Sid had bought pencils that said I LOVE CANADA on them for every one of us.
“You guys have been really great,” he told us.
“Come to America with us, Sid,” called Phil.
A chorus of “Yeah, come to America with us!” erupted.
Sid smiled.
“Maybe sometime for a visit, guys. But my home is here. What can I tell you? I love Canada.”
“And we love you!” Indira yelled. Then she smacked her hand over mouth.
“Okay, guys, be cool for Tim and Mrs. Redd on the way home. E-mail me if you’re coming back to Montreal.”
Our goodbyes went back and forth another few rounds, then Tim opened the door and Sid got off the bus. He stood waving on the sidewalk as we pulled onto the street to begin the drive back home.
It wasn’t until we were approaching the border that the chaos began. That’s also around the time that I remembered the squirrelly border guard who had warned me that I would be in major trouble if I tried to bring any thing or person back into the United States.
I’m guessing that to him, Beige Girl qualified as a person.
“Brooklyn, I can’t believe you’re that dumb!” Phil was yelling.
“I didn’t do anything—it isn’t my fault!” Brooklyn was yelling back. “It was like that when I went in—someone else did it!”
A chorus of voices rose together, calling Brooklyn a variety of names. She just stood there yelling back at everyone. It was so weird, seeing Shoshanna and the Satellite Girls not coming to her aid. I had called it—Brooklyn had been kicked way out of orbit.
“What is going on, please?” Mrs. Redd asked, plodding down the aisle. The yelling continued. I missed Sid. He would have won instant silence, and a concise explanation.
After a while, the explanation filtered through. Brooklyn had gone into the little bathroom, and when she came out, she had somehow caused the door to lock from the inside. Now nobody could get the door open.
“What if somebody has to go?” demanded Shoshanna.
I was sure Shoshanna wouldn’t have to go. She was the kind of person who seemed to never, ever have to go.
“I think I have to go,” called Alice.
“I have to go, too,” yelled Phil. “Like, really bad.”
“I might need to go later,” contributed Indira.
“This is terrible,” Shelby wailed. “Someone tell Tim.”
Mrs. Redd, probably relieved to get clear of the battle zone, immediately did an about-face and marched up the aisle to report the bathroom malfunction to Tim the Motor Coach Operator.
Moments later we were in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant.
The bus exploded into an excited symphony as Tim came down the aisle with a scowl on his face and a large ring of keys in his hand. As he stood trying various keys in the bathroom door, Mrs. Redd stood behind him looking stricken and trying to hush the sea of comments, with no success.
“I don’t have a key for this,” Tim proclaimed after a number of attempts.
“Well,” Mrs. Redd declared. “There are… facilities here. Students, if you need to go to the bathroom, please go inside the restaurant and do so now.”
No one stood up.
“I want french fries,” yelled one of the Random Boys.
Almost everyone stood up on hearing that, including Jac.
“I’m going to go get an O’Frothy,” Jac told me. “Want anything?”
I shook my head. I really didn’t. To be honest, I had lost most of my appetite ever since Ben and I had held hands. But, like, in a good way.
“Don’t let anything exciting happen while I’m gone,” Jac commanded, climbing over me to get into the aisle and beat the rush. She was so small, it was like having a chipmunk clamber over my lap.
“Well, the students can go now, and I suppose we can just pull over again later if someone has to go again,” Mrs. Redd told Tim. “I have a cell phone calling chain system in place. I can let the parents know we’re going to be late getting back.”
“That,” Tim declared, “is the least of our worries.”
“It is?” Mrs. Redd asked. “What is the most of our worries?”
Tim gave her a frustrated look.
“In about ten minutes after we get back on the road, we’re going to reach the U.S. border. We’re going to be checked by a border guard. Do you think he’s going to have a problem with the fact that we have a locked room on this bus that we can’t open to be searched?”
Mrs. Redd thought about this for a good long moment.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” Tim confirmed.
There was really nothing else to say.
We waited in the parking lot for what seemed like an eternity. After the first wave of people got back onto the bus, the smell of French fries inspired a second wave to get off and troop into the restaurant. We were there a good twenty-five minutes before finally getting under way again. Word had spread about our impending difficulties at the border. Tim had taken over, giving a concise lecture on the situation.
