Monument 14 Read Free

the bus. Now it was Jake, Brayden, Niko, Astrid, Josie, and me.
    Mrs. Wooly put the bus in gear and it lurched toward the Greenway.
    The hail was changing now. Changing into a heavy, frozen rain. The quiet of the rain was so strong I felt it in my bones. A steady, heavy whoosh .
    They say that your ears ring after you listen to something loud, like a rock concert. This was a continuous GONGONGONGONGONG . The quiet hurt as much as the hail.
    I started coughing hard. Sort of a cross between coughing and vomiting. Black gunk, gray gunk, brown gunk. My nose was running. My eyes were pouring tears. I could tell my body was trying to get the smoke out of me.
    Suddenly everything got orange and bright. The windows and the thin window frames stood out, illuminated against a silhouette of fire and … BOOM , our old bus exploded.
    Within seconds the entire behemoth was engulfed in flames.
    “Well,” Jake said. “That was close.”
    I laughed. That was funny, to me.
    Niko just looked at me like I was crazy.
    Brayden stood up and pointed out the window at the flaming wreckage that had once been our bus.
    “Class A friggin’ lawsuit, my friends,” he said. “Right there.”
    “Sit down, Brayden,” Jake said.
    Brayden ignored him, and stood, counting us.
    “The six of us,” he continued. “We’re suing the Board of Education! Where my dad works, they have plans for this kind of stuff. Emergency plans. There should have been a plan. A drill!”
    I looked away from him. Clearly, Brayden was a little crazy at this moment in time but I couldn’t blame him. He had every right to be unhinged.
    The bus reached the store. I thought she’d stop it outside and we’d walk in, but no, just as she had before, Mrs. Wooly drove it right through the hole where the glass doors had been and then we were inside the Greenway, in a bus.
    Surreal upon surreal upon surreal.
    There were no Greenway employees around so I figured they must not have come to work yet.
    The elementary and middle school kids were grouped together in the little Pizza Shack restaurant-within-the-store area.
    I saw Alex through the bus window and he stepped forward, squinting to try to see me. The bus sputtered to a stop on the shiny linoleum. Mrs. Wooly got off, then Niko, then me. I stumbled over to Alex, my legs still weren’t working completely right, and then I hugged him hard. I got char and vomit all over him but I didn’t care.
    He had actually been pretty clean before I hugged him. They all were. The little kids were scared, of course, but Mrs. Wooly had gotten them out of harm’s way in a hurry.
    One thing that bears explaining is that the middle school and grammar school in Monument were right next to each other, so for some of the little pocket neighborhoods, like ours, they had one bus collect the kids for the two schools. That’s why there were eighth graders and kindergarteners mixed together on Mrs. Wooly’s bus.
    From the five-year-olds to the eighth graders, the kids from her bus looked fine.
    Not us. We looked like we’d been in a war.
    Mrs. Wooly started barking out instructions.
    She sent an eighth grader named Sahalia and a couple little kids to the Pharmacy section of the store to get bandages, first aid cream, that kind of thing. She sent two kindergarteners to get a cart full of water, Gatorade, and cookies.
    Niko said he’d go get some thermal blankets to help prevent shock. He was looking at Josie when he said it and I could see why.
    Josie was definitely looking worse for the wear. She was sitting slumped on the steps of the bus, keening and rocking back and forth. The bleeding on her forehead had slowed, but the blood was thick and clumpy in her hair and dried on her face in patches. She looked totally terrifying.
    The remaining little kids were just standing and staring at Josie, so Mrs. Wooly sent them off to help Sahalia. Then she looked at Astrid.
    “Help me get her into the Pizza Shack,” she said.
    Together they lifted Josie to