Lance Armstrong was my idea. “Even after he had cancer, the guy won the Tour de France—seven times,” I’d told Sandeep.
Mr. Adams had paired Sandeep and me up for the modern-day heroes project. We had to choose a hero and then present him—or her—to the class.
Sandeep and I were having trouble agreeing on a hero. We’d been discussing it since last period. We’d walked out of school together and now, since we were lined up next to each other at the bus stop, we’d picked up the conversation again. “Some people say Lance Armstrong took steroids,” Sandeep said. “Heroes don’t take drugs.”
Sandeep had a point.
But I wasn’t ready to give up quite so easily. “Just because people say something, doesn’t make it true. Besides, heroes don’t have to be perfect.”
“They don’t have to be perfect; they have to be decent—and fair,” Sandeep said. “If he did use steroids, it wouldn’t have been fair to the other cyclists. What about Tenzing Norgay? He was the Nepalese mountaineer who reached the summit of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953.”
“How do you know stuff like that?”
“I like trivia. And I have a good memory.”
“If we do Tenzing Norgay, then why not Edmund Hillary too? Mr. Adams said one hero only per group. So that pretty much rules out old Tenzing.”
The bus pulled up to the curb. Jake had fallen asleep during English, so Mr. Adams kept him in after class, but now I spotted him rushing out of the building. He waved in my direction.
“Look,” I told Sandeep, taking a few steps away from him, “let’s both do some more research tonight. Then we can talk about it again tomorrow—in class.”
Sandeep’s eyes met mine. “I see,” he said.
Jake clapped me on the shoulder. “So you and raghead hanging out now?”
I took another step away from Sandeep. “Nah,” I said, “we got stuck together on that English project is all. We’re still deciding on a hero.”
Georgie’s music was blaring when we got on the bus. Pierre had already pried open the ceiling window. Kelly, who’d been chewing gum, blew a big pink bubble that somehow ended up bursting in Jewel’s hair. “You get it out of my hair this instant!” Jewel shouted.
“I can’t. It’s stuck!” Then Kelly started laughing hysterically.
“You could try rubbing ice on it,” Sandeep suggested.
Jewel put her face right up to Kelly’s. “You’re evil!”
“Fight! Fight!” voices chanted from the back of the bus. Other kids started clapping.
There was so much noise, we almost didn’t see Old Quack Quack at the curb. It was hard to tell who noticed him, but suddenly Jewel popped back into her seat, and the yelling and clapping came to a halt.
Old Quack Quack was rubbing his temples. He must’ve heard us from outside the bus. “I’ll just be a minute or two,” he told the driver.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to need to see three of you—in private.”
The tension on the bus was so strong you could feel it in theair, like a giant bubble about to burst.
What was Old Quack Quack talking about?
Who were the three kids he wanted to see? And was I one of them?
Old Quack Quack took a sheet of lined paper from his jacket pocket. “Jake Adams,” he said, his voice dull, as if he was just waking up after a long nap.
I looked over at Jake, who was pushing Kelly off his lap.
“Georgie Papadopoulos.”
Georgie groaned.
My heart thumped.
“And Lucas Samson. I’m afraid the three of you won’t be riding the 121 Express today.”
When we got up from our seats, the bus was completely still. Most of the kids kept their eyes on the floor. But Jewel Chu smiled when we passed her.
Sandeep was the only one who actually said something. But what he said had nothing to do with our getting in trouble. “How about Rosa Parks?” he whispered to me.
Rosa Parks? What was Sandeep talking about? And then it dawned on me: Rosa Parks was a modern-day hero. She had something to do with the American civil rights movement.
Leave it to Sandeep to be thinking about our English project. I sure wasn’t thinking about school. And I wasn’t even thinking about how upset my parents were going to be when they found out I’d gotten in trouble. No, I was only thinking about one thing. It was the same thing everyone on the bus—except Sandeep—was thinking about.
Who was the snitch?