121 Express (2 page)

And yesterday, I insulted an old lady's car when she pulled up next to the bus.
“Your clunker's got more rust than metal on it!” I yelled out the window. When the old lady turned her head, I realized it was Mrs. Gibbs, my old kindergarten teacher. I ducked so she wouldn't notice me.

Today, when the bell rang at three, the mood at the bus lineup was extra crazy. Kelly and her friends were dancing, and Pierre punched one of the nerds in the stomach. The kid was lying on the ground moaning, but he stopped when Mr. Adams walked by.

“Everything okay?” Mr. Adams asked as he helped the kid up from the sidewalk. “You look a little winded.”

“Yup, everything's fine.”

When the bus doors opened, we stampeded past Mr. Adams, who was standing at the curb, shaking his head. This time Pierre couldn't find his bus pass, so the two of us pushed our way in through the back doors.

I saw the bus driver eyeing us in his rearview mirror. It was a cool September day, but his forehead was sweaty. “Hey,
hey,” he called out, but nobody paid any attention.

When Jake raised his lighter in the air, I took mine out too. We all had lighters, even if we didn't smoke. We liked snapping them. The driver couldn't take the sound—and he was probably afraid we were going to set fire to his precious bus.

“Look!” someone called out from the front of the bus. “The driver's cheek is twitching double-time!”

Soon all of us at the back were snapping our lighters. Then Kelly and her friends started pulling on the yellow cord that makes the bell ring. Between the snapping and the ringing, it was like a bad concert. Everyone was laughing. Even old Sandeep Singh.

Everyone, that is, except the bus driver. When he swerved around this Subaru wagon, so close he nearly took off the sideview mirror, I thought he was losing it.

“Hey, man, I think it's time for some driving lessons!” Jake called out.

“Yeah, what are you trying to do—kill us?” Kelly shrieked.

The driver's back was straight as a stick. I could tell he was trying to focus on the road. Then, with no warning at all, he pulled over to the side of Côte-Vertu Boulevard and turned on the emergency lights. Their steady tick-tick echoed like a clock inside the bus.

Other drivers honked for us to get out of their way. But instead the driver put the engine into neutral and rose from his seat.

Except for the ticking, the bus was dead quiet.

The driver ran his fingers through his gray hair. “You kids are in a big hurry to start your weekend, right?”

“We sure are,” Jake called out. “So you driving us to the metro, or what?”

The driver just stood there, staring at us. His belly hung over his pants like a spare tire, and he was breathing hard. “I'm not driving you nowhere unless you cut out your nonsense. No lighters, no bells. No nothing. Got that?” He practically spit out the words.

The nerds all nodded. But the driver
knew their word wasn't good enough. “What about you guys at the back?”

Jake stood up and walked to the center of the bus so he was facing the driver. Everyone's eyes were on Jake. A couple of girls at the front of the bus twittered.

“Sure thing,” Jake said.

The driver waddled back to his seat. When Jake turned around, he gave us a wink. We all knew that meant Trouble. With a capital T.

If you're looking for a soccer ball, chances are Pierre's got one. Today the ball was between his knees. Pierre was using it to exercise his quads.

All Jake had to do was point. Pierre released the ball. Then he tossed it up in the air and used the top of his head to butt it over to Jake.

Jake yelped as he head-butted the ball halfway down the bus.

“Keep it going!” voices shouted.

“You'd better watch it!” Jewel Chu said.

Things could've gone worse. The ball could have hit the driver, and he could have lost control of the bus.

Instead the ball hit Jewel Chu, breaking one of her pink fingernails—the ones she spent most of English class filing. Still it was just a nail, though from the sounds of it, you'd have thought we'd stolen one of her young.

Jewel leapt up from her seat. When she turned around, I noticed how the vein that ran across the middle of her forehead was throbbing. “I can't believe you broke my nail! You guys are total imbeciles!”

Sandeep Singh watched the action from the corner of his eye.

I grinned. For me, being called a total imbecile was a compliment.

