by Rosie DiLeonardo
“RINGGGG! RINGGGG! RINGGGG!” The alarm sounds as Annabella opened her eyes. She rubs her head and rolls onto the floor with a thud. She crawls into the bathroom.
“Oh, Annabella. Poor, poor, Anabella. She has to get up at 6:30!” her mom says. Annabella sighs.
“Stop being a drama queen! People have to wake up early every day! Now brush your teeth and get in the shower,” said her mom.
“Okay.” Annabella sighs. She brushes her teeth, hops into the shower, and scrubs her long brown hair. She didn’t want to go to school, but she had to. She had a math quiz. And she didn’t study. But then she realizes she has her field trip today!
“ANNABELLA!!!” Her mom shouts from the kitchen. “YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR YOUR FIELD TRIP!”
Annabella quickly brushes her hair and gets dressed. On her way out of her room she grabbed her phone, and the signed permission slip to go on the trip to a water park. She had her bag packed with sunblock, a beach towel, her bathing suit, her lunch, her water bottle, her cover up, and a little pouch of money just in case.
She checks the bus tracking app and grabs her extra change of clothes in case these ones got wet and stuffs them into the drawstring bag of stuff. She slips the permission slip inside too. She squeals and jumps up and down at the thought of spending the whole day at a water park with all her best friends. She and her best friend Jenna had been planning it forever. They are going with their entire friend group, which includes of course Jenna then, Lyla, Sadie, Autumn, and Amber. Lyla and Autumn are twins. Annabella sent out a quick text to their group chat.
Annabella: I’m about to get on the bus to go to school. Wait for me at the entrance!
Amber: I can’t go. I’m sick. I’ve been throwing up all night.
Lyla: Me either. 😖Autumn and I have to go to our uncle’s funeral.
Autumn: 😭😭😭
Jenna: My mom won’t let me go!
Annabella: Who will I go with???!!!
Jenna: IDK! I’m soooo sorry! It was a last-minute decision! I went downstairs and my mom just said that she didn’t want me to go!
Annabella slams down her phone without bothering to respond. What kind of friends are they??? Leaving her all alone on a field trip to the coolest place ever?
“Mom? Is it too late to cancel going on the trip?”
“Why? Did everyone else cancel?” her mom asks.
“Yeah.”
“We can’t cancel now! We have already paid! I’m sorry! You will just have to go.”
“UGHHH!!”
“Don’t grumble at me, young lady. Now go. You’ll miss your bus.”
Annabella checks the bus tracking app. The bus is on her street! She grabs a Pop Tart and bolts out the door. She held the Pop Tart in her mouth while running to the bus and holding both of her little brother’s hands. Her little sister follows behind, cramming a piece of toast slathered with butter and jam into her already-full-of-peanut-butter-mouth.
Annabella has triplet siblings. Her little sister Joanie and her little brothers Oliver and Lewis are 6 years old and in kindergarten. Annabella is 13 in 8th grade. Before the triplets were born, Annabella was shy and timid. She didn’t talk in class, and she didn’t have many friends. After the triplets were born, she felt like she had a responsibility. She started to be more outgoing, and she talked more. She isn’t very shy anymore. The triplets had changed her. Her Pop Tart broke, and fell to the ground, leaving only the part she is holding in her mouth.
“Great,” she says dryly.
She found a seat on the bus, and Joanie slid in next to her. Oliver and Lewis sat next to each other, across from Annabella and Joanie. The kindergarteners were going to the water park too. The whole school was supposed to be going, other than the kids whose parents didn’t let them go.
On the bus, everyone was talking. Annabella sat in silence, staring at her phone. She watches video after video, scrolling mindlessly. They pulled up to the school and got off the bus. Annabella went to first period, and Lewis, Oliver, and Joanie went into their kindergarten classes. 30 minutes later, they announced the buses. All the kids who were going left their school backpacks in class, and only carried their drawstring bags with their water park things. Annabella joined her siblings on the line onto the bus. She and her siblings climbed onto the bus, and the air was moist. No one is talking. It smells musty. And there is a different bus driver from that morning.
“Hello. I will be your field trip bus driver,” the bus driver says. She smells bad. She had a bottle of beer in the cup holder. She sat down, and the bus lurched forward.
“Darn! No gas! I forgot to fill up,” the bus driver says. They pull into an empty gas station, and the bus driver tells a girl to go pump gas. That’s not allowed, but the girl goes anyway. The tank fills, and the bus driver starts to back out of the gas station, but there is a loud crunch, and a scream. The bus driver gets out to see the girl on the ground. She didn’t get back on the bus. She’s dead.
As the driver gets back on the bus, Annabella whips out her phone. She calls her mom. No signal. She calls again. Still no signal. The bus driver smiles a wicked smile, her lips displaying yellow brown teeth, chipped and crooked. Then the driver burps and turns around. She is drunk. She revs the engine and starts to drive. Joanie whimpers. Annabella left her siblings with an older girl as she ran to the front of the bus.
“You’re drunk! Stop driving! We could get hurt! You just killed someone!” she yells.
The bus driver says, “You are my witnesses. And people will kill me if they know what I did. So, I have to kill you! That way there is no evidence. People will think we crashed, and everyone died. No messy crime scene to investigate! Just a poor old bus driver who has to carry the fake guilt of crashing a bus full of kids.”
Annabella turns around in distress. She pounds the dashboard.
“STOP THE BUS!”
The bus driver steps on the brakes hard. The driver gets up and turns around slowly.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Sit down and shut up!”
Annabella walks back to Oliver, Lewis, and Joanie, her face flushed but her eyes never off the bus driver. She picks up Joanie and holds her brothers close to her. Another girl walks up to the front. The bus driver screams: “DO WHAT I TOLD YOU TO DO. I AM THE ADULT HERE, AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I SAY!”
