thing had a floor-mounted stick shift. It looked a lot harder to handle than the gear shift on his dad’s car, which he’d been studying all year, practicing in his mind. He’d planned to ask his dad if he’d teach him to drive this summer.
Instead here he sat, in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds and thousands of miles from his dad, his friends at school, his bedroom and his tree house out back. “So first you have to shift.” He tried it and was surprised at the big lever’s resistance. “Ooof—move, you stupid thing!”
DC stood up on his lap, tail swishing in irritation. Sky hooked his left forearm around the cat to steady him. “Help me out here, will you? Why won’t it—oh!” Spaceshot. Dummy. He’d forgotten the clutch pedal. You stepped on that, then you shifted. “Pedal, then hold it, then—ha!” The gearshift moved easily, with a soul-satisfying clunk!
“Yeah!” Sky shifted up, down, then over and up again, the way he’d seen his mom do it. Then down again on the other side. “And that’s fourth gear, when we’re really rolling.” Hey, this was easy! He shifted back to the middle.
“Now we have to turn it on.”
Did he dare? He stole a glance downhill, but his mom was out of sight in the trees. “She’ll never hear us if we run it for just a minute,” he assured the cat. Resting his chin on DC’s round head, he leaned forward to finger the key. She couldn’t possibly hear, but still… His mom didn’t get mad often, but when she did…
“Ouch!” Tired of being squashed, DC dug in his claws and slithered down from his lap. His double-wide tail slapped Skyler’s glasses, which as usual had slid to the end of his nose. “Hey, stupid hairball, watch what you’re doing!”
Cat and glasses hit the floorboard at once, with a clatter and a weighty thump. “If you’ve broken them—” Sky’s mom paid for his first pair of replacement glasses each year, then the rest came out of his allowance. This was pair number three and it was only June. “Crap!”
He couldn’t see very well without them. He wasn’t blind as a bug-eyed bat, the way that jerk Timmy Ryder at school was always telling everybody, but things got kind of…blurry when he took them off. “Move over, fur brain.” Shoving the cat to the left with his foot, Sky squeezed under the steering wheel and cautiously down. “Where are they?”
He patted under the high-set pedals. Nope. “What are you doin’, sitting on ’em?” He pulled the cat up onto his knee, ignoring his warning growl. DC was too timid to bite even a mouse.
“Or maybe—ooof—keep still!” He twisted around to grope under the seat and— “Yeah, got ’em.” Unbroken; for once in his life he was lucky. He jammed them on top of his head, let go of the exasperated tom and, reaching up to the dash, caught hold of something, a handle of some kind, and started wriggling up past the steering wheel.
Thock! The handle jumped in his hand. The bus quivered and groaned.
“What was that?”
No comment from the cat. Ears flattened to his head, DC was doing his best to exit left, wedging his plump body between the driver’s seat and the side of the bus in an unsuccessful effort to reach the back. His tail lashed in frustration.
Sky grabbed the wheel to pull himself off the floorboard—and it spun hard to the right. “Hey!” Something felt wrong. The wheel was shuddering in his grasp. Gravel rumbled under the tires. As he squirmed into the driver’s seat and pulled his glasses down onto his nose, things swam into focus—and streamed away. No, it was the bus that was moving, he realized, as it gave a horrible lurch.
And kept on rolling.
Backward.
Swerving with a ponderous, dreadful deliberation off the road, then down across the pasture.
CHAPTER TWO
MARYLOU WON’T DO, Jack Kelton told himself, aiming his open Jeep down the road to Durango.
The baby-sitter might be five years older than his daughter, Kat, but she was three jumps behind every time. Missing Kat’s straight-faced jokes and veiled warnings. Failing to foresee her pranks, or knowing how to handle them once they’d been played. Worst of all, the girl was gullible, taking Kat at her word when she shouldn’t. Apparently they weren’t teaching critical thinking in high school these days, or if they were, Marylou was failing.
“And now, shoot me if she’s not in love,” Jack muttered, scrubbing a hand through his wind-whipped hair as the Jeep topped the hill. A fifteen-year-old in calf-love was useless! Lethally oblivious to the world and her responsibilities.
With Marylou lost in love, Kat would run wild this summer. She was probably contemplating mayhem this very moment, since she’d wanted to accompany him into Durango. She’d pulled a major pout when he refused to let her go to a kickboxing movie alone while he met with an after-hours’ client. Right now, back in Trueheart, Marylou was probably sprawled on Jack’s couch, bare feet up on the backrest, spooning the last of their chocolate-chip ice cream out of the carton as she giggled on the phone with the Love of her Life. While forgotten Kat was probably somewhere down the street, hot-wiring somebody’s car. She’d pass him any second now with a whoop and a wave and an offer to drag race. Automatically he glanced in his mirror.
Nothing but empty road back there. Still, facts had to be faced. He’d have to find another sitter, and soon. Not that Trueheart had much to offer in the baby-sitting department.
The Jeep crested the next rise and Jack cocked his head. Fifty yards downslope, a bright red, sawed-off school bus was parked by the edge of the road, facing his way. Not from around here; Trueheart school buses were yellow and full-size. Jack’s brows drew together as his Jeep closed the distance. Was it—?
It was rolling. Backing down the road. Or, no— “What the devil?”
As Jack’s foot moved to his brake, the bus curved slowly off the shoulder and trundled out into the field. Some idiot had left it parked without shifting into first! Most likely the emergency brake had let go.
Well, so be it. Whoever the idiot was, he was about to learn his lesson the hard way. The narrow band of brush and cottonwoods at the bottom of the hill screened a twenty-foot drop-off to a nifty little trout stream where Jack sometimes fished. Once the bus had gathered momentum, it would blow right through that fragile barrier.
“Hope to God the moron’s not directly in line below, communing with na—” Jack’s eyes narrowed. He stomped down on the gas, then spun the wheel. The Jeep swerved off into the pasture, bucked over a hummock and roared in pursuit. There was somebody in that bus, a head bobbing above the steering wheel! “Step on the brake, bozo!” Or could the brakes have failed? Swearing out loud, Jack floored the accelerator.
A race between gravity and distance, speed and time. Eyes sweeping the slope below, gauging probable trajectories and possible outcomes, Jack spotted the woman. Bursting from the trees, a blur of yellow with flailing arms. Pale flapping hair, a mouth open wide in what must be a scream, though he couldn’t hear her over his engine’s roar. “Get the hell out of our way, lady!” What did she think she could do—catch the damn bus like a fly ball? “Move it, woman!”
Well, she’d have to take care of herself. The Jeep closed the last few feet, bounding along driver’s side to driver’s side, and Jack stared up through the open window—into a small, wide-eyed face. Jeez, a kid! “Step on the brake!”
“I
