“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 go to the office? So what?” Royce mouthed off. “All the principal’s gonna do is suspend me from taking the bus for a week. Fine by me. That way I won’t have to put up with dorks like him.”
The Holmes kid bristled anew. For a second, Patrick thought the two would go at it again.
Jack Harrison, the principal, came out on the sidewalk, a petulant expression on his face. “Do you realize you’re ten minutes late?” he said. “Ten minutes! And some of the students were telling me there was a fight!”
Patrick swallowed a retort and presented the two boys to Harrison. “They’re all yours. Don’t know what it was about, but I expect you can sort it out.”
Harrison stepped back and peered at the students’ faces. “Good Lord! Well, don’t just stand there! They need medical attention. That one has started bleeding from the nose.”
Patrick didn’t bother suppressing a roll of his eyes. “C’mon, fellas. Appears you get to visit the school nurse.”
“See?” Royce said in a singsong voice. “Told you we wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” Patrick replied. “Because I’m not just a substitute bus driver. I happen to be chairman of the board of education, and I can make certain that you, mister, won’t have to put up with other students for just a week. I’m thinking a month’s suspension from the bus. Nah. Two. Nah. Maybe for the rest of the year.”
The fight went out of Royce. “Oh, man,” he moaned. “My mom is gonna kill me.”
Patrick was sure he saw begging in the Holmes kid’s eyes. Satisfied that he had the boys’ attention, he pointed them toward the nurse’s office. “Time to visit the new school nurse. Good thing for you two Nurse Nellie had to retire. Hope the new one doesn’t have any more of that stinging antiseptic Nurse Nellie liked so much.”
T O BE AN OCTOPUS !
Dana Wilson pushed aside the thought and pressed into service the only two arms the Lord had seen fit to give her.
“Here, Ritalin for you,” she said, edging a pill cup over to a rail-thin kid, “and a lovely dose of Zithromax for you.” The liquid sloshed in the cup