Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous (6 page)

But Mr. Pasternak just nods irritably and says, “Watch where you're going, buster! Kickoff is at two o'clock sharp.” It seems odd for him to be out walking in the rain, and Panzer doesn't look too happy about it. As for what he meant by kickoff time, Bender doesn't stop to wonder. He's off like a shot.

In less than a minute, he's across the loop and on the road, covering ground like Thorn Thompson setting a new cross-country record.

This stretch along Farm Road 216, from the gazebo to the highway, will be dicey. Anybody driving it is bound to see him in the open field, likely to know who he is, and even more likely to stop: “Bender? Did you miss the bus? Do you need a ride to school?” He plans to run alongside the road where the ground is a little lower and hit the dirt if he hears a vehicle. But the landscape is rougher than he expected, with all kinds of dips and—car coming! He drops immediately, and the garbage bag balloons over him, settling on his head.

The vehicle rolls on by. He doesn't dare look up to see who it is.

But then it hits him—he has the perfect disguise! What could be more ordinary, less worth looking at, than a plastic bag along the road? True, it's bigger than your average bag, but if he keeps well to the side of the highway and listens carefully for the sounds of an approaching vehicle, he'll have plenty of time to cover himself and drop to the ground undetected. So the garbage bag is his Halloween costume after all. Ha!

Twenty-three minutes and twelve seconds later, he's learned a few things.

Such as, “average walking speed” means a healthy adult walking briskly on a level path with no obstructions. Getting
to
the highway is the easy part. Now that he's here, he has to stay inconspicuous, which means
off
the highway. No way can he duck under barbed wire, circle trees, and step over gullies at three miles per hour. After slipping on patches of mud and wet grass, he also learns that garbage bags don't really keep the water out. Once he's hit the ground a few times to hide from passing vehicles, even industrial-grade plastic leaks like a cotton sock.

Finally, an hour later, Bender learns that a mile is really long. Five thousand, two hundred, and eighty feet, and he has to fight for every inch of it (that would be 63,360 inches).

Being
thirteen
sucks
, he thinks—not for the first time. These golden years from twelve to fifteen, that his dad sometimes wishes he could go back to, are a freaking POLICE STATE! Shuttled from school to home and back again, having his head stuffed full of stuff somebody else decided he needs to know, while what he really wants to know he can't find out, and when he finally makes a prison break, the land itself seems to be against him—

He stops. Where is he?

Where is anything?

It's not raining anymore, but that's no help because he is wrapped in a fog so thick it's blurred his sense of direction. While he was stumbling along, it sneaked up on him and threw its cold wetness over his head. And now…he's trapped.

Okay, forget about the mystery stop; forget about everything but home, his own bed, his electric blanket. He's clutching that pathetic garbage bag in a desperate effort to conserve heat, even though the dampness has worked all the way to his goose-pimply skin. He clenches his teeth to stop the chattering, listening for sounds from the highway. Once he can determine which direction it is, he'll head straight for it and hitch a ride home. No matter who stops for him, even if it's a serial killer. Even if it's his mom.

Well, maybe he's not
that
desperate.

After another fifteen minutes or so, though, he almost is. The fog packs him like cotton, so tight he can't move. Or rather, any place he moves is exactly like the last place, and if he wanders, he'll only get more lost. The silence is so thick no sound can penetrate, or just barely. How did he get so far away? From everything? Even the ground under his feet seems spongy and uncertain.
Where
am
I?
doesn't even register, because he's lost all sense of
where
. What if there's no
where
here? Is that a reasonable question?

He shakes his head fiercely. Miles to the shed: 2.832. Miles to town: 7.59. Circumference of the earth: 24,901.55 miles. Total surface area: 197 million square miles, or 510 million square kilometers, rounded to the nearest hundred thousand. Somewhere on that vast expanse is
him
. “Hey!” he shouts at the top of his lungs to whoever might be around to hear. “HEY!”