“This is serious,” he said, in his official Motor Coach Operator voice. “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you guys at the checkpoint. No laughing, no smart mouths, no helpful suggestions. We get a guy who’s had a bad day, we could be stuck at the border all night, or until somebody kicks that door in, which I’m not paying for.”
Jac was sucking her O’Frothy through a straw with such force I was afraid her eyes might pop out of her head. She finally gave it a rest, and nudged me.
“This trip is the best thing ever!” she said.
“Jac, we’re about to come under suspicion of smuggling,” I said. “We could all be tossed in the slammer.”
“Exactly!” she said. “My mother must be having a fit.”
I was tempted to go up and see what my own mother thought of all this, but I didn’t want to risk unleashing the wrath of Tim. The whole bus had fallen quiet as we pulled into the bus area of the U.S.-Canada border.
Tim got off the bus and went inside a building. Five minutes later he returned with three unsmiling border guards in tow.
Make that two living and one dead border guard in tow.
Mrs. Redd silently handed the package of passports to one of the guards, while a second followed Tim to the bathroom and tried the door.
The squirrelly guard came and stood by me, hands on hips. A set of spectral handcuffs hung from his belt, and I wondered if he was going to try to use them on me.
“All right,” announced the guard in the back of the bus. “Here’s the deal. Nobody is going anywhere until this door is opened and I see the inside of that bathroom. I don’t care how you do it, but I want this door open now.”
The bus was as silent as a tomb. Everyone stared at the bathroom. Then everyone stared at Brooklyn.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she stated.
“Did I ask whose fault it was?” asked the guard. “I don’t care whose fault it was. But if you don’t get the door open, you can sit here for the rest of your lives as far as I’m concerned.”
Bummer. My future with Ben suddenly looked bleak. And very crowded.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone get up. I waited for the border guard to order the student back to her seat, but heard nothing.
It was Beige Girl. She had gotten out of her seat and was standing in the aisle. Looking right at me.
“We can’t cross the border until the bathroom door is open,” I said to her.
“Yeah, thanks for listening,” said the border guard. “I don’t think we need a recap.”
There were some quickly hushed giggles. I felt like an idiot.
But Beige Girl was looking at me very intently. Then she turned and looked toward the bathroom door. And began to walk toward it.
She walked right through Tim and the border guard. She put her hand on the bathroom door handle, turned it, and pushed.
It swung a few inches open.
“What the—” the guard began. He gave the door a cautious push, and it opened all the way.
“Did he kick it in?”
“It looked like it just swung open!”
Tim’s warning that none of us utter a peep had been forgotten, as everyone offered their own theory for how the locked door had spontaneously become unlocked and opened itself.
There was an outburst of clapping that quickly stopped as the guard stepped into the bathroom and began to examine it.
Beige Girl did not stick around to watch. She began to walk toward the front of the bus.
“Thanks,” I said to her when she came even with my seat.
She paused and looked at me.
She was actually quite pretty. She almost looked familiar, in a generic way, just like any old girl you might see in any old place.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“I can help you get home,” I told her quietly. The back of the bus was still abuzz with the mystery of the bathroom door, so hopefully no one noticed I was talking to air again.
“I can’t go home yet,” Beige Girl said. “I’ve lost someone.”
“Lost someone?”
She nodded. Her pale eyes looked large and serious. A little sad, maybe.
“We were separated. She doesn’t understand. And I won’t cross over without her.”
“Where were you separated?”
“In Montreal.”
Shame she couldn’t be a little more specific.
“But how are you going to find one person in all of Montreal?”
“I just need to keep looking,” Beige Girl said. “I have time.”
I suppose, technically speaking, Beige Girl had all of eternity.
“Good luck,” I told her.
She smiled, and when she did a little life bloomed into her face. Who had she lost? Maybe she’d been on a trip, too. Maybe she’d been traveling with her best friend. I would never leave Jac behind, no matter what. I sort of understood Beige Girl now. And I’d be secretly rooting for her.
Beige Girl turned to the squirrely guard.
“Where are the Montreal-bound buses?”
He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then pointed.