We expected the bus driver to pull over and give us another lecture, only he didn't. Instead he picked up speed. For a few minutes, the 121 Express was flying! We held onto the bottoms of our seats—or the closest pole. The driver's window was
open, and his gray hair flapped in the breeze. I figured he was in a hurry to reach the Côte-Vertu metro station, where most of the kids who take the 121 Express get out.

Jake was standing on one of the seats at the back. His sneakers had already left gray scuff marks on the vinyl. “Hey, Lucas,” he called, “I need some help.”

I went over to see what he wanted. When the bus squealed to a stop at a red light, we nearly fell over. Luckily, Jake grabbed onto one of the gray rubber handgrips—and I hung on to Jake. The two of us must have looked like a couple of monkeys swinging from a banana tree.

When the bus jerked forward, we got back to work. I was helping Jake pop open the emergency ceiling window. The trick was to undo the levers on either end.

“What kind of useless emergency window is this?” Jake shouted when the window wouldn't budge. “Lemme out of here! I can't breathe!! This is an emergency!” Then he started making choking noises
and pounding his chest, which cracked everyone up.

“Hey, Kelly,” I shouted, “I think Jake needs some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!”

That made everyone laugh even harder.

“Let me put on my lip-gloss first!” Kelly shouted.

When the window finally popped open, it made a noise like a burp. “Yes!” Jake hollered. He pushed the window open as wide as it could go.

A burst of cool air came jetting through the bus. We must have passed some big trees because a few bright red maple leaves came flying down too.

We stuck our heads through the opening and screamed like madmen. “We're gonna die!” we yelled. “we're gonna die!”

The bus driver picked up even more speed. Wasn't he worried about the cops pulling him over?

Someone was rushing down the aisle. I slid down from the window to see what was going on. Jewel Chu was clutching the soccer ball against her chest.

“You show him!” one of her friends called out.

“I wanted to return this to you.” Jewel threw the ball at Jake's stomach. Hard.

Jake fell down from the window, moaning when he hit the floor.

The soccer ball rolled to the floor too. “At least you didn't break a nail,” Jewel muttered.

Pierre wanted his ball back.

“I'll give it back to you all right!” Then Jewel bent down and unfastened the safety pin from her kilt.

Jewel raised the pin in the air like a spear; then she stabbed Pierre's soccer ball. Pierre's mouth fell open and his silver braces gleamed in the afternoon sun.

“Here you go,” Jewel said in this syrupy-sweet voice. She handed Pierre what was left of his soccer ball.

“Why'd you have to go and do that?” Pierre asked.

“Why'd you have to go and break my nail?”

“I didn't break your nail.”

Someone laughed. It was a laugh we didn't recognize at first. There was something haunted about the sound of it. It took us a few seconds to realize it was the driver. He'd been watching the action in the rearview mirror.

The brakes squealed when the driver pulled up in front of the metro. The doors opened and almost everyone piled out, except for me and a few other kids who lived farther along Côte-Vertu Boulevard.

“That was the worst ride we ever had,” I heard Jewel Chu say as she stood up to leave.

Jake, who was standing behind her, patted the top of Jewel's head. “Funny, I thought it was pretty cool.”

Jewel stopped when she reached the driver. “Thank you, sir,” she said, flashing him a bright smile. “Have a wonderful weekend.”

The bus driver didn't say a thing. He just stared into space like a zombie.

Jake waved at me before he disappeared into the metro station with Pierre. “See ya tomorrow,” he said, mouthing the words.

Tomorrow, Pierre and I were both invited over to Jake's to play some b-ball and have pizza. Life was definitely looking up. In a way, I owed it all to the 121 Express. It was where I'd first made friends with Jake and Pierre.

So what if my marks weren't what they'd been at Lasalle Regional? The main thing was I had friends. Cool friends.

I leaned back into my seat. Kelly Legault had carved her initials into the window.

It was much quieter now that the bus was nearly empty. For the first time since I got on, I could hear noises coming from outside: birds chirping, cars honking, and somewhere in the distance, the whine of an ambulance siren.