His voice sinks into the cotton, like it never was.

Maybe he, Charles Bender Thompson, never was.

Too weird. He can feel the fog erasing him, like the mistake he suspects he is. Oops. Let's redo that, or pretend he never happened, make him smaller and smaller…

He opens his mouth but no sound comes out. Instead, a sound goes
in
: a motorized sound, like a vehicle on a road—and it seems to be coming closer.

“Hey!” he shouts. Then he runs—or stumbles, with his gimpy ankle—over the bumpy ground in the direction the sound seems to be coming from. “Hey, stop!”

He jumps over a rut and skids on loose gravel. It's a road! He can follow it, once he figures out which direction. Except that the sound is catching up to him, and he knows something has to be done, but his head is fuzzed up and slow and—

Out of the fog charges a Halloween nightmare: two glaring eyes and gleaming chrome teeth!

“Stop!” he screams. The creature stops, right after knocking him over like a bowling pin.

• • •

“Hey?” speaks a voice somewhere over his head. Bender jerks upright and his brain wobbles. Once his vision clears a little, he can make out a man standing over him—a man with a long stubbly chin and stiff brush-cut hair. On the gravel, a vehicle is idling.

It's all coming back to him now: he has just run like a panicked possum to the middle of a road, where he stopped long enough to get hit by a truck.

Brilliant.

“Hey, kid? Are you okay?”

Do
I
look
okay?
Bender wants to reply, but his teeth are chattering again. His eyes are chattering too, or that's what it feels like: he's seeing in fast-shutter speed. He squints, finds something to focus on: a metal buckle on the man's belt. It's a bird, a big bird—eagle? With wings spread? He tries to speak, but what comes out is, “D-d-d-d—”

The man spits out a four-letter word and crouches on one knee, bringing the eagle closer—along with a long-bladed knife strapped menacingly to his belt. He pulls Bender's eyelids open, glares at the pupils, grips his wrist while feeling for his pulse, aims questions at him like arrows. “What's the day of the week?”

“Th-Th-Thu—”

“Got it. What's your name?”

“B-B-Bender.”

“What's your mom's maiden name?”

“Bender.”

“No, I asked—Wait a minute.” The pressure on his wrist relaxes as the man sits back on his heels, eyes wide. “Was your mom Annie Bender, by any chance?”

Bender just stares back, vaguely recalling that his mother's full name is Anne Myra Bender Thompson. But that doesn't seem to have any relevance here.

“
Crap!
” the man says, making him jump. Doesn't he have a blanket in his truck or something? The motor is thrumming briskly; bet it's warm in the cab. “Don't tell her you saw me. Don't tell anybody. You've put me in a helluva moral quandary, you know that? No, you don't. Listen—Man, what to do? I'm in kind of a hurry, but… Listen, what's the story here? What are you doing out in the fog?”

Funny he should ask. Bender feels like he's been in the fog all his life; fog is his natural state. “W-w-w—”

“Yeah, that's easy for you to say. Ha-ha, forget it. Let me try again—where do you need to go?”

This one's easy. “H-home.”

“Home. Don't we all? Well, okay, is it close? Just nod, yes or no.”

Bender nods.

“Okay, lost boy, into the truck. Point me in the right direction, but if I start to think this is a trick, I'm letting you out, no matter where we are. Got that?”

If there's a trick, it won't be on his side of the equation. All his life, Bender has been told not to take rides from strangers. But somebody who's shared a moral quandary with you (sort of) isn't exactly a stranger, is he? The knife doesn't give him a nice cozy feeling, but whether it's smart or not, Bender knows he's going to accept the offer.

Miranda will never be famous for anything, except maybe for who she's friends with.

Last year, it was Penelope (“Don't call me Penny!”) Gage, whose father is president of First Republic Bank and who lives in the biggest house in town. Back in fourth grade, before Miranda had even met Penelope, she and her mother would drive by the house while it was being built, watching it change from a cleared lot with a poured foundation to a proud stone and timber mansion. They would ask questions of each other as the house progressed: How big will it be? How tall? What style? Where would the windows go?

