Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime

  Chapter Four

  The bus, for a fraction of a second, was trapped in time. Everyone was frozen, glued to their seats (if they had managed to remain in their seats throughout the ordeal.)

  Time caught up to us and chaos reigned. Everyone pulled out phones as they cried, shouted, screamed or just wished they were anywhere on the planet just. Not. On. That. BUS!

  Our coach was giving instructions in that voice grown-ups use when a situation is rather dire. The tone of voice that is desperately trying to calm everyone down but at the same time had an underlying, hard not to notice, pitch of sheer panic.

  I didn't listen to what she was saying.

  Somehow, my mind was as sharp as a blade in danger. Calming down, I looked up and noticed the emergency exit. Standing up on the seat, I opened the small hatch covered with a thin layer of snow above my head, hoping no one heard the rusty creak.

  Nervously waiting for every head to turn in my direction, I froze. When I was convinced no one had heard me, and no one was too concerned about what I was doing right at that moment, I hoisted myself onto the cold metal of the bus roof. No one batted so much as an eyelash.

  Robyn somehow managed to crawl to the back of the bus without anyone paying any attention to her either and climbed onto the roof to join me.

  Once on the roof of the bus, the freezing, icy wind biting through our jackets, we could see the full extent of the damage.

  The bus was definitely in great peril, hanging over a cliff. I stretched my upper body far enough to see over the bus.

  My heart had a few extra inches to climb to reach my throat… it was a long drop to the bottom.

  More than half the bus was suspended over the rails, the wheels spinning in vain, the entire yellow-painted frame rocking menacingly and a horrifying sound drumming beneath us: the sound of metal groaning as the bus slid, slowly, only moments from tumbling to its doom.

  "This is bad," I said. It was the understatement of the century.

  "Well, what do we do now?" Robyn asked.

  My razor sharp mind paused, as if saying, "Yeah, that's as far as I'll take you." I shrugged. "I don't know: we need Luke here. Maybe we could—"

  "That'll take too long," Robyn cut in. "Luke and the others are in Rockwell, hours away. We have to save these people now."

  Robyn had somehow managed to keep her backpack with her throughout the disaster. She unzipped the main section and pulled out two masks, a wig of short, bouncy, brown curls and another wig: a sleek blonde bob.

  We came up with the disguises in a sad attempt to hide our identities. The black masks only covered the area around our eyes, but the wigs did a lot to throw people.

  I fitted the blonde wig over my thin, strawberry blonde hair I had tied in a small bun and carefully applied my mask.

  Robyn had really long and really thick hair. But, somehow, she managed to hide it all under the mass of bouncy curls.

  We were ready to save the day!

  Only one problem... we didn't have a plan...

  "Okay, now what?" I said. My "sharp as a blade" mind was still hitting a blank. Maybe it was the cold was affecting it.

  Robyn quietly examined the bus. The screaming from inside the bus had not yet ceased. The shouts and cries were deafening; I don't know how Robyn managed to concentrate on anything.

  "I could just move the bus back onto the road," Robyn suggested.

  "Yeah, that's good," I said in a heartbeat.

  "But that won't work," Robyn said.

  The way she said it gave me that feeling you get when a sneaky, sadistic persons pulls out a little pin and pops a balloon you were holding. "Huh? What do you mean it won't work? How can't that work?"

  Robyn pointed to the road.

  I turned around, cautiously, aware that any sudden movement could equal chaos, and looked back over the road full of cars pulling up, the drivers and passengers coming over to see what they could do or just standing at a safe distance and taking photos on their cell phones.

  "This bus is big," Robyn explained, calmly. "I can't just dump it on the road; I'd have to move all those other cars out the way first."

  "Yeah, I can see that," I agreed, nodding my head, slowly.

  "I can't believe how many people have stopped already," Robyn commented as more cars joined the dozen or so already parked.

  The bus began to quake and tip a little further over the edge. It rocked, ominously, threatening to plunge over the edge any second.

  The screams from within the bus intensified.

  Immediately, I stretched out my arms and wrapped them around the bus multiple times, until I was positive I had a firm hold on the vehicle.

  I walked backwards and stretched my legs, gradually, as I stepped off the bus. Now I was standing on the road, my arms wrapped tightly around the bus, hoping against all hope that I didn't lose my grip.

  I gritted my teeth. Buses are heavy, to say the least, and my feet were starting to slide. The bus was tipping forwards and it was intent on dragging me down with it.

  As fast as a whip, I elongated and wound my legs around a sturdy (but icy to the touch) power pole. When it didn't bend over or buckle from the extra weight, I caught my breath and told myself I was justified in feeling secure for the time being.

