As soon as Sillow walked up the stairs into the bus, Kyle tossed him a ski mask. Sillow looked at it for a second, shrugged, and then put it on.
“His face ain’t burned,” Lisa Cartigliani yelled to no one in particular. “Who the fuck is this guy? And why’s he gettin’ a mask?”
“Yeah,” Jim Henderson said. “Who are you guys anyway?”
Tom Snodgrass looked up from his Star Trek book. “Could you both shut the hell up? Who cares who they are as long as we get to school?”
“Bruno, drive please,” Kyle called up.
“Where?” Bruno asked, sounding irritated.
Kyle leaned down to Bruno’s ear and gave him directions. Then, he walked to the back of the bus and tugged on Sillow’s jacket to pull him in close. “I know I asked you to do something different sixteen years ago,” he whispered. “But it turns out that what I really need is for you to just hold this back door closed. Don’t let any of these kids get past you. No matter what.”
Scarlett Finch hadn’t cared too much about the guys with the masks until they insisted on taking her iPod. She tried explaining that it wasn’t a phone, but the main guy didn’t care. He said she’d get it back later as he made her dump it into the plastic bag.
At first he was nice about the whole thing, but when Etan told him he wouldn’t give up his iPhone, the guy pulled out an old looking gun and shoved it in his face. “That’s a whack-ass piece,” Etan said, unwilling to show that he was scared. Still, he turned off his phone and handed it over a second later.
Once he had a device from every kid except Tom, who managed to convince him he didn’t have one, the main guy whispered something to Bruno and switched places with him, sitting down in the driver’s seat. Bruno silently sat down next to Marlon.
The bus got quieter after the guy threatened Etan. It was the first time in a long while that the ever-present yapping of the eighth graders didn’t drown out every other noise on the bus.
Everything stayed quiet for a couple of hours, all of the kids whispering to their seatmates about what might be going on. They were heading up the New York State Thruway going further and further north.
“Hey, Mister,” Tiffany called up to the front. “Where the hell are you taking us?” The immediate shock of watching the man threaten Etan with his gun had faded a bit. By now, Scarlett felt like everyone must be getting as antsy as she was. She also wondered if her bus-mates had come to the same conclusion she had. If these guys wanted to kill them, they were certainly going far out of their way to do it. Something in the way the two guys in ski masks acted toward the kids told Scarlett that they weren’t people who intended to hurt them.
“Are you gonna sew us together, mouth to ass, like in that movie Human Centipede?” Etan called up, not quite sounding like his confident self, but cockier than Scarlett would’ve been if she’d had a gun shoved in her face a few hours ago.
The driver just ignored the kids and drove, keeping a slow pace in the right lane. Kind of the way Scarlett’s grandmother drove the Thruway. It went on that way for almost an hour. The loudmouths on the Cheese Bus shouting at the driver, or trying to get the guy holding the door to talk. But both of the guys in the masks just kept silent.
CHAPTER 18
March 13, 2014
* * *
The day of the original bus crash
“Where are you going?” Scarlett asked Patty as she stood up from her window seat and brushed past her. By now, all of the kids were aware that the bus wasn’t heading to school today.
The guy in the ski mask who was driving had assured them that they’d be home by later in the evening and that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. The further north they drove, the more remote the chance of getting home by that evening became. It was nearly three in the afternoon—the end of the school day.
Scarlett watched, confused, as Patty walked to the back of the bus. She had been trying to get the driver’s attention for a few minutes, but Patty was so soft-spoken, and Scarlett was way too intimidated by him to speak up on her behalf.
Scarlett turned around, knees on the seat, and watched Patty walk up to the guy holding the door closed. He sat in the back seat, looking out the back window. He didn’t turn at first, but she just stood over him. Scarlett couldn’t hear what she was saying, but eventually he looked up at her.
“Hey,” the guy in the back called to “Frank,” the guy driving, “She says she’s gotta pee real bad.”
“Fifteen minutes,” ‘Frank’ said.
“She’s sayin’ she can’t wait,” he called up.
