There was a train that passed my house every week. We’d leave pennies like offerings on the tracks, our rural rendition of the pressed coins our classmates would bring home from the zoo. The train would leave them shiny, thin, and curved, and we would put them in little treasure boxes for scavenger hunts by the creek.
The school bus window rattles against my head. The glass is cooler than the hot, sticky air. The younger kids shout and climb over the seats while others tear pages out of their planners and accordion fold them into fans- the middle schoolers just scowl at their phones in the back, pretending to be above it all.
I sit somewhere in the middle. Stacy’s hand rests on mine, stuck with sweat to the rough bus seat. The heater blasts our bare calves. She doesn’t speak, and neither do I. We’re going to do a movie marathon at her dad’s house this Halloween.
The bus driver stops at the first set of tracks. She cusses under her breath as a kid shrieks in her ear. Our tires thump over the burning metal. A whistle howls in the distance. One, two, three times. The bus driver has given up on getting the kids to stay out of the aisle. It’s not like anyone is walking down it anyways.
At the second set of tracks, the bus driver doesn’t open the door to look both ways. She doesn’t open her window to listen. Maybe she’s tired- after all, she didn’t slow down until we were already halfway over the tracks. She must be half asleep.
“What’s going on?” I ask Stacy.
“I bet she’s kidnapping us,” she says, the same joke someone makes every time the bus doesn’t follow its regular route. The quiet kids at the back shout over each other and one runs to the front, stumbling over the legs of elementary schoolers who don’t understand. A tall boy tugs on the emergency door at the back while a freshman with dyed hair pushes at the hatch in the ceiling.
“Ally,” Stacy whispers, holding onto my wrist with a white knuckled grip and pressing me against the warm metal wall. I stare back at her. The driver does not move. The train horn blares.