The answers came over time: 1) Very. 2) Two and a half stories. 3) Rustic lodge. 4) Everywhere. The double doors in front opened to an entrance hall with cathedral roof and three chandeliers, but Miranda wouldn't know all that until fifth grade, when she got to be friends with Penelope.

It's kind of interesting, how that happened.

Two of the fifth-grade classes were in the library on a sleety afternoon last January when the fire alarm went off. The whole school groaned, as if the building had reared up on its foundations and exclaimed, “What the—?” They were only supposed to have drills on nice days.

Except it wasn't a drill. It was a real fire, started in the cafeteria kitchen after lunch when the staff was taking a break. When somebody finally noticed, things got a little confused and the alarm went off and the fire department got called. By the time three hundred kids were shivering on the sidewalk in a freezing rain, the fire was already out.

How Miranda's class got there was a little confusing too: they were in the library, and Mrs. Russell was in the restroom and Ms. Henderson was just outside sneaking a cigarette and Mrs. Jenks was under the checkout desk, trying to figure out where to plug in a computer cord. The kids lined themselves up in front of the outside door with no adult supervision. In the shuffle, Miranda found herself standing next to Penelope, who was holding a book. “I've read that!” she blurted.

Penelope glanced at her then stared forward again. “Is it any good?”

“It's kinda sad.” Miranda could have said that more people died than she expected, but it was a good book anyway. One of the best she'd ever read, in fact, if you went by how many Kleenexes it took to get to the end. But she didn't say anything because Mrs. Russell, who had dashed back from the restroom, was directing the bulky line forward. Besides, Miranda wasn't sure how cool it was to get so totally into a story you had to keep a Kleenex box nearby. Soon, icy raindrops were stinging her face.

Penelope took the Lord's name in vain as she stuck the book under her jacket and pulled up her hood. “If this is a drill, it's the stupidest one ever. My dad's going to call the school board and complain.”

Miranda surprised herself. She knew Penelope's dad was a bank president, and Penelope was probably the richest kid in town. And who was Miranda? Nobody. All the same, she opened her mouth and said, “My dad's going to call city hall.”

By the time they got to the playground fence, two fire trucks had arrived to prove this wasn't a drill. While they shivered in the schoolyard, the two girls amused themselves playing My Dad knows more important people than Your Dad: “Mine is going to call Channel Ten News!” “Mine is going to call our senator!” “Well, mine is going to call the president!”

They giggled, and then Miranda surprised herself for the second time that afternoon: “Actually, my dad won't even know about it. He lives in Arizona.”

Penelope didn't say anything for a minute. Then she squeezed Miranda's hand. It seemed kind of natural at the time, because all the kids were huddled so close together they looked like a giant mushroom under the drippy sky. But Miranda couldn't help thinking that she'd let a piece of her real self slip in a very dorky way—like when you bend over and the elastic of your underwear rides up over your jeans. But Pen's squeeze seemed to tell her it was okay.

A lot of calls were made that week: to city hall and the school board and the fire department and the county health extension office and the mayor. But among those calls was one made by Penelope to Miranda: “Want to ask your mom if you can come over after school on Friday?”

Come over?! To that huge, glassy, rustic-lodgey house she and her mother used to guess about when they drove by?

When Mrs. Scott came to pick Miranda up after work that Friday, she seemed a little nervous about meeting Mrs. Gage. Penelope's mother didn't act snotty, but she had an edge. So did Penelope, for that matter: both were thin, with narrow faces, sharp noses, and glassy-green eyes, whereas both Miranda and her mother were roundish (okay, overweight), with round faces, curly brown hair, and big dark cow's eyes.