The driver shook his head. “Fifteen minutes. Sorry.”
Tom Snodgrass stood up, leaving his book on the seat. He was the biggest kid on the bus. Definitely the most physically imposing. “Hey driver,” Tom said. “Are you deaf? Stop the fucking bus.”
But the driver didn’t respond. Tom looked forward and saw that the driver wasn’t even looking back at them. Scarlett could see the wheels churning in his head. He grabbed the guy holding the door in the back by his shirt collar and started pushing him out.
“This is some bullshit,” Tom called up to the driver. “It’s time for some answers, and it’s time for you to pull this fucking bus over.”
The door to the back of the bus swung open as the guy in the ski mask braced both arms against the doorframe trying to keep himself inside. A fall from a moving bus onto the busy Thruway would mean certain death.
CHAPTER 19
March 13, 2014
* * *
Moments later
Kyle started to lose control of the bus as soon as he saw the door swing open, and the scene in the back with Sillow trying to stop Tom Snodgrass from pushing him out the door.
“Stop!” Kyle yelled, trying to straighten himself out as he rolled over the white lines on each side of the middle lane. “I’ll stop the bus. I’ll stop. Just give me a second to pull off!”
He watched as Tom backed off from Sillow for a second, stepping behind Patty Marshall. Sillow looked like he was trying to catch his breath. Then, he suddenly reared back and threw a punch toward Tom, who dodged out of the way.
This was the first unusual behavior Kyle had seen from his father since they’d met in 1998. Kyle couldn’t understand how his dad had managed to be such a deadbeat. All Kyle had found, once he got past Sillow’s initial gruff behavior, was someone willing to help him in this crazy scenario, and trying to make amends. He’d found everything he could want from a father, minus the shared history.
Kyle got himself into the right lane and started slowing his speed down, preparing to pull onto the side of the road, but it was too narrow to pull off on this stretch of the Thruway.
“I’m gonna stop as soon as I have a shoulder,” Kyle yelled toward the back. “Just calm down and hold tight.”
Tom was grabbing Sillow now, and trying to land a punch to his face. Kyle tried to keep an eye on the road, but couldn’t help but watch what was going on behind him. Suddenly, as Tom and Sillow pushed and grabbed each other—each trying to get the upper hand—Kyle heard Tiffany scream, “Patty!”
Patty Marshall had been pushed out during the scuffle and was now clinging onto the back door to save herself from falling onto the Thruway. Kyle was afraid to jam on the breaks and jar her off the door. He knew the drastic impact Patty’s death in the original bus crash had on her family. Her father wound up in rehab for a drinking problem he’d never had before, and her mother showed up at Kyle’s trial each day in pajamas. Kyle knew each of these kids so deeply and richly that the pressure to keep them safe now, and the worry that he might not be able to, gave him a hollow feeling deep in his stomach.
Tom and Sillow stopped fighting and moved quickly toward the doorway. Kyle only had a partial view through the rearview, so he took his eyes off the road for a second and turned around. This is exactly what time wants, he thought, a way to get this bus into a dangerous situation where something can kill these twelve kids. With this thought knocking around in
his head like a pinball, he looked up and saw Sillow holding Tom by the waist as Tom reached out his hand toward Patty. The seventh grader was hugging the top and side of the back door like a boogie board.
Kyle could hear Patty screaming and was relieved to see a widening shoulder up ahead about fifty yards. He slowed down and put on his turn signal. He rolled over the gravel and tried to stop as gently as he could. He heard the door swing shut as he stopped. By then, though, Sillow and Tom had pulled Patty back inside the bus. Tears streamed from her eyes and Tom patted her on the back.
Kyle stood up and opened the door of the bus. He didn’t see the harm in letting them stretch their legs, so he told them they could get out for a few minutes. As he exited the bus, Sillow looked up at Kyle, who shook his head in amazement. Kyle couldn’t believe his father would be stupid enough to get into a fist fight with an eighth grader.
“Just playing defense,” Sillow said. “He almost killed me.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “He’s like, thirteen.”
