by Gae Polisner
“So, you kids going to Albany, I take it?” He jangles coins in his pocket.
“Yessir.” Jaycee salutes him, but at least she’s taken her lips out. I pull mine out too and elbow her.
“No parents this late?”
“Nope,” she says. “I was visiting my dad with my boyfriend. The folks are divorced, you know.” He studies her thoughtfully, then leans against the aisle seat and pulls out a ticket punch.
“You got tickets?”
Jaycee digs for them, hands them over. The girl is truly amazing. I had forgotten all about them, would’ve had no freaking idea where they were. If it were up to me, we’d be walking back to Glenbrook at this point. He takes them from her, punches them, and puts them in his pocket. “Okay then.” He glances at his watch. “Well it’s after eleven, so it looks like it’s just the three of us.”
“Looks that way,” Jaycee answers.
“We should make good time. No stops. Figure three hours.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She smiles. “Want some lips for the ride?”
He lowers his glasses and eyes her. It’s stern, like, “Don’t mess with me,” but she laughs anyway. He shakes his head, then lumbers up the aisle to his seat and adjusts his mirror so he can see us back where we are. Then he closes the doors, gives a short, soft blow on the horn, and lurches us the heck out of Rochester.
20
As the bus makes its way onto the ramp for the expressway, I stare out the window and try to get a handle on the jumbled mess of things that I feel. I mean, there’s kissing Jaycee, which is awesome. I could do it forever, and it makes me totally happy inside. But then there’s this part of me that’s still upset about Dad, and worried about Mom, and not sure how I feel about Jeremy.
On the one hand, I dread seeing my brother. I can already hear him gloating about how right he was about Dad, about how I’m so freaking naïve. On the other hand, he’s seemed different the last few days, genuinely worried and checking in on me, like maybe he actually gives a crap how I am. There must be six or seven texts from him already, just since this afternoon. So part of me misses him and wants to talk to him about everything too.
It’s weird how it feels like so much has changed even though I’ve only been gone a short time. I mean, tomorrow is Sunday. Mom won’t even be back from Philly. Yet there’s this part of me that feels like I’ve been gone forever, and I just really want to get home.
But then there’s this other part of me that feels sad to be leaving Rochester because it felt like this cool, suspended place where the old Nick morphed into a new Nick who’s a little more bold and self-assured. Honestly, I’m afraid he’ll disappear the minute I set foot back home.
So I’m just sitting there thinking all this, trying to sort it out in my head, when Jaycee starts kissing me all over again. Which is nice, because I guess she’s not sick of it either. So we hang out and kiss some more, letting everything else fall away. This time, my fingers even brave the soft, cottony swells of her bra. Finally my stomach lets out a loud embarrassing growl. I mean, it must be close to midnight, so it’s been like fifteen hours since we’ve eaten.
“Time out. I’ve got stuff.” Jaycee pushes me off her and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. She gets her backpack again and rifles through. I lean in to see what she’s got in there now, but she quickly twists away. I look out the window instead.
Outside, the road is dark and quiet, but for a car passing here or there. We’re in the middle of the boonies, God knows where. It occurs to me that we could pull out the GPS, plug in our home address, and find out how far there is to go, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I listen to Jaycee rattle things in her bag and do whatever kooky thing is so very private in there. Then there’s the sound of the zipper again, and the crinkle of the paper bag.
“Okay,” she says, and I turn. She’s got the deli bag propped in her lap. No wax lips, no other secret surprises. Sometimes you don’t try to figure her out.
“Tuna or turkey?” she asks. She holds out two sandwiches wrapped in white deli paper, then drops one in her lap and digs in the bag again. “Or ham with mayo?”
I smile. The girl is always prepared. “Turkey,” I say, tapping the one she holds higher.
She rolls her eyes. “Turkey for a turkey, of course.”
“Then you’ll pick ham,” I say.
