The Fourth Age never comes to pass, except as the Bus Driver’s words echoing forever in our minds. “You louts!” He sings in His obscene voice. “Live together in that foul puddle until you bloat white!” He rises from his seat and bounds down the aisle, slamming shut the emergency exit. The blue boy cowers…

Emergency Exit The blue boy hid behind the last row. We didn’t know of his existence, and we certainly don’t know why he’s blue. Jill swears she’s seen him kneeling there the entire time. She says that he stares out the back, never taking his hand off the red handle that opens the emergency exit…

Window #18 The darkness pushes beyond the bounds of the school bus. We huddle together in the center of the aisle. The spiky-haired boy comes through the window carrying a great bubble wand, or at least a few of us will swear to this. We can’t see him, though we can almost hear his pocket…

Window #17 In the hairy darkness, our skin falls away. We move blindly along the floor. Unlike an airplane, the school bus is not equipped with emergency floor lighting. So we stumble on, bumping into each other. Without skin, it’s easy to merge. There are those who resist, who hide in the dark under the…

Spiky-haired boy: Discussion 3, Row 15 He’ll climb down from the heavens and through the bus window, then unsheathe his board and cut away at the hair that binds us. The wheels of the great skateboard rolling over the hair, tearing it from its roots. Will he let us ride the board? Will he teach…

Bearded Boy: Episode 3, The Un-naming Bushy, bearded hair sprouts from the teeth seeds, twisting and tangling its way around the seat legs, winding its way up the metal sides, creeping across each and every window, and the Bus Driver waves his mighty hand to clear a patch on the windshield to see, but as…

Window #16 He says we can fold him up and put him in a box, which is what we do. He doesn’t like school. He hates the school bus. Of course, we all hate it. We shout it out the windows in spring and write it on the seatbacks in winter. He simply asks to…

Window #15 She paints her eyes. We don’t know what she uses. Kohl powder perhaps. You’d think something so trivial wouldn’t matter. But the subject of her eye paint inspires intense discussion among the girls. Of course they want eyes like hers. Who wouldn’t? If she so much as looks at a boy, he’s struck…

Window #14 The girl with the big, loop earrings never takes them off. Other girls wear earrings every day, but at least they change them. Jesse goes from her birthstone studs (Aquamarine) to ones with a cool, oval emerald, to our favorite that looks like a sun with a fake ruby in the center. Once…

Window #13 It’s hard to miss the fat kid. Every bus has one. So, it seems a bit odd that we’ve only gotten to him now. Of course, the more accustomed you are to seeing something, the sooner you forget it’s there. No one knows how or when the fat kid got on the bus.…

Spiky-haired boy: Discussion 2, Row 11 Her round belly proves her guilt. She’s going to have his baby. Whose? The spiky-haired boy’s. I heard he came to her in the back of the School Bus. Yeah. It was after school, and the bus was empty, but it wasn’t the spiky-haired boy, it was the Bus…

Window #12 The most beautiful time to see the girl with the tree growing out her spine is autumn. The leaves that make up her hair shift from green to fiery orange, to burnished gold. Sometimes, when she walks down the aisle of the bus, leaves drop from her hair, and she doesn’t like that.…