Four Three Two One by Courtney Stevens

Author:Courtney Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

34. RIDE, SALLY, RIDE.

$78,880.00

A middle-aged bus driver hunched over the end of the counter. He ate sausage links like he’d never eat again, and when I climbed atop the stool beside him, he didn’t notice. I watched as he tapped his paper check with his yellowed fingernails. “Bus driver eats for free,” he reminded the waitress. He had not one but two cigarettes above his left ear.

“Um, sir,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said, the words stretched with a Midwestern accent.

“My gran’s considering a bus tour to Philadelphia, and I wondered if I might hop on your bus and check the seats for her. She had a hip replacement.” I feigned deep concern. “We all want her to go, but we’re worried. You could ease our minds.”

“Sure, kid. Lemme hoover this down, and I’ll unlock her.”

I nodded and swiveled in the opposite direction so he wouldn’t feel pressed. Rudy was there. He gave me a cheesy smile I couldn’t return. My stomach was roiling from the sausages and the idea that I was about to be up close and personal with a bus. I put my chin on the counter and took a deep breath.

“Ya ready, kid?”

“She is,” Rudy answered, thrusting out his hand.

The man popped the cigarette he was holding into the corner of his mouth and shook Rudy’s hand. “You the brother?”

“I’m the friend,” Rudy answered.

He slapped Rudy on the back and said, “Good on you. Let’s head outside to Sally. Ya know, like ‘ride, Sally, ride.’” He laughed heartily at his own joke and slapped Rudy between the shoulder blades again.

Rudy tugged me off the stool and we followed the driver out the front door. The smell of tobacco wafted toward our nostrils and Sally beamed in the late-afternoon sun. Her diesel engine ran like a purring jungle cat. When I closed my eyes, the image distorted. The bus flipped sideways. Melted metal. Crumpled steel. Burning skin. Rudy screamed.

When I opened them again: the aqua-blue bus, the black steering wheel, the gray, swaying steps. Cigarettes and diesel.

Closed. A bus in pieces. I touched my side, blood escaped from a hole near my hip.

Opened. An empty, innocuous charter bus. Ride, Sally, ride.

The driver, who had by now told us that his name was Dennis and that he was married with five kids and he’d once been a rodeo clown in Fort Worth, stepped clear for me to enter. “I’ll have to pat you down when you leave,” he said, but he took an embroidered hankie from his back pocket and pressed it into my hand. “Nose is bleeding, tiger. Don’t drip on the seats.”

“You don’t have to do this. Caroline’s daring you because you dared her.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“What if something happens to you in there?”

“I have to make it up there before we worry about that.”

Rudy accepted this answer with grace. His lip even curled into a smile. “Ride, Sally, ride,” he said, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the joke. The bottom step lay six inches away. The standard-issue grooved rubber flooring from Bus #21 covered the three-step well.

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