13

“I see something,” Kevin was saying about a half hour later. “Look over there!”

“What is that?” José squinted and stared at the horizon.

In the distance, it looked like something moving. Lights flashed. A faint sound of a siren wailed, but the sound went in and out with the wind.

Was it just a mirage? Or was it like when you see something on a hot day and the sun makes the heat in the air shimmer? Mr. Dwyer had taught them that the effect was called heat haze. Hot air rises and mixes with cool air, distorting the light waves.

The group stood in a line and stared, with their hands up to their foreheads to shield their eyes from the setting sun. From a distance, they probably looked like a company of soldiers saluting. They had been like soldiers—like in one of Tyler’s video games, but instead of battling an army of zombies, they had battled nature.

The approaching shape came from the opposite direction that the storm had gone.

It was a vehicle, coming down the road from Tucson.

“It’s the ambulance,” Sha’relle breathed.

Now that it got closer, the siren grew louder. And something else was in the distance further behind the ambulance: the replacement bus.

“They’re coming for us!” Ethan shouted. “They’re coming for us!”

Tyler and Ethan ran along the side of the bus and drummed their hands against the dimpled metal as they cheered and whooped. It was covered in a layer of dust and dirt and every slap against the side of the bus left smudgy handprints, but they didn’t care.

***

When the ambulance got close, some of the students started waving their arms so the vehicle would pull up to where the bus driver was lying on the ground. The back doors of the ambulance opened, and two paramedics jumped out. They brought a stretcher over to the driver.

“What happened?” one paramedic asked as she glanced at the rest of them.

“Heart attack, we think,” Mr. Dwyer said. “Some students performed CPR.”

The paramedics leaned down and spoke to the driver. “Can you hear me?”

The driver was out of it, but after a moment, he wheezed, “Yes.”

“Do you know where you are? What state are we in?”

“Arizona.”

“Where were you today?”

The driver paused before responding. He moaned in pain and touched his chest where Ethan had done the compressions.

“You’re probably just sore from the CPR. That’s normal,” the paramedic said. She kept her voice calm. “Do you remember what you were doing today?”

“Well . . . I drove to a speech tournament . . . in Tucson.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not so good.” He struggled to stand up, and his legs wobbled. The paramedic’s hands hovered over him.

“Whoa, sir. Let’s get you on a gurney.”

“That’s probably best.”

The two paramedics ran back to the ambulance, propped up the legs of the gurney, and rolled it near the driver.

“Lie down flat on your back,” the other paramedic instructed as he prepped the gurney once it was stopped.

They stood on either side of the driver, hoisted him onto the gurney, and wheeled him over to the ambulance. Once they’d loaded him into the back, the male paramedic jumped inside. The other closed the doors and then came back to the rest of group.

“Who did the CPR?” she asked.

Everyone pointed at Ethan.

She smiled at him. “You saved this man’s life, young man. He should thank his lucky stars you were here.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said. “But it was a team effort.” He jerked a thumb toward Tyler.

A smile tugged the corners of Tyler’s mouth. Maybe he wasn’t such a screwup after all.