Monument 14

side. It was screaming along the asphalt on its side. It shuddered to a stop.

The hail, which had merely been denting the hell out of our roof, started denting the hell out of us.

Now that the bus was on its side, hail was hammering down through the row of windows above us. Some of my classmates were getting clobbered by the hail and the window glass that was raining down.

I was lucky. A seat near me had come loose, and I pulled it over me. I had a little roof.

The rocks of ice were all different sizes. Some little round marbles and some big knotty lumps with gray parts and gravel stuck inside them.

There were screams and shouts as everyone scrambled to get under any loose seats or to stand up, pressed to the roof, which was now the wall.

It sounded as if we were caught in a riptide of stones and rocks, crashing over and over. It felt like someone was beating the seat I was under with a baseball bat.

I tilted my head down and looked out what was left of the windshield. Through the white spray outside I saw that the grammar school bus, Alex’s bus, was somehow still going. Mrs. Wooly hadn’t skidded or lost control like Mr. Reed.

Her bus was cutting through the parking lot, headed right for the main entrance to the Greenway.

Mrs. Wooly’s going to drive right into the building, I thought. And I knew that she would get those kids out of the hail. And she did. She smashed the bus right through the glass doors of the Greenway.

Alex was safe, I thought. Good.

Then I heard this sad, whimpering sound. I edged forward and peered around the driver’s seat. The front of the bus was caved in, from where it had hit the lamppost.

It was Mr. Reed making that sound. He was pinned behind the wheel and blood was spilling out of his head like milk out of a carton. Soon he stopped making that sound. But I couldn’t think about that.

Instead, I was looking at the door to the bus, which was now facing the pavement. How will we get out? I was thinking. We can’t get out. The windshield was all crunched up against the hood of the engine.

It was all a crumpled jam. We were trapped in the demolished sideways bus.

Josie Miller screamed. The rest of the kids had instinctively scrambled to get out of the hail but Josie was just sitting, wailing, getting pelted by the ice balls.

She was covered in blood, but not her own, I realized, because she was trying to pull on someone’s arm from between two mangled seats and I remembered Trish had been sitting next to her. The arm was limp, like a noodle, and kept slipping down out of Josie’s grip. Trish was definitely dead but Josie didn’t seem to be getting it.

From a safe spot under an overturned seat, this jerk Brayden, who is always going on about his dad working at NORAD, took out his minitab and started trying to shoot a video of Josie screaming and grabbing at the slippery arm.

A monster hailstone hit Josie on the forehead and a big pink gash opened on her dark forehead. Blood started streaming down over her face.

I knew that the hail was going to kill Josie if she kept sitting there out in the open.

“Christ.” Brayden cursed at his minitab. “Come on!”

I knew I should move. Help her. Move. Help.

But my body was not responding to my conscience.

Then Niko reached out and grabbed Josie by the legs and pulled her under a twisted seat. Just like that. He reached out and pulled her two legs toward him and brought her in to his body. He held her and she sobbed. They looked like a couple out of a horror film.

Somehow Niko’s action had broken the spell. Kids were trying to get out and Astrid crawled to the front. She tried to kick through the windshield. She saw me on the ground, under my seat, and she shouted, “Help me!”

I just looked at her mouth. And her nose ring. And her lips moving and making words. I wanted to say, “No. We can’t go out there. We have to stay where there is shelter.” But I couldn’t quite piece the words together.

She stood up and screamed to Jake and his people, “We’ve got to get into the store!”

Finally I croaked out, “We can’t go out! The hail will kill us.” But Astrid was at the back of the bus by then.

“Try the emergency exit!” someone shouted. At the back of the bus Jake was already pulling and pulling at the door, but he couldn’t get it open. There was mayhem for a few minutes; I don’t know how long. I started to feel very strange. Like my head was on a long balloon string, floating above everything.

And then I heard such a funny sound. It was the beep-beep-beep sound of a school bus backing up. It was crazy to hear it through the hammering hail and the screaming.

Beep-beep-beep, like we were at the parking lot on a field trip to Mesa Verde and the bus was backing up.

Beep-beep-beep, like everything was normal.

I squinted out, and sure enough, Mrs. Wooly was backing up the elementary–middle school bus toward us. It was listing to the right pretty bad and I could see where it was dented in the front from smashing into the store. But it was coming.

Black smoke started pouring in through the hole I was looking through. I coughed. The air was thick. Oily. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

I should go to sleep now was the thought that came into my head. It was a powerful thought and seemed perfectly logical: Now I should go to sleep.

The cries of the other kids got louder: “The bus is on fire!” “It’s going to explode!” and “We’re going to die!”

And I thought, They’re right. Yes, we’ll die. But it’s okay. It’s fine. It is as it should be. We are going to die.

I heard this clanking. The sound of metal on metal.

And “She’s trying to open the door!”

And “Help us!”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I was floating down now, going underwater. Getting so sleepy warm. So comfortable.

And then this bright light opened up on me. And I saw how Mrs. Wooly had gotten the emergency door open. In her hands she held an ax.

And I heard her shout:

“Get in the godforsaken bus!”

CHAPTER TWO SPACE BLANKETS

I was sleepy was the thing. I saw the kids scramble back toward Mrs. Wooly. She helped them get down on all fours and scoot out the emergency door, which was sideways.

There was a lot of shouting and people helping one another over the battered seats and slipping on the hail on the floor, slipping because everything was sticky, now with the blood of the kids who had been crushed and Mr. Reed and maybe also motor oil or gasoline, maybe… but, see, I was so warm and sleepy.

I was all the way up at the front of the bus, at the ground level, and the black smoke was encircling my head in these rich, ashy tendrils. Like arms from an octopus.

Niko came scrambling up the aisle, checking to see if anyone was left. As I was mostly under a seat, he didn’t see me until he was just about to turn back.

I wanted to tell him I’d be fine. I was happy and comfortable and it was time for me to go to sleep. But it was so far to go, to get to those words and then pull them up to my throat and my lips and then form them. I was too far under.

Niko grabbed my two arms and started pulling.

“Help me!” he shouted. “Kick your legs!”