“Are you sure about this?” I asked as we rolled down the backroad on the night before Halloween, everyone with their faces nearly pressed to the windows like we were kids instead of three twenty and two twenty-one year-olds.
“Very sure.” Samantha said, punching my leg, giving me a long hard glare.
I gave her an apologetic look, neither of us had to look at Heather to say that was the reason for the punch. We were all very aware of Heather. Sitting in the back seat between Keith and Faye, she was the absolutely stellar looking blonde that was too hot, too cool, and too everything to be hanging out with some normies (Maybe even nerdies) like my best friends Keith and Faye, my sister Sammy, and me. I don’t know how Sammy had done it but she had befriended the goddess, or maybe not friended so much as convinced her to hang out for the night because somehow the hot blonde had nothing better to do. Selling her on the fact that Keith, Faye, and her were convinced about some local urban legend being real.
The Sky Bus. Everyone in Defluer had heard of it. An old 70s style school bus that had somehow gotten onto one of the ridges, way up where a bus could not drive, the path supposedly was barely reachable by foot. It was unexplainable how a vehicle, much less a bus, had gotten up there. Mom and dad had heard of it, they said they knew a guy and girl from their high school who had claimed to have found it, confirming that it was already a thing back in their day. It wasn’t just that the bus was up there in near perfect condition, that would be one thing but not urban legend level. No, it was that those classmates of mom and dad’s had started a new twist. The idea that if you stayed in the bus all night, you would be granted a wish.
“So what did your dad say?” Heather asked, scrubbing her hand over her window to keep the condensation from building up from her and Faye breathing on the same pane of glass.
“That it’s real.” Sammy answered.
“About how they found it.”
“He said his classmates said they saw the stop sign from the bus, at the beginning of the path, high up in a tree. Dad and all his friends went out, the summer after, but they couldn’t find it.” I answered, trying to keep the tone out of my voice that said I was the only disbeliever here.
“And… Why didn’t they just go right out and look for it, if it supposedly grants wishes?” I told myself to be cool, just because she was asking questions like that didn’t mean she was a disbeliever too. Even if she was, it wasn’t like that level of hotty would forgo buff handsome guys for a nerd just because he also didn’t believe in the supernatural urban legends.
“Because they didn’t know right away.” Sammy said excitedly.
“Yeah,” Keith agreed, so nervous with Heather sitting next to him (I didn’t blame him) that that was all he could manage to say because she turned to look at him.
“They didn’t know how much their classmates luck had changed until the school year was over. When all of a sudden he was super popular, his parents won the lotto, some relative he’d never met or heard of passed away and left HIM a bunch of money.” Sammy recounted, seemingly not so effected by Heather’s presence as the rest of us.
“The girl he’d gone up with lost a bunch of weight, she got discovered by some modeling agency and went to Europe. I guess by nineteen she was married to some prince.” Faye added, not so impressed by somebody who only wanted to be a model and marry a prince, but excited at all the “evidence” nonetheless. “When they heard that, apparently they used to call the girl Pizza Face Pattie, they knew there had to be something to what their friend. Something up there had granted their wishes to be rich and popular and to be attractive, famous, and marry a prince.”
“I thought it was about getting good luck.” I pointed out.
“Same difference,” Sammy was not to be brought down by logic or facts, the others (Besides Heather I was excited to see.) all nodded.
“So a stop sign in the trees?” Heather remarked as everyone was clearly imagining their life with their wishes granted or their luck set to max.
“Yeah,” Sammy quickly shaking away the daydreams (or night dreams since the sun was well and truly down) to keep her eyes glued for the prize.
“That you can only see in fall or winter?” A hint of snark to my voice question.
“Yeah.” Sammy gave me another punch, I took it with pride. Then to Heather she put it. “We went out five or six times last week.”
“Six.” Faye corrected.
“Six?” I asked, I had laughed off their request to waste a Saturday afternoon driving out around the far ridges looking for a myth, I had not known it was not their first wasted afternoon.
“Which is what dad said him and his friends did.” Sammy put in. “So after we got back the last time Faye had the bright idea that we needed to do something different. Early morning or after sundown. Because it might make a difference, somehow.” Even Sammy couldn’t actually say right artemisbet yeni giriş out that the magic might only activate at different times, but she let it sit in a way that trying to get us to think that. “And so here we are!”