Mrs. Gage invited Mrs. Scott in for a cup of herbal tea, but Mrs. Scott said no, she had tons of stuff to do at home. “I know the feeling,” Mrs. Gage said, already closing the heavy front door with its beveled glass. “Thanks for letting Melissa come over. See you later.”

“
Miranda
, Mom!” Penelope's voice came muffled from behind the door.

Penelope was sometimes hard to be friends with. She usually ignored Miranda when boys were around, and she accepted an invitation to go to a concert for Miranda's birthday but canceled the day before with a lame excuse. They always ate lunch together, and half the time, Penelope unloaded on Jayden or Jordan or Jenn—or her brother or her brother's girlfriend or even her mom. Or she would talk about college and how she couldn't wait to get out of this boring little town where the most excitement was Rodeo Days.

“You know who I can't stand?” Penelope asked at lunch on the next-to-next-to-last day of school.

Just
about
everybody
, Miranda thought, but she didn't say it.

“Shelly Alvarez, that's who. She thinks she is so hot. You should have seen her after school yesterday, at the Talent Fling tryouts.”

“How did your ballet go?”

“Let me tell you. I spent at least twenty minutes getting ready but only got to dance for, like, two minutes! I was just warming up when Mrs. Jarvis stopped me. ‘That's great, Penelope, we'll put you on the list, and, Dylan, are you ready?' Dylan's doing a stupid lip sync. They should ban all the lip syncs next year—they're boring and they don't take any talent whatsoever.”

“I agree,” Miranda agreed.

“But when
Shelly
gets onstage, she's got her
tech
crew
. Pul-leese. Mr. Manchuso is doing the sound for her and Barton Joy is doing lights, and she gets to go through her whole song.”

“Ewww,” said Miranda.

Penelope stabbed her organic roasted veggie wrap with a fork. “Then Mrs. Jarvis talks up how great everybody is but there's a few she has to leave out because of time.”

Miranda gasped. “Pen! She didn't cut
you
, did she?”

“Of course not!” Penelope looked outraged at the very idea, and Miranda almost apologized. “Most of the fourth-graders get cut, but she still leaves in a
bunch
of lip syncs, and Daniel Kenner's lame magic show comes next to last, and guess who's last? The act Mrs. Jarvis thinks is so great she puts it there to wrap up the whole show?”

“Uh…Shelly?”

“
Shelly
.” Penelope took a savage bite out of her veggie wrap. “I should've just left. I should've not signed up for the stupid show, but my mother made me.”

Miranda thought she remembered Penelope's mom advising against it, but maybe she'd heard wrong. Penelope went on, “If I'd brought my Firebird costume—which makes that silver outfit of Shelly's look like a pillowcase—and
lights
and everything, it would have been a totally different story. That's mostly what Shelly has going for her, anyway: tech support.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you pull the plug on her, she's nothing.”

“Right.”

Penelope suddenly put down her veggie wrap and sat up straighter. “Wait a minute. I have an idea. What if we actually
pull
the
plug
?”

By “we,” she meant Miranda.

What if Miranda slipped backstage just before Shelly's turn (“The back door is open all the time”) and sneaked over to the sound equipment, and while Mr. Manchuso's back was turned (“He's always reading comic books—
X-Men
is his favorite”), she could knock out the plug to the speakers (“It'll look like an accident! If you move fast enough, they won't even know it's you!”).

Friendship is easy if all you have to do is nod and laugh at the right times. But when you have to actually
do
something, it's like being called up to give an oral book report, when all she wanted to do was read the book. (Mr. Cavendish in the fourth grade was always making her stand up and read her reports because he thought they were so good. So she started writing crummy ones, just to make him stop.)

Miranda stalled. “Why can't you do it? Since you'll be backstage already.”

“Because I'll probably be changing. That costume takes a lot of time to get out of—it's got all these tricky hooks and stuff. Can't risk it.”

But
you
can
risk
me
, Miranda thought.

Penelope was going on: “…after all these months and coming over to my house and taking you shopping, I ask you to do this one thing as a friend—how can you say no?”