After that, we eat quietly, because we’re both probably running out of steam. I suddenly wish that Jaycee had brought another book along to read. Even some dumb old classic. I lift her backpack from the floor by her feet where she’s dropped it and start to unzip it without thinking.
“Hey, give me that!” she snaps, which surprises me, because I figure I’ve pretty much seen everything important in there. Maybe she does have some secret.
“Sorry.” I drop it back down and raise my hands. “Don’t shoot. I wasn’t gonna steal your Slinkies.”
“Never mind.” She pulls it up and tosses it on the seat across the aisle.
We eat and drink our sodas, and then, I guess, I fall asleep. Because the next thing I know, things are shaking and banging and then Jaycee is tugging at my sleeve like a crazy person.
It takes me a second to realize I was dreaming, and she’s just trying to wake me.
I move my eyes around to get them to focus, but I’m groggy and confused. I remember we’re on the bus, but we’re not moving for some reason and it’s quiet and completely dark. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them again, but I still feel cockeyed and weird.
“Nick! Come on!” She shakes me some more.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“I don’t know. I just woke up too. Seriously, something’s wrong. I don’t know where we are.”
All around us is pitch black—no street lights, no cars. I force myself to sit upright, then cup my hands to the window. I can’t make out anything but silhouettes of trees. I pull myself up and look to the front of the bus. The moon shines in up there. There’s no driver. And the bus is definitely tilted to the side.
I squeeze past Jaycee and start to make my way up the aisle, pulling my cell phone from my pocket to use the light. When I open it, it buzzes with messages and makes me jump. Every little noise is magnified in the quiet. I continue toward the driver’s seat, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Up here, the moonlight comes in through the windshield and illuminates things better. The driver’s jacket is gone, but his keys are still in the ignition. I lean across the seat to his side window and peer out again, hoping to catch a glimpse of something. Which I do, only it’s not what I am expecting. There’s a large tree trunk pressed right against the window. Beyond that, an embankment, which the tree seems to have stopped us from going over. And then it hits me—the bus is on the wrong side of the road, facing the wrong direction. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a car in sight, and it seems like we’re pretty much up on the shoulder.
“Nick?”
I jump. Jaycee is right behind me. “Jesus, Jaycee, don’t do that!” I whisper.
“Sorry.” She leans against me and shivers, and it occurs to me that she’s scared. I wrap my arms around her while I think. “What happened?” she asks.
“Gangs of gang agley, that’s what.” I squint out the window again. She laughs, but it’s the nervous kind. I press my nose against the pane thinking I can see a small beam of light moving way down in the distance. My heart pounds in my ears. It’s all I can hear in the quiet. I wonder if Jaycee can hear it too. I don’t want to make her any more scared than she is.
“I think we crashed,” I say finally. “There’s a light down there. I’m guessing it’s him.”
“What kind of light? And what do you mean we crashed? If we crashed, why would he be down there?” She presses up behind me and peeks out over my shoulder.
“I don’t know, Jaycee. You’re the mind reader, remember?”
“That’s true,” she says. “Okay, disposing of the body then. That’s what he’s doing down there.” She makes that ne
rvous laugh again.
“Great. Thanks, that’s very helpful.”
“You’re welcome.” She digs her chin into my shoulder. “Seriously, Nick. Do you think we should go and see?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
My eyes still not completely adjusted, I take her hand and start carefully down the deep steps, and smack straight into the closed double doors. She stifles a laugh. “Well, why did he close them?” I say. I push on them, but they don’t move. “Hey, how do we open these things?”
“You got me.” She backs up the steps and moves her hand around the dashboard. “Wait, got it, I think.” There’s a soft grinding noise, the suction breaks, and the doors fold open. Cool air rushes in.
Something about the doors being open freaks me out. She must feel the same thing because she asks, “What if there really is something wrong, Nick? What if he is a serial killer?”