“Here we are.” I made my tone cheery but still got a glare from my older sister who seemed to be trying to steal my friends.
As I drove on they told Heather of the highlights of the other six adventures. Seeing a family of deer. Finding an old rusted out truck. Seeing four people “having a lot of fun” up on a ridge. Then Sammy and Keith went over the supplies that they’d brought, backpacks of supplies because we’d have to hike to the top of the ridge to get to The Sky Bus. Keith pulled out a box of dozens of different LED flashlights that he’d convinced his dad to order off of Amazon.
I tried to watch Heather, wondering if she’d come along just to have a story to tell later. About the nerds who believed in The Magical School Bus. I could imagine her friends making fun of us. Talking about if we expected Ms. Frizzle to come answer our wishes, or which one of us was what character. But she didn’t seem to have a sneaky wicked smile that movies and media said a person would have if that was their plan. She looked genuinely interested as she listened to whoever was talking.
I tried to watch carefully but she was too damn beautiful to think about anything but her looks, well her looks and the road. Heather wasn’t THE popular hot high school girl but she was up there. Shoulder length blonde hair that wasn’t as perfectly dyed with various highlights and lowlights as I remembered it when we went to school together. She wore a battered leather jacket overtop a white sweater, the former unzipped and the later tight enough to hint at her large chest. Despite the cold weather a sliver of midriff was visible before black jeans, fashionably tattered. Some worn in combat boots that probably had been chosen for the chance of a hike, but maybe not. I couldn’t see the pants or the boots but they were still locked in my brain from her walking out of her house when we’d stopped to pick her up. Which I had never believed was real or would actually happen, Heather Fucking Lancaster!
It was during one of the moments that I was not checking out the beautiful blonde that I spotted the road ahead. Going from gravel to what looked like straight up dirt. No, not even dirt but freaking sand. I did not have an off road vehicle so that was not an option. It wasn’t the first time I’d pulled a U turn, Sammy glanced ahead briefly before twisting back in her seat talking to the three in the back, otherwise even paid attention to what I was turning around for.
That’s when I saw it. Halfway through the U turn on the old and quiet road where we hadn’t seen a house in maybe a mile, I saw it. It was so startling that I stomped on the brakes and stared. A hint of red at the top edge of my headlights, like some demon cyclops standing on a tree limb staring at us with a glowing red eye.
“What?” Sammy asked, looking out the window but she didn’t see it. I pointed, she still asked. “What?”
“Give me a flashlight!”
“What?” Sammy asked, still not seeing it.
“Why?” Keith hugging the box as if they were made of gold and sent a bill for eight thousand dollars a second right to his dad’s credit card.
“Just give me a…” I reached back and grabbed one out, it was too small, tossed it back in and ignoring his hiss I found a bigger one. Rolling down the window as I figured out how to turn the damn torch on, before aiming it up at what wasn’t just a tree but a rock outcropping with a tree in front of it. “That’s what.”
“Holy shit! It’s real! It’s fucking real!” Samantha had her face glued to the front window, staring up at the old stop sign that was thirty feet in the air.
******
“So that’s why they said to look for it in Fall or Winter.” Keith huffed, still amazed by it even though it was five minutes behind us.
“Yeah, during the summer it would be impossible to see with the leaves on that tree!” Sammy was equally delighted, she battered me with her flashlight a few times. Not enough to hurt but she was so tiny and scrawny that I doubted it would have hurt much even if she was swinging full tilt. “We told you it was real! We told you! And look at this path! Way out here where there aren’t any Park Rangers to make it, there is a path!”
“Which means how many people a year have to find that thing and walk up this way? Or know where it is at and use it?” I asked, but kept some other things to myself, as the others thought that over.
