HOW THEY SLEEP on this cold bus, I don’t know. The windows is steamed up, sweating, from heat outside and the cold in here. A girl wearing a pink blanket like a shawl sneezes her way back to the bathroom. The lady across from us got her sweater spread over her legs, a quilt on her kids.

JuJu said I would be cold. But what did she expect me to do? Dress like a grandma? “Bus driver—” Before I say he need to turn off the air, he pick the microphone up. He knows it’s cold. He apologizes for that. But a warm bus can make a driver drowsy, he say. “And I want to get everyone where they’re going alive.”

I got goose bumps on my legs and arms, I tell him. I got my arm in one sleeve when I say, “You could turn it off if you wanted to.”

I head up front, leaning with the bus. Stopping, I hold on to a rail so I don’t fall. That old dude looking me up and down, smiling. Men always do. It used to make me uncomfortable. Especially at JuJu’s parties. My father’s old fatigue jacket helped some. I wore it while I served beer and drinks or dumped ashtray or collected money for fried chicken dinners. But men got X-ray vision Clark Kent–style. They see me, through me, anyhow. So, I expect it—them looking at me like the last beer at the party. Guess being cute gonna come in handy when I’m in Alabama.

The bus go too fast on the curve. “Woo—” Old man grabs my waist after I almost fall in his lap. He likes the shorts I’m wearing, he says. My top too. I push his hand away and stand up.

The driver watches me through the mirror. He got a big belly like my dad. Skin as brown as Maleeka’s. “You all right?” he ask.

I pull at my shorts, not that it do any good. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

I almost tell him I can take care of myself. “I’m fine” is what comes out.

I quit walking when I get to the yellow line painted on the floor so people don’t get too close to the driver. “It’s really cold back there.” I fasten my jacket. “Some of us ain’t bring blankets.”

He beeps the horn to keep a truck full of sheep from running into us. “Okay, but you guys are never happy. Ten minutes from now someone else will ask for air.” He beeps again. “Can’t anybody drive?” His eyes find mine again. “And you—sit down.”

The bus still think it’s a boat. On my way to my chair, I got to hold on to seats on both sides of the aisle. Twice, I look over my shoulder at him. His eyes is on the road, not me. “Bus driver. Do you got kids?” I hear someone say.

“Two. Girls … twins, twenty years old next month. They gave me these gray hairs. God should have gave me boys. They’re easier.”

My dad said stuff like that.

Back in my seat, I stare out the window at trees every shade of green in the crayon box. The driver gives us the name of the creek on our right. He says Native Americans named it, but he can’t pronounce it like he should. “I won’t try.” It’s lazy today—quiet—’cause there’s no wind, he tells us. “But if y’all look closely, you can see where it overflowed last winter and wiped out three farms.” People stand in the aisle for a better look. If you woke and got a window, you stare out—not saying a word. One person died in that flood, the driver says. I think about the cows, sheep too. Who look out for them when the water gets high?

It’s quiet again when I check out the boy beside me. There’s a name tattooed on the back of his neck. Jason. Hope that’s his name. Not his boyfriend’s. Otherwise, I’m screwed. So I don’t think too hard about him or his dumb neck, I grab my backpack. And finally do what my sister asked. It’s out my purse when I see she wrote a note to me on the outside of the envelope. My legs is on the seat, folded, when I start to read.

JuJu chose her … over me. She on Miss Saunders’s side now, not mine. I keep reading, stopping at the part where JuJu says she’s passing Miss Saunders phone number on to me, in case I might want to call her. Then I open the envelope. Shake out the letter. And rip it up.

The bus is humming, extra quiet, when I make up my mind not to go to Alabama. My grandparents is good people, but they family. And JuJu done showed me you can’t trust family neither. You got to look out for yourself. Take care of yourself the best way you know how. ’Cause nobody else will.

Miguel pulls his thumb out his mouth. “Don’t be sad.”

I lie. “I ain’t sad. Go to sleep, okay?”

The boy next to me sits up. “What?”

I am tired of people all up in my business. “You gay?” I ask. “’Cause you look gay.”

His legs cross at the knees and ankles. “All day every day—proud too.” He pulls a jacket out his backpack the color of peas and covers his head with it.

I’m crying by the time the man behind me stands up. “You okay? Driver—”

“Everybody leave me alone!”

Jason or whatever his name is waves a tissue my way. “Here. I was crying before I boarded the bus. I saw my ex-boyfriend on the way here.”

I take the tissue. Then blow my nose and wish I was dead. Miguel’s mother offers me apple juice. I shake my head no. The boy next to me steps on my foot on his way to the bathroom. Miguel’s mom gets in his seat. “Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay. Sometimes you just need a mother.”

She rubbing my back when I tell her that my mother and father are dead.

She says, I know. Or I thought so. Something like that. Then she hugs me—tight—like she my momma, daddy, and JuJu wrapped in one. I don’t know what she saying when she talks that Spanish in my ear, all calm and quiet, but I like it.