3

Tyler looked at his watch. 4:13 p.m.

“Should the sky be this dark already?” he asked.

“I’m going to say no,” Julia answered him. She turned in her seat and looked at the sky all around them. Toward Phoenix, their destination, the sky was blue and clear. But the sky toward Tucson was gray, almost black. The sun was low on the horizon.

“Were we supposed to get a storm?” Julia asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tyler said. It hadn’t rained all spring, thanks to the drought Tyler’s dad had kept going on about. His dad said it would be the worst drought they’d seen in years.

“Rainstorms usually don’t look like that,” Ethan pointed out.

A prairie dog ran up to the bus. The little creature stood on his haunches with his eyes darting back and forth as if he had gulped down too many energy drinks. Then he scurried off and ducked into a nearby hole. Tyler would have mistaken the hole for a snake hole if he hadn’t just seen the prairie dog dive into it.

Tyler and Julia saw the prairie dog at the same time and caught each other’s eyes. Tyler was no animal expert but he figured that if even the animals were looking for cover, some serious weather must be coming their way.

Behind them, what looked like a wall of brown clouds moved closer. One by one, kids began to head off the bus to see what was going on.

“Hey, stay on the bus. Guys—” Mr. Dwyer stood as the students rushed past him. He sighed, lifting his hat to wipe at his forehead before following them out of the bus.

“Dust storm,” José said.

“Awesome!” Kevin yelled.

When Tyler stepped off the bus, the hot air caught his breath. He loosened his tie. Good thing he’d brought his inhaler. He never went anywhere without it. Not being able to breathe was the scariest feeling ever. Out in the desert, he felt like he was breathing while sitting in a sauna, except this air wasn’t just dry. It was full of dust particles that coated his mouth. Tyler wore braces and the thought of dust and dirt on his braces made him wince.

Pretty soon, everyone had exited the bus. The whole team stood outside and pointed at the approaching clouds.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Sha’relle murmured.

“It’s heading this way,” Kevin said.

The driver came out to stand near Tyler. As he stared at the brewing clouds, his mouth gaped open. He clutched his hat, crushing it in his grip. “Sweet mother of mercy.”

The driver hopped back on the bus and into his seat. He revved the engine, pressing on the gas a few times. The engine groaned as if it was in pain. The driver turned the key and tried again. The gears were grinding. “Come on! Come on!” He pumped the gas several more times, which probably just flooded the engine.

Nothing.

He hit the steering wheel with his hands and gave up. That bus was not going anywhere.

Tyler looked down the road. No towns in sight—no gas stations—no cars.

“We could outrun it,” L.J. suggested. “Dust storms don’t travel very fast, do they?”

“About twenty-five miles per hour,” said Ethan, probably remembering that information from his presentation.

L.J. was a fast runner, but who would want to run with that dust cloud chasing him?

“No,” Mr. Dwyer said. “We’re staying with the bus.” He looked at L.J. “All of us.”

“But there’s probably a town just a few miles away,” L.J. argued.

“Did you bring running shoes?”

L.J. looked down at himself. He wore black dress shoes with his dress pants and suit jacket. “I can run in these.”

“Well, you aren’t going to,” Mr. Dwyer said. “This isn’t a debate.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “Quit arguing.”

“Well, what do you suggest, genius?” L.J. said. When Tyler said nothing, he added, “Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be asking you for advice. It hasn’t exactly been your day, has it?”

Tyler clenched his fists, then looked down. The ground had shifted into mini-sand dunes. He’d never get over being the reason the team lost at State. What if this embarrassing loss followed him around for the rest of high school?

“Lay off him, L.J.” Ethan elbowed L.J. Tyler was surprised but also relieved that Ethan was coming to his defense.

The dust storm kept moving but approached slowly, the way water comes to a boil.

Earlier that year, a firefighter had come to Kennedy High School and given the annual safety talk in the auditorium. Dust storms were becoming more common, he’d said, so they were getting more attention as a result. The firefighter taught them the motto from the National Weather Service for what to do in case of a dust storm: Pull aside. Stay alive!

Well, Tyler thought, they were already pulled aside because the bus broke down. So they were following that direction. Now they needed to know what to do if the storm actually reached them—and it looked like it would very soon.

“How much time do you think we have?” Tyler asked.

Mr. Dwyer pulled out his phone, glancing at the clock on the lock screen. “Maybe twenty or thirty minutes. The dust cloud’s moving pretty steady.” He fiddled with it for a bit before sighing and looking up at the students.

“Does anyone have service? We should try to make a call.”

Though he’d just looked at it minutes ago, Tyler pulled his own phone out of his pocket along with the other students to check. A few of them even held their phones up in the air as if that would help them get service. They were far enough from the nearest cell tower that apparently none of their phones could get a strong enough signal.

“If all that dust gets in the air, how will anyone be able to breathe?” Daniela asked suddenly.

“That’s the point,” L.J. said. “We won’t be able to breathe. We need to be inside a building. Which is why I think we should start running.”

“No one is running anywhere,” Mr. Dwyer ordered.

“We don’t have air tanks. We can’t hold our breath. How are we going to last in the middle of that dust cloud?” L.J. was getting more agitated.

“We’ll seal the bus the best we can,” Mr. Dwyer said.

Ethan removed his tie, then his jacket, and unbuttoned his white dress shirt. “And we can cover our faces,” Ethan said. “We also need to protect our clean air as much as possible.”

Ethan was always prepared during scary situations, like the time he and Tyler got Tyler’s dad’s car stuck on a sand bar. Ethan had calmly suggested putting something under the back wheels to gain traction—and that had worked. Ethan planned to become a rescue worker someday.

Ethan wrapped his dress shirt around the top of his head. Then he arranged the arms to cover his nose and mouth. He made his red tie into a headband to hold the shirt in place.

“There,” Ethan said.

Tyler laughed. “You look like the Karate Kid.”

“Just call me ‘Sensei,’” Ethan joked, flipping the ends of the tie behind his head and standing on one foot with his arms raised. He crane-kicked a leg toward the storm. The smoky cloud looked to be less than a mile away now.

“Can you breathe under all those clothes, Sensei?”

“Yes.” Ethan’s voice was muffled. “I’ll be able to breathe just fine when that dust bomb drops on us.”

He pulled out a pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket. “If you have sunglasses, you can wear them to protect your eyes too.”

Everyone else got to work on their own face coverings. It didn’t take them long to copy Ethan’s method. Not everyone had sunglasses, but some students wrapped their ties around their eyebrows to serve as a windshield of sorts.

“Hey,” Ethan said, surveying everyone. “Where’s L.J.?”

Then they looked down Interstate 10.

L.J. was in the distance, running away from the storm.