What I saw, what I held back because it was ludicrous, was that the leaves were off of the trail. Not perfectly a hundred percent but there were so many trees along both sides of the trail, HEAPS! But 99.9999% of the brown, red, and yellow leaves were to one side or the other of the small path. A path that was made up of dirt and rocks but also some stretches of grass. All artemisbet giriş that dotted with no more than a leaf or two every ten feet. A leaf or two that sometimes blew away on a light puff of a breeze to join their friends rotting in the depths of the forest. I wouldn’t say it was supernatural, but they would. If I pointed it out. I knew there had to be some explanation. Maybe the wind just naturally blew easier through the opening in the trees, thus clearing the path. Or something to do with the piles of leaves clinging to each other. Or something. Something logical and not “magic” as I thought they would all see it.
“Everyone doing okay?” I asked, feeling like I was betraying them all for keeping that observation to myself.
“Okay.” Keith, who I was worried about most, gave me a thumbs up.
The rest answered about the same. Sammy would have been a dozen feet ahead, if not for the dark. I could tell in the way she was walking, getting ahead a few feet, stopping momentarily to bounce with excitement as she watched us catch up. Impatience in her expression and body language but she did not say a word. I thought it was a little funny because Keith was tall with long legs and Samantha was barely five foot and tiny but she could outpace my long time best friend easily. My dark haired sister with her big bright red puffy coat on, crazily colored leggings, and a knee length orange dress on stood out for more than just her energy. I caught her looking at Heather and Keith in a way that I didn’t like, my sister was sort of plain and had never had any sort of relationship. There was times I suspected that she was gay and there was times that I suspected she had a crush on my friend. I didn’t want her and Keith to go out in case he did something to hurt her or they broke up and that would make the rest of our lives awkward. I especially didn’t want her to have a thing for Heather, because that would make it real real weird that I had a thing for the same person.
After asking my eyes went to everyone one, again and again. I was an avid hiker and while Heather was clearly still fit (Not just left-over from her track and swimming days.) probably still did jog and swim, the others were not so much. I only looked at Heather because it was nice to look at Heather. We were going up a tough trail, the fact that it switched back and forth was good, made it so we didn’t have to literally climb, but still. Keith was lumbering along, training his flashlight at every sound, real or perceived. Samantha stopped just before calling out to us to move faster, her hands sometimes moving as she silently willed us to hurry.
Faye was the most reserved, I couldn’t really tell what was going on in her head. The black girl had always been an enigma to me, ever since she came up to Keith and I in eighth grade and said she was going to be our, “Token Black Friend”. We burst out laughing and once we were done and she pointed out liking our geek t-shirts, we were friends. I’m sure both Keith and I had crushes on her, I still did if I was being honest. If I thought that she was at all interested in me I would have pushed Heather aside to ask Faye on a date with me.
Faye was beautiful, I’ll be honest and say a little of it was that she was black. That she was different from ninety percent of the women I knew in Defluer, so it instantly set her apart. Her milk chocolate skin, hair that she never bothered to straighten or change much from it’s natural curliness. It was peeking out from her knit cap at the moment, probably piled up under there in the messy bun she usually kept it in. Big dark brown eyes, glasses that I never knew if they were real or if she wore them just to ‘fit in’ with Keith and my nerdy-asses. And speaking of nerdy asses she had this delicious one, sort of pear shaped she had the most amazing junk in that trunk. But she also had more than handful sized breasts too. One of my best friends or not, I was VERY aware of her. I wasn’t “in love” with her like you saw in media, where the guy or girl said they couldn’t even be around the person anymore, but I wanted her pretty bad.
Okay, it wasn’t totally in control. There were times when I would feel like it was the tenth time in a week where I caught Keith and her hanging out, alone. That I would be jealous and want to scream out if they were fucking or not.
*****
“I told you! I fucking told you!” Sam said, hitting me on the arm was not enough for the level of excitement of seeing a yellow object looming out of the dark, she had to jump on my back.
“Hey! You crazy?” Faye asked, grabbing my arm. We were far from the edge, really, but her worry was touching, also probably spoke of her having a fear of heights.
“WE FOUND IT!” Samantha screamed, it seemed her excitement was infectious because both Keith and Heather were smiling from ear to ear.
“We found something,” Faye tucking in against me as soon as Samantha dropped off.
“Go slow! Please!” As my sister rushed away, not towards artemisbet güvenilirmi the bus but the edge.