  The bystanders gasped, pulled out phones from pockets and handbags, and started taking videos that would go viral in a matter of seconds.

  Robyn, still standing on the roof of the bus, closed her eyes.

  "Don't just stand there; do something!" I yelled, indignantly, at my friend.

  But, as I spoke, Robyn was doing something.

  The lengthened muscles in my arms straining, I turned my head around to see what Robyn was accomplishing.

  The cars that had parked on the road, preventing us from placing the bus on the safety of the asphalt, began to rise up, as if an invisible hand was picking them up, one by one, and placing them, gently, a little further down the road.

  All together, there were about twenty cars parked on the road. Each one rose into the air, hovered for a second, and then proceeded to move itself out of the way, drifting above the heads of gawking spectators.

  The only problem was that more cars were gathering to watch the grand spectacle getting grander by the second.

  The bystanders were torn between taping the girl with the unnaturally extended arms and taping the cars that suddenly decided to just lift themselves up, with no strings attached, and plonk down a couple of metres down the road.

  "Thanks," I called to Robyn.

  She smiled. "You're welcome," she said, sweetly.

  She climbed down off the bus. "Need any help?" she asked.

  "Yeah," I said, softly. Then, with more volume and emphasis, "DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO HELP ME GET THIS BUS BACK ON LAND!"

  Robyn stood next to me and concentrated, hard, on moving the bus with her thoughts alone.

  She did as much as she possibly could to move the bus with her mind but she was tiring after moving all the cars.

  Our powers were still quite young. And, as System explained every so often, we didn't get our powers in the proper, traditional way. You aren't supposed to jump into a pool of Amepips. It's a long, scientific process I can't dream of understanding.

  With a lot of huffing and puffing, gritted teeth and clamped, shut eyes, I was able to heave the bus a couple of inches over the broken, useless rails.

  My elongated arms were starting to lose their strength. I nearly let the bus slip. The bus rocked, dangerously. The girls on the bus, who had put a pause to their screaming for a few moments to crowd at the back of the bus and watch the daring rescue, started up their fits of screaming murder again.

  I looked, indignantly, over my shoulder at the bystanders. They just... stood there, as if someone had glued them to the frozen asphalt.

  "You all do really good impressions of trees!" I yelled out, hotly. "Put those muscles to work and HELP US OUT ALREADY!"

  My little motivational speech
dissolved the glue.

  Robyn focussed harder, I wrapped my arms around the bus another lap for extra strength and some strong (as well as some not-so-strong but willing) guys, who had been watching, slack-jawed; moved in, unwrapped my legs from around the pole and added their strength to the equation, pulling with all the might they could muster.

  I was concentrating so hard on pulling up the bus and not letting go, I barely noticed the crowd of photographers and journalists that arrived on the scene, swarming like the bees that day at the zoo.

  My strained, racing mind spared a few moments to wonder how the news crews had managed to turn up so fast.

  Cameras started flashing and clicking; journalists started, immediately, to write notes; and television reporters started to retell the events of the past twenty minutes in their serious, "This is actually happening," voices; staring intently into the lens' of the numerous cameras.

  I cannot say how long it took, but we got the bus back onto the frosty asphalt with a great deal of huffing, puffing, gritted teeth, grunting and a few vain efforts.

  But we succeeded, eventually.

  I will forever remember the satisfaction of hearing the black, rubber tyres land on Terra Firma.

  My arms were so sore and tired after that, they were barely able to withdraw to their original length.

  I was exhausted and I was anticipating a lot of pain when I woke up in the morning. I glanced over at Robyn who looked like she had the headache to end all headaches.

  The look we exchanged said we were both ready to collapse. Still, we had just saved the day, as heroes do. We were two, not-so-ordinary teenage girls who just saved the day. Despite the fatigue, we found ourselves laughing that inexplicable laugh people laugh when they just did something they never thought they could manage.

  We high-fived each other. "That was crazy," I said to my friend.

  We were ready to leave the scene, find a hidden spot to remove our disguises and hopefully sneak back as if nothing had happened.

  But before we even caught our breath, journalists and reporters swamped us, scrambling to ask questions, listen to the answers and then write them down as fast as possible.

  "Can you tell us where you were before you arrived here?"

  "Did you really just stretch?"

  "How did those cars move and did you have anything to do with it?"

  "Where did you come from?"

  "What did it feel like to save that bus-load of teenagers?"

  "Why are you here?"

  And then, the one question I knew they would ask, but sincerely hoped they wouldn't:

  "Who are you?