Easy
, Miranda thought.
Just
two
letter
sounds, en and oh
. But somehow it wouldn't come together. And neither would
yes
.

“How will I know which plug?” Miranda felt her throat going dry.

“I'll figure it out ahead of time and mark it somehow. I'll even loosen it up, so it'll be easy to knock out. Nobody will see; they'll all be watching
Awesome
Shelly
. And as soon as the speaker cuts off, it'll take them a while to figure out why. You'll have plenty of time to get away. Come on, it'll serve her right.”

Miranda wasn't sure about that—she had nothing against Shelly, who could be annoying but wasn't mean. Besides, they lived in the same subdivision and sometimes talked. And besides, wasn't it kind of…like…wrong?

“Please?” Penelope asked.

Miranda blinked. Had Penelope ever asked anything with a please?

“Okay,” she heard herself saying—and dropped into a simmering pot of misery for the next forty-eight hours.

On the outside, she looked the same but was really a virtual human, trying to act normal while a snake wrapped around her quick-beating, mousy little heart.
Why
did
I
say
yes? Why couldn't I say no?
This was lots worse than an oral book report.
What
if
they
catch
me? And I'm so clumsy they're bound to. What will I say?

On the morning of the Spring Fling, even her mother noticed: “What's the matter? Do you have to do a speech or something?”

“Bye, Mom,” she said mechanically, walking out the door.

In the end, Miranda did the right thing in the wrong way, maybe. That is, she didn't do anything.

She literally sweated through the lip sync and piano solos and barely noticed Penelope's ballet. When Daniel Kenner came out in a red-lined cape to begin his magic act, Miranda was supposed to raise her hand and ask to go to the bathroom so she'd have plenty of time to get backstage before Shelly's turn. But by the time Daniel concluded his act and bowed low to thunderous applause, Miranda still had not moved.

When Shelly bounded out in a silver flash, Miranda didn't join in the whoops and screams and was as surprised as anybody when the sound cut off. But when Shelly sang on, all alone, carried by self-confidence and determination, Miranda was one of the first to join the clapping, and the rest was history.

So was her friendship with Penelope.

• • •

Of course, Penelope's still around.

A week after screwing up Shelly's nursing home gig, Miranda picks up the phone at home to hear a voice from the past: “Back to eating lunch alone, aren't you, Scott? That's how Shelly repays her
friends
.” Penelope hangs up without waiting for a reply, not that Miranda could think of one.

Her former friend knows where it hurts; more than anything, Miranda dreads eating alone. Lunch period feels like the Cafeteria Table at the End of the Universe, and she's considering asking Mrs. Jenks if she could get a library pass for that time.

Penelope spoke too soon, though: Shelly's not perfect, but she doesn't hold a grudge. The very next morning, she takes a seat next to Miranda as though nothing happened and asks her to manage her Youth Court campaign. That afternoon, they write the fliers—Miranda types them on the Alvarezes' computer, and Shelly imports a publicity photo of herself with her head cocked and one hand behind her ear. They print five dozen, which Miranda hands out the next day:

Shelly Alvarez hears you!

A sympathetic ear, a caring heart,

She's the one who'll take your part.

Miranda also writes the campaign speech, and during the last week of October, Shelly delivers it flawlessly to the faculty meeting and the homeroom representatives. On the first Tuesday in November, all the candidates give their speeches to the general assembly of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, with the voting to come right after.

There's no polling data, but Miranda is confident about her candidate's chances. Especially if you take Spencer's reaction as a kind of reverse indicator. Other sixth-graders are running, but the chemistry between those two makes it seem like a one-on-one matchup. The more Shelly charms, the more Spencer scowls; his speeches get louder, quicker, and angrier as the campaign goes on, in spite of Jay reminding him to chill. Miranda knows Shelly will win, right up until the last day and the last speech—actually the last minute of the speech.