Beige Girl walked up the aisle, down the steps, and out the bus door. I scootched over to the other side of the bus and watched her walk through twelve lanes of traffic to the northern-bound lanes. There was a big blue bus there, with a huge bowl of oranges painted on the side, and large letters proclaiming VITAMIN C-ANADA. The bulk of the bus blocked my view, but I knew without a doubt that Beige Girl got on it.
It was as my mom said. Some spirits don’t want to leave. Some spirits can’t. Some spirits choose not to. They’re here because they want to keep on doing something that made them happy while they were alive, or because there’s something they need to do before they can cross over. Beige Girl had to find her friend.
“Okay, I don’t know what the deal was with that door, but the bathroom checks out, and you’re good to go,” the guard in the back of the bus announced. He and his partner disembarked quickly, walking back into the building shaking their heads. The squirrelly guard scrutinized me, then gave a nod, apparently satisfied that he had completed his duties to the fine countries of Canada and the United States of America.
When the door had hissed shut, and the bus began to rumble forward, everyone began shouting and laughing at once.
“Can you believe that?” Jac was asking. “Everybody back at school is going to flip. That was hi-larious.”
It was hi-larious, now that it was over and we were on our way home again.
“Except I think I might have to go to the bathroom,” Jac said. “Do you think Tim will stop if I ask?”
“Use the bathroom on the bus,” I commanded. “It’s not going to kill you.”
“It could,” Jac said. She looked like she believed it, too.
I took her O’Frothy from her, ignoring her outraged protests.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you mind if I go sit… back there for a while?”
Jac stared at me.
“By the bathroom?” she asked.
“No.”
“By Shoshanna?”
“No.”
I handed her the O’Frothy back. I knew she was playing dumb. She just wanted me to say it.
“Glockenspiel.”
“Ahhhhhhhh,” Jac said. “Copy that, Commander. Dial the Stargate for Planet Glockenspiel.”
She gave me a friendly punch in the arm, which kind of hurt, then she fussed with my hair a little and straightened my fleece.
“Thanks,” I told her.
Then I took a deep breath, stood up, and made my way toward Ben Greenblott’s seat. Three days ago, on the trip up to Canada, it had been absolutely unthinkable that I would have gone anywhere near him. Now, I couldn’t walk to his seat fast enough.
Brooklyn was standing in the aisle, pretending not to notice Ben but at the same time conveniently blocking access to the seat next to him.
I cleared my throat.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Brooklyn looked at me blankly. She wasn’t going to make this easy. Did she think she could thwart my chances with Ben by simply standing in the way?
“Could you scoot over so Kat can come sit with me?” Ben asked politely.
“What?” Brooklyn looked at me then did an exaggerated double take, like she had no idea I’d been standing there. “Oh, sure. Whatever.”
I said nothing, but glanced at her face as I moved around her to sit with Ben. Her eyes were slightly red, and maybe a little watery.
Was Brooklyn Bigelow crying?
She could be a mean girl. She was petty, and underhanded, and a vicious gossip. But she’d also had a pretty bad trip. She’d been exiled from the Satellite Girls, rejected by a boy she liked (who liked her number-one enemy), and had been publicly blamed for the Bathroom Door Mishap. I didn’t envy her one bit. But I didn’t hate her, either. I did, in fact, feel a tiny bit sorry for her, because Ben liked me and I was feeling charitable.
Just before I sat down, Shoshanna Longbarrow glanced up from her spot in the last row and caught my eye. We looked at each other for a moment, and I looked over at Brooklyn and back at Shoshanna. She held my gaze for a minute.
“Brook, why are you standing there like a doorstop?” Shoshanna asked. “Come sit down, for heaven’s sake.”
And she gestured toward the empty spot in her row next to Shelby.
Brooklyn got into that seat next to Shelby so fast I could have sworn she’d manipulated time and space and suspended the laws of physics. I wasn’t sorry to see her back in the realm of the Satellite Girls. She was probably going to be a lot less of a pain to me now that she had Shoshanna to worship again.
As we approached the WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA sign, I sat down next to Ben. When the bus crossed over the border, we were together.
And I’ll tell you one other thing. Even though there were no ghosts left on the leprechaun bus, Ben Greenblott slipped his hand into mine.
And I have to say, seeing nothing never looked so good.