“Fight! Fight!”
The words any school-bus driver dreads hearing ricocheted off the curved ceiling of the bus. Patrick’s gaze shot to the wide rearview mirror to confirm his worst fear.
Yep. There it was, the telltale circle of excited onlookers, forming a protective fence around the combatants.
Patrick groaned and pulled the bus next to the curb.
On his first day—and last, if he had any say in it—of driving a school bus, he indeed had a fight on his hands.
At the next board meeting I’m voting for a raise for these bus drivers . With that in mind, he swung himself out of the seat and marched through the pack of students.
The kids reluctantly gave way then drifted back to their seats. Patrick shoved aside the remaining stragglers between him and the combatants to see two boys, their fists flying.
“Take it back!” one boy screamed at the other as he pummeled him. “Take it back! ”
Patrick remembered what it was like to be ten and have your honor on the line. He remembered how fast and hot the adrenaline coursed through your veins, how you either stood up and declared your manhood—well, prepubescent boyhood—or were assigned the status of wuss.
Still, such pressure didn’t change the fact that the bus was already ten minutes behind schedule. Making the situation even worse was that the school was in sight. Five more minutes, and those kids would have been somebody else’s problem.
“Okay, fellas. Break it up.” He yanked the two boys apart and stood between them. A quick check told him that one would be sporting a shiner and the other would have the honor of a split lip and a nosebleed all over his shirt.
What do I do now?
Both the boys were panting like Thoroughbreds at the starting gate. If he stepped from between them in order to make that five-minute trip to school, they’d be at each other’s throats again.
But, dang it, he was ten minutes late already.
“Royce started it, Mr. Connor,” a kid sitting in a nearby seat told him.
The comment initiated a volley of protests from all sides. Patrick came to a decision and guided the boys to the front of the bus, when he evicted the small fry currently occupying the seats.
“You—there.” He indicated that Royce should assume one of the seats. “And you,” he said to the other kid, who looked like a Holmes boy. “Over there. We have five minutes— five minutes —to get us parked and y’all into school. I don’t want to hear a peep from anybody.”
Patrick more or less held his breath for much of the five minutes left of the bus ride.
He drew up to a stop in front of the old school that pretty much appeared as it had back when he’d attended. The air brakes whooshed as he set them, and he sat for a moment longer, not daring to remove his hands from the wheel for fear that the students would notice his fingers trembling.
Then he turned slowly and opened the bus doors. He aimed a warning glance at Royce as the kid bounced up, intent on slipping past him.
“Don’t even think about it,” Patrick growled.
The other students filed past, rubbernecking at Royce’s bloody shirt and the Holmes kid’s eye, which was puffing up like phyllo dough. One little girl in braids and glasses stopped short at Patrick.
“Mr. Connor, you shoulda put ’em in their usual seats. Mr. Willie makes ’em sit in assigned seats. That way, he can keep an eye on ’em.”
She was giving him an eyeful of pity. Now Patrick felt like a total screwup.
“Well, um, thanks, Bridget. It is Bridget, right?” At her nod and smile, he added, “Next time I’ll do that.”
Her gap-toothed smile grew wider. “Don’t worry. My mom says new things need lots of practice.”
This old dog won’t be practicing any more new tricks. But he didn’t want to dash the little girl’s hopes that he wasn’t the wimp she feared, so he settled for a nod.
Driving the bus had seemed the perfect solution to the transportation crisis. Vann Hobbes, the school superintendent and his best friend, had mentioned the previous afternoon that the regular driver had to be out for a doctor’s appointment. Vann had found no takers on the list of substitute drivers.
“I’ll do it,” Patrick had told his buddy. “I’ve got a license to drive a commercial vehicle. Tell me the route, and I’ll do it for you.”
“You? Drive a bus?”
“Why not? At least all my troubles will be behind me,” Patrick had joked.
Boy, had he been dreaming.
Now Patrick squared his shoulders and rose from his seat. With a glower, he silenced Royce’s wailing and trekked from seat to seat, ensuring everyone was off the bus.
Halfway back, he spotted a powder-puff pink shirt and blue jeans with girly little bows. The child was wrapped into a tight fetal position. His breath caught as he zeroed in on dark silky hair and flushed cheeks.
Annabelle .
But of course it wasn’t Annabelle. Gulping down the lump in his throat, Patrick knelt in the aisle. Tentatively, he reached out a hand, then drew back.
He studied the little girl for a long moment, drinking in the innocence of her face, the way her black eyelashes fanned out against her cheeks, how her tiny pink mouth sucked on a forbidden thumb. She couldn’t be more than four or so, probably in pre-kindergarten. Healthy. Whole. Alive.
“Hey, you! That was the tardy bell! Can I go now?”
Royce’s voice boomed through the interior of the bus, shaking Patrick loose from the spell he was under. He gritted his teeth and put his hand on the little girl’s shoulder. She was too damn young to be in school. She should have been outside running and playing, not stuck inside somewhere.
The little girl yawned and stretched. “But I’m tired, Mommy,” she protested, still half-asleep.
“You’re at school, honey,” Patrick said. “It’s time to go in. Who’s your teacher?” he asked.
Brown eyes—thank God they were brown and not blue like Annabelle’s—rounded in panic. Then the panic subsided and she nodded. “Miss Elephant.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows. “Miss Elephant?” He considered the list of pre-K teachers. “Oh, you mean Miss Ellison?”
“That’s what I said,” the little girl told him, sweeping by him in the grand manner of a queen. “Miss Elephant.”
Patrick got up on creaky ankles and knees and watched her go.
He checked the rest of the seats. The bus was empty save for the two defiant, sulking boys. Patrick shepherded them down the steps.
“We gotta