“I doubt it,” I say, but my heart beats so hard it hurts, and Jaycee’s totally not helping.
“But why would he leave the bus with us on it? Not even make sure we’re okay? I knew he looked creepy.”
“I don’t know, but I guess we’ll go and find out. Or I’ll go if you want. You can stay in here.”
“No way,” she says, grabbing my arm, “I’m going with you.”
* * *
Once outside, the moonlight offers some visibility. I walk with Jaycee clinging to me, around to the front of the bus. The whole bus is inclined toward the embankment, its driver-side front wheels completely up on the shoulder. The tree has definitely stopped us from going down the hill.
“Jeez!” Jaycee whispers.
“Shhh.” I turn and put my hand over her mouth. “Listen.”
The sound of crunching leaves comes from down the embankment, plus the flicker of light again, between the trees. Man, what is he doing down there?
Jaycee calls out. “Hey, is that you, bus driver man?”
I spin around at her. “Are you crazy?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I don’t, so we wait, but there’s no answer.
I take a step closer and try calling myself. “Hey, you okay down there, mister?” Again, no answer. What the heck? I look up at Jaycee. “Maybe you should go back to the bus.”
“Like hide, you mean?”
I nod, then remember my cell and think maybe I should call 911. I pull it out and start to dial. My hands shake so badly it takes two tries. I don’t press send yet. I mean, I have no idea how much trouble we could get in, two kids alone in the middle of the night.
“Come on,” I say, and pull Jaycee back toward the bus, then we hunker down behind it and wait for the light to reach us. After another minute there’s still nothing, so one of us needs to look. I hold Jaycee back protectively and step out to see what I can see.
“Jesus Harry Christ!” the bus driver yells. He’s standing like two feet in front of me. He literally jumps when he sees me, the beam from his flashlight sweeping up and momentarily blinding my eyes. When he lowers it, I see him quickly tuck his other hand behind him. “Kid, you scared the daylights out of me,” he says too loudly, then adds, “Oh, sorry,” and pulls an earbud from his ear.
And then I get it. He’s got his iPod on. Which explains why he didn’t hear us, if not why he was wandering down there in the first place. He knocks the other earbud out. “What are you kids doing out here?”
“Us?” I say, my heart still feeling like it might explode. “What are we doing? What are you doing? What the heck is going on?”
“Flat,” he says. He nods toward the bus. “Well, blowout, really. Two of ’em in the back. We must’ve run over something. I felt ’em blow, but I couldn’t control her. Swerved up onto the shoulder, and lucky this tree here stopped us from going any farther.” He aims the beam across the dark to illustrate. “Surprised it didn’t wake you kids up.”
Jaycee comes up behind me. “So, you’re saying, if you hadn’t hit the tree, we would have gone down there?” She takes another step forward like she’s going to inspect the damage, and the bus driver backs away quickly as if he doesn’t want us to see what he’s got in his other hand, which makes me suspicious all over again. I mean, what is he hiding? Plus, now that I think about it, his whole story sounds fishy, because even if the blowout is true, why would he leave us alone? And trek down the hillside in the dark?
“So what were you doing down there?” I ask accusatorily.
“Taking a leak.”
“What’s wrong with the bathroom on the bus?”
“It’s broken. Clogs easy,” he says.
“Then what’s in your hand?”
“Flashlight.” He holds it up and blinds me again.
“Not that hand. The other one!” I say, like I’m Sherlock Holmes or something.
“Oh, sorry.” He pauses, then slowly brings his other hand around. I brace myself but all he’s got is a knotted plastic bag with some crumpled paper in it. It dangles limply. “Dump and leak,” he says, looking down. “I didn’t think you’d want that much information.”
Jaycee busts out laughing.
* * *
Back on the bus, the driver tells us to get cozy, that we have a bit of a wait ahead. “I radioed about fifteen minutes ago,” he says, “so likely a half hour before they can get a fresh bus to us. Oh, and the cops. There’ll have to be a police report, of course.” Jaycee rolls her eyes. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour, tops,” he adds.
