Before Alma and Shirin left, the three of them decided to meet that night at 11:50 at the bus stop near Hugo’s house.
Hugo and Shirin had consulted the bus schedule by the library the day before, after Alma had run off. There wasn’t a stop on Second Point Peak, but there was one at the bottom of the mountain.
“It wasn’t part of the official schedule though,” Hugo had told Alma.
“What do you mean?” Alma had asked.
“It was written in pen at the bottom,” Shirin had explained. “And the other buses had their last stops at like eight thirty.”
Why, Alma had wondered, would there be a bus so late at night in a town as small as Four Points? And why wouldn’t it be on the regular schedule?
“I propose we meet and wait for the bus,” Hugo had said. “If it does not come, we can abort the mission. If it does come, I will get to conduct my research.”
“If Hugo’s in, then I’m in,” Shirin had replied. “It’s going to be amazing—unless we get caught!”
“I’m in too,” Alma had said.
When she rode up to the bus stop that night, quintescope in her bicycle basket, Shirin was just riding up too and Hugo was waiting. He was holding the wind funnel, disassembled for ease of carrying, in his gloved hands.
“You still don’t look right,” Shirin said, frowning at Alma as she climbed off her bike. “You were so, like, bright the other day. Are you feeling okay?”
Alma looked down at herself. She half expected to see a flickering, nearly burned-out flame somewhere around her stomach. Of course there was nothing, only her jacket.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”
“So you say,” Shirin said with another sharp, searching look. “But you know what? I’m still worried. Tell us the truth. What’s going on with you?”
Alma opened her mouth, but no words came out.
And then she didn’t have to say anything. Because from down the street there came a squeaking, groaning, grating noise. It sounded like a tin roof caving in. It sounded like a blender full of knives. It sounded like—
A bus. It was their bus, coming down the street.