The bus driver reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a knife. Everybody on the bus screams. Joanie starts crying. An older group of boys run to the front and tackle the bus driver. They pulled the knife away. One boy bent over, and he clutched his chest. Blood spills out onto his hands. He collapses and groans. Annabella saw a slice through his stomach. He is going to die. And he did. But no one seems to notice, they are so scared. His mouth hung open. A tear rolls down Annabella’s cheek. She didn’t know this boy. But what did that matter? He is dead. A living breathing person had been killed. An innocent person is killed for no reason. She couldn’t let it happen again.
The bus driver screams at the boys. The oldest one held the knife in his hand. “Back up. Don’t come near the kids. Don’t touch them!” he demands. He shelters the littlest kids.
He is willing to cover them, even if it means sacrificing himself. Why can’t I be like that? I want to be like that. I want to be able to protect my brothers and my sister, Anabella thinks.
Then the boys are back on top of the bus driver. They roll down the aisle, scratching and screaming. Blood is on the bus driver’s face. The bus driver passes out. But the boys still couldn’t unlock the bus doors. The oldest one climbs into the driver’s seat and puts his foot on the gas. The bus sped up. Annabella’s head hits the seat behind her.
The bus driver is going to wake up. Annabella thinks. One boy looks at the driver rising and clonked her right in the head with his fist. His knuckles hit the bus driver’s temple and her head hit the floor. As he struck her head, his wrist snapped in the wrong direction. He screams in agony and clutches his wrist in his cradled arm like a baby.
Meanwhile, the boy who is driving turns of course does not have his license. He is swerving all over the road. It isn’t a busy road, but there are some cars behind and in front of them. They honk their horns and get out of the way.
Joanie cries, and Lewis and Oliver are holding onto each other. Annabella drew them in closer and told them, “It’s going to be alright.” But she isn’t sure. She had to make it work for them though. The bus swerves. Her head shot back. She hit her head against a seat.
Blackness. Pain. Screams. Blackness. Pain. Screams. Repeating. The noise got louder and louder until her head felt like it was going to explode. She covered her ears. She felt a bump on the back of her head and ran her fingers over it. Dry blood had crusted and fell off. How long had she been unconscious? Where is Joanie, Lewis, and Oliver? Where is everyone else? Where are the police and ambulances? She looked out the window of the bus. The glass is shattered, and the bus has hit a tree. She is alone on a wrecked bus; her siblings are missing. She checks and her phone is broken. She stares at the shattered screen and tries to turn it on. The screen stays black.
Annabella climbed off the bus and looked all around her.
I’m gonna die out here!!! She thinks to herself. She runs into the brambles, screaming for her siblings, or anyone else that’s outside. Crashing noises. Footsteps. Annabella freezes.
“Who is it?”
“Joanie Marks. Who are you? Annabella?”
“Joanie!!! It’s me, Annabella! Where are Louis and Oliver?”
“They’re right behind me. We can’t find anyone else. Can you call mommy?”
The two boys run out of the bushes and embrace Annabella.
“I tried to call her. My phone is broken. We need to walk back to the school. It’s only half a mile. I’ll carry anyone.”
“Oliver is tired. Carry him.”
Annabella reaches down and picks up her little brother. She hugs him tight.
“I’m very glad that you three were smart enough to stay together.”
Her stomach twists as she remembers all that had just happened. She realizes that the bus driver is still out there with everyone else.
“We have to save everyone else.” She reached into her pocket to get her phone. She saw the cracked screen. It wouldn’t turn on. She continued to hold Oliver, and Joanie and Louis held each other’s hands. Annabella shifts Oliver to her hip to grab Joanie’s hand. Then they ran into the woods. She sees a trail of footprints. She hesitates and then follows them. Lewis points out the bus driver.
“Hey look! It’s someone in the woods!” Louis says in a loud voice.
The bus driver turns around but doesn’t see them. Annabella crouches and puts Joanie on the ground and whispers, “Stay low. Don’t move, don’t make a sound.”
They lie on the ground and the bus driver grumbles and walks back to the side of the road. Annabella and her siblings ran low. They came to a clearing and heard a sound. They searched the bushes. Annabella looks behind a shaggy bush and sees a group of kids huddled together.
“It’s me, Annabella!” Annabella whispers. They slowly uncurl and stand up one by one.
One boy says, “Does anyone have a working phone? Mine is still on the crashed bus!”
A girl says, “I do!”
The boy dials 911. The police picked up the phone. “911 what’s your emergency?” The voice asks.
The boy tells the whole story, and the 911 operator tells him the police are on the way. Then the girl takes her phone back and sends her location and a video of the bus driver to the police.
“You have a video of her?” Annabella asks.
“Yeah, I started recording when the bus driver started talking about getting rid of us as witnesses.”
Everyone stares at her and then a boy says, “Wow, man. You saved us. I don’t think the police believed us.” Everyone starts thanking her. Then a siren blares in the distance.
“They’re coming!” Annabella yells. She led everyone to the road as four police cars and a bus pulled up. Everyone scrambled into the bus as the police drove down the road toward the bus driver sitting on the curb. They stepped out of their cars, and handcuffed the bus driver. Everyone cheers.
Epilogue
Annabella and the triplets told their mom the whole story at the police station. Their mom just stood there, mouth open, and then she frantically called their dad and started screaming into the phone in a wild relief that all the children were safe. At the police station, all the other kids called their parents to come pick them up. Even though the phones were pressed to the kid’s ears, you could hear each parent scream through the phone.
After they had gotten home, they watched the news and the bus driver being pushed into the police car, and when the students filed onto the buses. Annabella and her mom decided she would never go on another field trip again!
© 2024 Rosie DiLeonardo All rights reserved.
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