and come out the back with the rest of us. Watching the parents hop out the back was pretty funny. It was such a scene. There was water all over the place and people freaking out about the flat tire. We were all the way in the front, so I knew we’d be some of the last people off. Kids and parents jammed into the aisle waiting to jump out the back.
One of the parents said, “Can’t we simply go out the front doors?”
“We’re going out the back,” Mrs. Cliff told her firmly.
Mindy and Becky jumped off, landed, and walked to the sidewalk where the rest of the group was. Mrs. Cliff insisted Mom go first. She agreed. Then it was my time. I’d done the back-door jump a zillion times before. I didn’t sit on my tush like I was some kind of little kid. I walked close to the edge and jumped, or at least tried to jump. Unfortunately for me, my ridiculous sneakers got caught on something, and I tripped. I tumbled out of the bus like a bag of laundry and fell face-first into a dirty city puddle.
12
911
A bus full of kids crashed into a fire hydrant brings more firefighters and police than I ever could have imagined possible. Every car and truck with a flashing emergency light in the city must have been sent to save us.
We watched from the sidewalk as they towed the bus off the gushing water and shut off the water supply. We watched as they repaired the flat tire on the bus. By the time the tire was repaired and the bus was ready to go, it was three o’clock, and the other classes were already at the statue.
An ambulance lady insisted on checking out every single person involved in the bus crash. When she got a look at me and all my bites and wet clothes, she ordered that I be taken to the hospital. Mom tried telling her that I was fine, but the woman wasn’t having it any other way.
“You ruined today,” Becky told me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Your brother didn’t ruin anything. Today was doomed from the moment we woke up. We need to go to the hospital, get checked out, and just go home.”
The lady checked out the rest of the kids and then carted my sisters, my mom, and me off to the hospital. Mom told Mrs. Cliff that we’d probably take the train home after the hospital.
The ambulance ride was the best part of the day. The driver was going really fast and zig-zagging in and out of traffic. When we got to the hospital, they insisted on putting me on a stretcher and wheeling me in the big entrance door. It seemed like a whole lot of drama for a couple of bug bites.
At the hospital, we were in the ER, which stands for Emergency Room. The room wasn’t really a room at all. It was just a shiny metal-framed bed surrounded by a bunch of curtains. We were in the corner room all the way in the back, but I could hear all the other people in the ER talking and making noise. There was a little kid who was about five crying because they wanted to take his blood pressure.
We sat in the room for a while waiting to see the doctor. The girls were still giving me the silent treatment, and Mom was exhausted.
After a while, the doctor, whose name was Igor, arrived. He had an accent that sounded like he was from Transylvania. He checked me over and said, “We’ll need to take some blood to check for da Lyme disease.” And the way he said “take some blood” reminded me so much of the count from Sesame Street that I started laughing.
Becky finally spoke. “This is just too weird.”
The doctor said, “I assure you, I’m not a vampire. I only sound like one.” Then he put his doctor coat over the bottom of his face, like a vampire would with a cape, and said, “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be back!”
When he was out of earshot, Mindy said, “Where are we?”
“This place gives me the creeps,” Becky said.
“I really just want to get you checked out and get home. Today is getting weirder by the minute,” Mom said.
We could hear a bunch of people rushing into the room right next to us. There were so many people in the room that our curtain kept getting pushed back. We could hear them talking as if they were in the room with us. We had to listen to what they were saying. There was no other choice.
A woman’s voice said, “He’ll be fine. We just need to ice it.”
A guy said, “There’s no time for ice. We need to get him on his feet and get him to the show.”
We were all listening carefully to what was going on. It sounded very important. The guy and the girl argued back and forth about someone. They mentioned the word “perform” a few times.
Finally, a boy said, “I’m fine, really. It’s a bit sore, but I can still perform.” His voice sounded kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Becky and Mindy grabbed each other’s hands and made faces like they were screaming but didn’t make any sound.
“What?” I said.
13
Jason Freeber!
“That’s Jason Freeber!” Mindy whispered. “No way,” I said, reaching out to pull back the curtain for a look.
They both grabbed me. “Don’t look, but it’s totally him,” Mindy said.
“I can’t believe this,” Becky added. “I’m finally close to Jason Freeber, and I’m in a gross hospital with my bug-infested brother.”
“Cut that out,” Mom warned.
We kept on listening to what they were saying. It sounded like he had twisted his ankle.
“Either way,” a new voice said, “he’s got to take the stage at five, or we’ll have to cancel.”
I looked at my watch. It was four fifteen.
“Thanks to you, I don’t have my phone! I can’t even take a picture with him!” Becky said.
She was right. Mom had a phone with her, but Mom’s phone was pretty lame and didn’t have a camera.
The girls were really excited. They were also crowded around Mom’s small makeup mirror, fixing their hair and making themselves as pretty as possible under the conditions.
Every time he spoke, the girls looked like they were going to shoot right through the ceiling with excitement. We heard him say, “It’s just my ankle. It hurts so much. These shoes aren’t going to work.”
“We don’t have time to go find a different pair of shoes,” one of the voices said.
“Can you perform barefoot?” another asked.
Mom grabbed my wrist and pointed to my all-white, extra-big-heeled sneakers. The girls jumped up and down and whispered, “Yes!”
Before I could say a word, Becky pulled back the curtain and said, “Jason, I think we have a solution to your problem.” She also flipped her head to the side to create dramatic hair movement.
His people tried to close the curtain on her, but he told them to stop. Jason was sitting on a bed just like mine. He was a few years older than me, but he was really small for his age.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
The girls froze up. I hopped off the bed and said, “Jason, my mom bought me these horribly lame sneakers for back-to-school last week because they make me look ‘sturdy on your feet,’ whatever that means. If you want to try them, they might help your ankle.”
“Those are pretty cool!” he said.
; “Seriously?” I asked.
“I picked them out,” Becky chirped.
“I helped,” Mindy managed.
“You really think these are cool?” I asked.
“Yeah, especially since you girls helped pick them out,” he said to Mindy and Becky. If he were in front of a big crowd of fans, that would have been the part when all the girls let out a loud, high-pitched scream. I thought the girls might, but instead they went, “Awwwww.”
“You’ve got to be careful in them because the heel is so big,” I interrupted. The girls were starting to gross me out. “I’ve wiped out a bunch of times already, but if you take it slow, they do give you a lot of support.”
“Justin, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day!” Mom said. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all week. You’ve just been walking lazy.”
I untied them and held them out for Jason. “They’re all yours if you want to try them.”
The people with him were all whispering into cell phones and texting away like crazy. The woman who seemed to be in charge said, “Try them on and see if they help your ankle.”
Jason tried them on and gently hopped off the bed.
“You look so sturdy on your feet!” Mom said.
“They look super cute,” Mindy said.
Jason gave her his cutest pop star smile and said, “Thanks, Mindy.”
“He knows my name! You know my name!”
Both of my sisters squeaked and giggled like I’ve never heard before.
“They feel pretty good. The ankle still hurts, but they’re sturdy. I feel like I’m walking on air.”
The woman in charge asked me, “How much?”
“We can’t take your money,” Mom said. “Just return them when you’re done. Justin can wear Mr. Freeber’s shoes for the rest of the day.”