I turn to her. “We’re gonna get home at like four in the morning.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and leans against me. “We’ll sleep at the bus station and take a cab or call your brother in the morning.” Then she slips her fingers into mine and I get quiet. I’m not really sure why. I have nothing to say. Or maybe it’s all the craziness finally catching up with me.
“Hey, Nick.” She nudges me. I sigh and brace myself for a wiseass comment.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not just the Fever King, you’re the Saver from the Serial Killer.”
I look up toward the front, where the driver sleeps, head back, jacket over his face to shield out the moonlight. “He was taking a crap, Jaycee, not exactly a serial killer.”
“But we didn’t know that, and you protected me. And I love you for it, Nick. It was brave.”
“Shut up,” I say, smiling. “I’m sleeping.”
21
I wake again, this time to the sound of a police radio and red flashing lights pulsing in through the windows. I glance at my cell. It’s 2:02 a.m. I stand up and tap Jaycee.
“Yeah, I see,” she says.
The interior lights of our bus are on; the driver stands at the front door, talking, presumably to a cop. Across the road from us, pulled off onto the opposite shoulder, is a new, empty Trailways bus, its parking and interior lights all on, lit up like a Christmas tree. There’s a driver in the front seat. I can see her poofy blond hair from here. I wonder if our guy is going to get hauled away. After everything we’ve been through, I kind of like him now.
“Guess we should get our stuff,” Jaycee says. She reaches across the aisle for her backpack, slings it over her shoulder, and we head to the front of the bus.
The police officer, a white-haired old guy who looks like he was woken out of a sound sleep, is down on the lowest step taking information from our driver. He asks us a few questions, but we’re not all that helpful, since we didn’t really see what happened. We manage to be serious and leave out the stuff about thinking that the driver was a madman. I don’t want to make trouble for the guy. At this point, I just want to switch buses and get home.
The cop finishes his report and tells us we all can go. That he’ll wait for the tow truck to come to haul the dead bus away. I’m relieved that our driver is coming with us. We head down the steps and across the road, while the cop veers the opposite way toward the embankment.
“Hey, you know,” he calls out as we plod across toward the new bus, “it’s a good thing that tre
e was here. It’s quite a steep drop. Sure would’ve put a damper on your plans!”
I hear it the minute he says it. I’m sure Jaycee does too.
“Gang aft gangly!” I call back to him, because I can’t help myself anymore.
As we board the new bus the blond driver gives us a huge, sugary greeting, then says, “Charlie, you must be tired. I’ll take this leg.” Our old driver nods and slips into the seat behind her like a punished elementary school kid. I can’t help but feel bad for him.
Then she starts chatting with us, even though we’re halfway down the aisle.
“You two children have had quite an adventure!” She adjusts her mirror. Jaycee rolls her eyes at me and pushes me to walk faster.
“Yep,” Jaycee calls.
“Of course, I’m not asking what on earth two kids like yourselves are doing on a bus to Albany in the middle of the night to begin with. That’s none of my little old business, eh? And I’m sure not one to pry.”
“No,” Jaycee says sarcastically, just to me, then loudly, “We were killing a dog and buying a ranch to tend bunnies!”
I laugh, because I get the reference, so Steinbeck would be proud.
* * *
We fall into our seats and, like that, we’re making out again. It feels like hours since we have, and it still feels amazing and awesome. It’s more comfortable now, this making out thing. Jaycee’s lips are soft and taste completely like peppermint candy. Which suddenly makes me wonder. I stop kissing her and hold out my hand.
“Fork one over,” I say.
“What?”
“A mint.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Yes you do. You taste like mint, Jaycee.”
“Naturally occurring,” she says. I point to my palm again. She slaps it, then holds hers both out to show me they’re empty. “I ate toothpaste,” she says.