THE AERO-BUS

I climb into the bus, and my eyes don’t know where to look first. It’s like a glittery motor palace! The seats are sparkly couches, and the walls are painted all different colors. Control panels fill the back of the seats. What kind of aero-bus is this?

My teammates have already found their seats. Jax is camped out on the couch behind the driver, his head buried in a magazine. Marianna and Jillian are sitting together a few rows behind him with their heads practically touching. I wonder what they’re looking at. Alexander is sitting by himself on the other side of the aisle. His legs are sprawled over the whole seat. He swings them off and moves over toward the window.

“You can sit here if you want.”

I slide in. “Thanks.”

“You can call me Ander. I don’t like long names.”

“Okay. You can call me Kia. I don’t have a long name.”

The bus pulls away and lifts off before I can look out the window and wave goodbye. All I see is the empty amphitheater, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to see my family drift away anyway.

Ander presses a button on the control panel. His seat reclines, and the control panel extends toward him. “I hope my hockey stuff is okay under the bus. I have a brand new helmet in there.”

I stare at his skinny body. “You play hockey?”

“Yup. I’m a winger. I always say, if I can get the puck, I can score.”

I think he’s making that up. “Why did you bring your hockey gear?”

“Principal Bermuda told me they have everything at this camp. If I find an ice rink, I want to pull a game together. Do you play?”

“Me? No.”

“No problem. I can teach you.”

“I don’t think we’re going to have time for games. We have a task to work on, remember?”

“How long can that take? I bet we’ll have a ton of free time.”

He pushes another button on the control panel and chooses a song. Iridescent headphones descend from the ceiling to cover his ears. I hope he’s kidding. Six weeks is not a lot of time to solve our task, especially now that there’s a chance we’ll have to go back home for programming.

I sink down in my seat. I wonder what category our task will be in. I hope it’s not in Human History. I look at Ander. He’s mouthing the words to a song. I nudge his arm, and he pulls the headphones away from his ears. “Do you want to talk about which task they’re going to give us? You know, guess some of the possibilities?”

“Nope. I want to enjoy the ride.” He jumps up and turns around in his seat. “Can you believe this bus? Look at it back there.”

All I see are rows of couches and a curtain behind them. He pushes another button on the control panel. A map of the aero-bus appears on the back of his seat. “Look! There’s a movie theater behind that curtain and an ice cream shop too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, come on. Let’s go check it out.”

I think about it for a second. “Maybe later. I want to study my task notes.”

“What for? We have eight hours until we get to camp. Can’t you do it later?”

“No. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

He takes off his baseball hat, messes up his brown hair, and shoves the hat back on his head. “Okay, see ya.”

I quiz myself on as much Human History as I can, but it’s hard to concentrate. I feel like Principal Bermuda played a trick on us. In all the years of talking to us about the Piedmont Challenge, he never told us that if you make it to camp, but don’t do well in the National Finals, you can still be sent home for programming. It’s not fair. I can’t study one subject for seventh and eighth grade and high school too! How can anyone expect us to do that? I bite the corner of my thumbnail and the nail polish flakes off. I pick a piece off my tongue.

I skim my category notes but my eyelids flicker when I get to the Revolutionary War. I force myself to read about Paul Revere’s midnight ride, but soon I close my book and make a wish that our task will not be in this category.

I peek down the aisle at the girls. They look like they could be sisters, or cousins maybe. Jillian’s blond hair is long and wavy but Marianna’s is stick straight. Jillian is pretty. She seems nice, like we could be friends. I like her headband and her flowing skirt. I’m not so sure about Marianna. She seems too perfect. I think whenever she looks at me she’s laughing at me. I look up the aisle at Jax. All I see is the back of his head—and the flat top of his haircut. His face is still buried in the magazine. I don’t get it. Later today we could find out our task. Why don’t any of them care?

That’s when I jump out of my seat. I don’t even know my teammates. How can we work together when we don’t know anything about each other? Crimson Elementary School is really big, and except from meeting them on the Day of Brightness, we haven’t even talked!

I change my plan. Maybe getting to know each other is more important than studying right now. I head up the aisle to Jax’s seat. “Hi, what are you reading?”

He sits up straight. Now he’s way taller than the back of the seat. “It’s a magazine of machine parts, all about the way things work.”

Hmm. So Jax likes mechanical stuff. Interesting.

“Do you want to go to the back of the bus? Ander said there’s a movie theater back there.”

He slumps back down. “Nah.”

I walk back towards the girls. They don’t notice me standing there until I say, “Hi, Jillian. Hi, Marianna.”

Marianna giggles. “Um, no one calls me that.”

I feel my face get hot. “Oh, sorry. What should I call you?”

“Mare.”

“Okay. Well, I’m going to the back of the bus. Ander said there’s movies and ice cream. Do you guys want to come?”

“No, thank you,” says Jillian. “We’re watching a video my dad made of the crowd this morning at Send-Off.”

I try to catch a glimpse, but they don’t turn the player my way. “Oh, well maybe later we can study for our task together.”

Mare looks at me with a crinkled forehead. “Why would we do that?”

“So we can be ready for whatever task they give us when we get to camp.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah. I want to get a head start, don’t you?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Oh. I guess I’ll talk to you guys later. Come find us when you’re done if you want to.”

Jillian smiles. Mare laughs at something on the screen. I walk away. I’m not sure my “Getting to Know My Teammates Plan” is working.

Behind the curtain I find a small room with a giant screen and a row of seats. Ander is sitting in one of them.

“Ha! I knew you’d change your mind. You have to see this. We can pick any movie ever made, or make our own. What do you want to see? I already started two different ones, but you can pick now if you want. Go ahead.”

“Any movie ever made?”

“Or make combinations of movies too.”

“Okay!” We scan through the list, pick the funniest ones we can find, and splice them together. Two hours go by like two minutes and the lights turn on by themselves. My ribs hurt from laughing, but I can take it. This is all part of the “Getting to Know My Teammates Plan.”

Ander puts his hat back on. “What should we do now? Want to eat?”

“Sure.” We step out of the movie compartment and the aero-bus shakes. I reach for the railing. Maybe we drove through a patch of turbulence. We cross the aisle into a restaurant called the Circle Café, where colorful rings like hula hoops hang from the ceiling. Each wall is painted a different color: red, blue, yellow, and green.

“Whoever designed this bus must have a thing for circles,” he says. “Let’s sit over there.”

We spin on circle-shaped chairs at the counter and drink blueberry milkshakes while Ander talks and talks about his hockey team. I don’t care about that team, but he’s so excited that I listen. He plays with the straw paper, and somehow he turns it into a mini sailor hat. “Look, I made a hat for my hockey puck. Let’s make some more. We can turn my hockey bag into a ship, and the pucks can be the crew.” His smile is big, like he just came up with the most amazing idea ever. Weird. I wonder if he has an invention list too.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll get more straws.” My insides churn as I walk away. My plan is working. I’m getting to know Ander! Now I just have to convince the rest of my teammates to build the Hockey Puck Hats too.