The emergency window was hanging open. I could have shut it, but I didn't. Something about seeing it like that made me feel good. It reminded me of the fun Jake and I had had prying it open and then screaming our heads off. I could still hear the laughing when I'd made that joke about Kelly needing to give Jake mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Sometimes, I thought, as I gazed out the window, I could be pretty funny.

When the driver drove through a yellow light, I moved closer to the front. I didn't want to miss my stop.

I could have taken one of the empty seats up front but I didn't. I'd worked too hard to earn my place at the back, and I
felt like it would be bad luck to sit with the nerds. So I just stood there, clutching a pole. If the driver took a sharp turn now, I wouldn't lose my balance.

Valerie and Sandeep were still riding the bus too. I knew Valerie got off at the stop before mine. From where I was standing, I could see the way her red hair frizzed up at the ends. It was a nice color of red. For once she wasn't listening to her Mp3 player. She was writing in a fat spiral notebook. She must have felt me watching because she closed the notebook and stuffed it inside her backpack.

“What are you doing—writing a book?” I asked.

I knew she'd heard me, but she just turned toward the window and sighed. I figured she wanted to steer clear of troublemakers—and I liked that she thought I was one of them. Even if it meant she was ignoring me.

Sandeep was sitting on one of the long seats behind the driver, watching us. “Hey, Valerie,” he said.

It kind of bothered me when Valerie turned around for Sandeep. “What's up?” she asked him.

“Not much. I'm excited about that project Mr. Adams wants us to do—the one about modern-day heroes. Did you pick your hero yet?”

Jeez, I thought, Sandeep really needed lessons in how to be cool. Imagine telling a girl you're excited about an English project.

But Valerie actually seemed interested. “I'm thinking about doing Mahatma Gandhi,” she said. “He believed in non-violence.” She raised her voice when she said that, which made me think she was trying to tell me something.

“I'm all for nonviolence,” I said. I hadn't meant to say anything.

Valerie sighed again. “Messing with the emergency window is violence—kind of, anyway.”

“No, it's not,” I said quickly. “We didn't hurt anyone.”

“What about him?” Sandeep raised his dark eyebrows toward the bus driver.

“I can't help it if he can't drive.” I said it loud enough for the driver to hear me. His cheek twitched.

When Valerie started discussing Mahatma Gandhi again—how a lot of people think he was related to Indira Gandhi, who was prime minister of India, only they weren't related at all—I knew it meant my part in the conversation was over.

I was sorry I'd said anything at all. I was better off ignoring those two—the way they were ignoring me.

The driver slowed down before Valerie's stop. Valerie said good-bye to Sandeep, but she ignored me altogether. I tapped on the pole and pretended not to notice.

I had to crane my neck to watch Valerie walk down Côte-Vertu Boulevard, her head held high. She wasn't very friendly. But I still liked the color of her hair.

Sandeep took a book from his backpack. I figured it was a physics or math textbook, but it wasn't. It was a new thriller by Michael Connelly, and from the looks of it, Sandeep was into it. I liked Michael Connelly too.
He was the kind of writer who made you feel you were there with him—inside his story.

About a block before my stop, I reached up to tug on the bell cord. I had a feeling the driver wouldn't slow down the way he had for Valerie. Sandeep usually got off at my stop too, but for now, he was still sitting, lost in his book.

I went to the very front of the bus and waited behind the tinted glass that separated the driver from his passengers. That little space, I thought, that didn't measure more than a few square feet, was the guy's office.

The driver's hands had brown spots and his bony fingers shook when he gripped the wheel.

Sandeep was busy reading. “Hey,” I called out, “it's our stop!”

Sandeep stood up, but he didn't shut his book.

The driver pulled up to our stop. I could have thanked him, but I didn't. What stopped me was the idea of what the guys would say if they knew.

As I got off, I felt Sandeep's weight on
the step behind me. When I stopped to toss my empty water bottle into the garbage can by the bus stop, I half expected Sandeep to stop too. He wasn't cool, but I didn't see any harm in walking a couple of blocks with the guy.

Only Sandeep didn't stop. He just kept reading his book, which he had balanced in one hand.

What a loser, I thought, as he walked right past me.