It was starting to get dark. The time of the original crash had passed hours ago and the kids were all still alive. Kyle wouldn’t feel confident, though, that he’d changed anything for good until March 13 had come and gone, which meant keeping these kids another six hours. Allaire had told him there was no chance of getting these kids to March 14 alive. He had no idea what would come after, but he was only six hours from getting them through today.
Kyle wished he had somewhere safe to bring the kids for the next few hours so they weren’t just driving around. He was afraid that, after all this, the universe could still manufacture a different version of the crash here on the Thruway. Everything he’d learned in these last few weeks about time travel was that the universe wanted things to stay as they were. Six more hours.
But, maybe . . . Maybe Joe Stropoli being far away . . . Maybe Sillow and Kyle being on the bus . . . Maybe getting the kids out of Flemming . . . Maybe this was all enough to keep them all safe for six more hours.
Still, Kyle wished he had the option to stop moving.
As the kids emptied out onto the wide shoulder of the road, Kyle noticed most of the students were standing in a row looking at him. They wanted some kind of explanation. Some way of understanding what they were doing here along the side of the New York State Thruway, hours away from Flemming. He needed to avoid any further unrest among them. Things were too tenuous for any more risks.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Lisa called out.
“Let’s wait until Patty gets back,” Kyle answered. “Anyone else who has to use the bathroom, there’s bushes right back there.”
“How do you know our names?” one of the Costello twins asked him. Kyle couldn’t tell which one.
“I don’t,” Kyle answered, lying to them. It had been a mistake to use Patty’s name, but it was hard to pretend they were strangers.
Kyle was about to speak when a tan minivan pulled up directly behind the bus. It looked like it was rolling to a stop, but then Kyle saw that it actually wasn’t. He got a quick look at the driver, and then screamed to the kids.
“Watch out!” Kyle yelled. “Get out of the way!”
The kids all looked up and started throwing themselves out of the way of the oncoming minivan. The vehicle barreled toward them, and then stopped briefly in the weeds beyond the shoulder before it started rolling backward. Allaire had warned Kyle that it might not be her trying to stop him next time, and it wasn’t.
It was Everett behind the wheel, reversing and trying to aim for the large group of kids now standing near the bus. Everett knew exactly what Kyle was trying to do, and determined to stop him, he attempted to run over the children.
“Look out!” Kyle screamed, running toward the group of five or six kids. He corralled them in his arms, pushing them away from the bus.
Everett’s minivan smashed into the side of Bus #17 before rolling forward and into the weeds again. The kids were screaming. It was absolute chaos.
The wheels on Everett’s van got stuck, and they just spun as he tried to dislodge himself from the dirt and weeds.
“Who the fuck is that?” Sillow shouted.
“Someone who doesn’t want us messing with things,” Kyle yelled back. “All of you! On to the bus!”
Kyle pushed and pulled all of the kids onto the bus as Everett spun his wheels trying to get out of the muck. Just as the door to Everett’s van swung open, Kyle pushed the last kid inside and hopped into the driver’s seat.
Kyle watched Everett through his side view mirror, holding a shotgun as he approached the bus. He pointed the shotgun, cocked it and fired once. “Get down!” Kyle screamed to the kids as the back window exploded. Kyle wasn’t sure if anyone was hit. He threw on the ignition, but cars zipped by on the Thruway. It might take a couple of minutes to find an opportunity to merge back into traffic.
Kyle ducked his head down, looking at traffic in the side view. He could see Everett too, raising the shotgun toward the bus again. Kyle decided to open the driver’s side door and hop out. He put his hands in the air and walked toward Everett. None of his time weaving had been about his own life. If it ended here for him, at least it was while he was trying to right his greatest wrong.
As he walked toward him, Kyle half expected to be blown to bits by a shotgun round right then and there.
“I don’t have to kill you,” Everett said. “Only them.”
“Why?” Kyle asked.
Everett cocked the shotgun again. “Because you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
“Well enough?” Kyle pleaded. “They have a chance now! Or, they would . . . ”
“Who are you to say who deserves a chance?” Everett said. “There are no do-overs in life.”