“Keith get your phone out and document… Everything! Take pictures and video. I’m gonna do a circuit around the edge to make sure there is no way anybody could have driven a bus up here.” Samantha told him and he nodded, both him and Heather pulled out their phones.
“No signal,” Heather said.
“Me either.” Keith said.
“Nope none for me.” Then we discussed what carrier everyone was on; Heather, Sam, and I were on the same one while both Faye and Keith were on different ones. Three carriers and nobody had a signal. Sammy pointed her flashlight in her face, letting us all see her expression saying that that could mean nothing but supernatural. “Five phones and nobody has any signal at all?”
“We are out in the middle of nowhere, we had to turn around because the road literally turned to dirt.” But once more I held back, being up high should probably mean that we were above anything that would be between us and the towers.
I smiled at Faye, rebooted my phone, turned Airplane mode on and off. I didn’t really think that would help but it gave me an excuse to stand still, to ‘protect’ her. A couple minutes later all three of the others returned.
“No way up besides the path, there isn’t even another ridge nearby where something might have eroded.” Samantha held her phone out to me, she’d recorded it. Watching it on fast forward, she was right, but then again it was so dark outside of the torch light that who knew what could be there just out of view.
“It’s a fracking bus!” Keith reported, showing us the pictures from his phone after we all watched Sam’s video.
Not just a bus but a Defluer High School bus, according to the big black words on the side. It was far from ‘in pristine condition’ as had been reported, but it was in way better condition than it should have been. I was no expert but it didn’t look like one from the seventies to me, but from the freaking fifties! My grandpa had a GMC truck from 1955 in his barn that had nearly the same front end as this bus. There was rust on it, some dents and dings, the paint was faded and not bright. Trees and bushes growing up alongside it but they bent away, probably because the paint was made of lead and was slowly leeching off. The windows were fairly dirty but intact, not one that I saw was broken, super remarkable considering kids my age and younger seemed to love breaking unattended glass.
“There was a sign on the door. I wanted to wait and read it with the rest of you.” Keith said, Heather nodded, she had gone along with him and seen it.
“Okay, ready?” I asked Faye in particular but remembered to scan everybody so it wouldn’t be obvious it was her I was worried about. Her because of the height we were at.
Everyone was ready and we walked towards the bus. With all the lights we had it was really lit up. I took time to examine what Keith had not looked at. The placement of the rocks… Well for sure those gave the impression that the bus had just floated down from the sky and gently landed here. Nope, I didn’t point that out, just walked. I wanted to walk around the bus completely but that freaking note. It was duct taped to the door, then a stick was placed holding it place for when the tape wore out, which almost all of it had. Clear plastic with a folded piece of paper inside.
“Go ahead.” Sam told me, wedging her way in between Faye and I to push me at the door.
“Me?” But of course the answer was me, nobody was willing to step close to it, they all believed that it was magical so were a little afraid. I thought they were silly considering they thought it would answer their wishes, but I had to get the note.
“Read it out loud.” Samantha once I took hold of the plastic, pulled the stick away.
“That doesn’t mean anything!” I said because the second I had the note in my hand, thunder rolled. While all of them prepared to refute that a huge gust of wind came out of nowhere, which it was for sure to do up here high above anything else. It hit the other side of the bus, we were protected by the yellow-ish bulk, for the most part. It rocked on ancient springs that squeaked but showed it wasn’t rusted completely in place, it actually moved more than modern cars. After the first sway the doors opened a couple inches, loudly. Then they thumped into place, completely open with all of us staring at them, a second before another peel of thunder. This much closer so much more earsplitting. “It was the wind! It was clearly the wind.”
“Maybe we should go inside.”
“I don’t…” Keith started with a shake of his head the dark interior but rain came quick and hard, with cries and squeals we were all inside the bus before anybody even thought. I pulled the door closed as the water was blowing in from the wind which had seemed to switch where it was coming from. “You gonna try and explain that Baxter?”
“It’s autumn, there are plenty of storms and…”
“There was no rain in the forecast, that’s why we picked today to go out!” The other Baxter quickly refuted.
“That was for Defluer! We’re practically in Cydney, or Everett!” I was quick to point out that we were way out from Defluer, Defluer as we all thought of it.