If you’re looking for a soccer ball, chances are Pierre’s got one. Today the ball was between his knees. Pierre was using it to exercise his quads.
All Jake had to do was point. Pierre released the ball. Then he tossed it up in the air and used the top of his head to butt it over to Jake.
Jake yelped as he head-butted the ball halfway down the bus.
“Keep it going!” voices shouted.
“You’d better watch it!” Jewel Chu said.
Things could’ve gone worse. The ball could have hit the driver, and he could have lost control of the bus.
Instead the ball hit Jewel Chu, breaking one of her pink fingernails—the ones she spent most of English class filing. Still it was just a nail, though from the sounds of it, you’d have thought we’d stolen one of her young.
Jewel leapt up from her seat. When she turned around, I noticed how the vein that ran across the middle of her forehead was throbbing. “I can’t believe you broke my nail! You guys are total imbeciles!”
Sandeep Singh watched the action from the corner of his eye.
I grinned. For me, being called a total imbecile was a compliment.
We expected the bus driver to pull over and give us another lecture, only he didn’t. Instead he picked up speed. For a few minutes, the 121 Express was flying! We held onto the bottoms of our seats—or the closest pole. The driver’s window was open, and his gray hair flapped in the breeze. I figured he was in a hurry to reach the Côte-Vertu metro station, where most of the kids who take the 121 Express get out.
Jake was standing on one of the seats at the back. His sneakers had already left gray scuff marks on the vinyl. “Hey, Lucas,” he called, “I need some help.”
I went over to see what he wanted. When the bus squealed to a stop at a red light, we nearly fell over. Luckily, Jake grabbed onto one of the gray rubber handgrips—and I hung on to Jake. The two of us must have looked like a couple of monkeys swinging from a banana tree.
When the bus jerked forward, we got back to work. I was helping Jake pop open the emergency ceiling window. The trick was to undo the levers on either end.
“What kind of useless emergency window is this?” Jake shouted when the window wouldn’t budge. “Lemme out of here! I can’t breathe!! This is an emergency!” Then he started making choking noises and pounding his chest, which cracked everyone up.
“Hey, Kelly,” I shouted, “I think Jake needs some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!”
That made everyone laugh even harder.
“Let me put on my lip-gloss first!” Kelly shouted.
When the window finally popped open, it made a noise like a burp. “Yes!” Jake hollered. He pushed the window open as wide as it could go.
A burst of cool air came jetting through the bus. We must have passed some big trees because a few bright red maple leaves came flying down too.
We stuck our heads through the opening and screamed like madmen. “We’re gonna die!” we yelled. “we’re gonna die!”
The bus driver picked up even more speed. Wasn’t he worried about the cops pulling him over?
Someone was rushing down the aisle. I slid down from the window to see what was going on. Jewel Chu was clutching the soccer ball against her chest.
“You show him!” one of her friends called out.
“I wanted to return this to you.” Jewel threw the ball at Jake’s stomach. Hard.
Jake fell down from the window, moaning when he hit the floor.
The soccer ball rolled to the floor too. “At least you didn’t break a nail,” Jewel muttered.
Pierre wanted his ball back.
“I’ll give it back to you all right!” Then Jewel bent down and unfastened the safety pin from her kilt.
Jewel raised the pin in the air like a spear; then she stabbed Pierre’s soccer ball. Pierre’s mouth fell open and his silver braces gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“Here you go,” Jewel said in this syrupy-sweet voice. She handed Pierre what was left of his soccer ball.
“Why’d you have to go and do that?” Pierre asked.
“Why’d you have to go and break my nail?”
“I didn’t break your nail.”
Someone laughed. It was a laugh we didn’t recognize at first. There was something haunted about the sound of it. It took us a few seconds to realize it was the driver. He’d been watching the action in the rearview mirror.
The brakes squealed when the driver pulled up in front of the metro. The doors opened and almost everyone piled out, except for me and a few other kids who lived farther along Côte-Vertu Boulevard.
“That was the worst ride we ever had,” I heard Jewel Chu say as she stood up to leave.
Jake, who was standing behind her, patted the top of Jewel’s head. “Funny, I thought it was pretty cool.”
Jewel stopped when she reached the driver. “Thank you, sir,” she said, flashing him a bright smile. “Have a wonderful weekend.”
The bus driver didn’t say a thing. He just stared into space like a zombie.