“Of course there are!” Kyle said. “Why would time travel exist otherwise? Why would you and Allaire try to fix the things that get messed up? Aren’t those do-overs? These kids, they’re here, Everett. You can just walk away and let them live . . . Or, let the universe decide if they live.” He was standing close to Everett now.
“We both know these kids should be dead,” Everett said, raising the shotgun toward Kyle. “Now, are you gonna let me do my job? Or do I need to take you down too?”
Kyle’s eyes lit up when he saw the headlights of his own Nissan Sentra. The car skidded onto the shoulder, and out came Allaire. She opened the door and walked toward them with a somber look on her face.
Everett aimed the shotgun at Kyle and didn’t move a muscle.
“Allaire,” Kyle said. “Tell him not to kill all of these kids.”
Allaire looked at Kyle, but wouldn’t make eye contact.
“Please!” Kyle screamed, realizing that she wasn’t there with the same agenda as his own. “Tell him to let them go.”
“Those kids don’t belong here,” Allaire said, pulling out her pistol. “They don’t have a place in the world anymore. They’re a glitch.”
“What are you talking about?” Kyle asked. “This is crazy! They’re right here. Living and breathing.”
Allaire walked up closer to Everett, who had his gun trained on the bus now. She whispered something to him.
When she looked at Kyle, he could see that her eyes were filled with tears. “I’m sorry.”
Everett started pumping shotgun rounds into the bus as quickly as he could reload the double barrel weapon. The first two shots slammed against, and through, the metal of the bus like they were cannonballs.
Kyle was thrilled to hear the engine of the bus kick back on. He’d told Bruno to take the bus and just go if he heard any gunshots.
Everett reloaded another two rounds into the shotgun as Bruno turned the bus toward the Thruway. All he had to do was find a clear space to merge, but traffic wasn’t cooperating as car after car raced by. Kyle saw the back door swing open and his stomach dropped. He wondered if Sillow had been hit by one of the rounds Everett fired at the bus again.
Kyle needed to give the bus a few seconds to get off on
its way. He lowered his shoulder and charged at Everett. It only took a fling of Everett’s forearm, though, to push Kyle out of the way.
As Kyle got up and came at him again, Everett got off another shot at the bus. The horn blared, and at first, Kyle assumed it was Bruno trying to make his way off the shoulder and into traffic, but the horn didn’t stop. When Kyle looked at the driver’s seat, he could see Bruno’s mangled half-head laying on the steering wheel. Everett had blown it clear off.
Ignoring Everett, Kyle ran toward the bus, the dirt from the Thruway shoulder kicking up beneath his feet. He could see that the students had all taken cover on the floor, clear of the windows. He heard Everett pump the shotgun again and waited for the bullet to either hit him in the back, or thud against the bus.
Kyle opened the driver’s side door and pulled Bruno down from the seat, laying him down on the gravelly ground. The way Bruno’s head looked reminded Kyle of Joe Stropoli on the day of the original crash.
Kyle turned around and saw that Allaire and Everett were scuffling now. She was trying to pull the shotgun away from him, while her pistol was on the ground at her feet. Kyle saw Allaire connect with a roundhouse kick, which knocked Everett to the ground. Her moves looked like something out of a movie, but in real life, a kick like that one was enough to fell anyone, even a big guy like Everett.
Allaire knelt next to Everett and unloaded with three punches to the head, one after the other.
Kyle grabbed Bruno’s ankles and pulled him away so he wouldn’t run over him. He looked up at Allaire and saw her pick up the shotgun.
Kyle couldn’t get the words out quickly enough to warn her before Everett grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the ground. She slid on the dirt and fell face first, the shotgun coming to rest directly underneath her.
Everett violently pulled the shotgun out and butted her in the forehead. The blow sent Allaire’s head snapping back into the ground. She wasn’t knocked out, but it was enough to incapacitate her for the moment. Everett cocked the gun and pointed it down at Allaire, then up at the bus. Kyle looked backward and tried to line himself up between the barrel of the gun and the bus.
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