Ambush

  Wyatt had called me the day after Kate and he left the manor. He said he wanted to help me clear things up, but I know he just wanted to stop me—to control me and make me feel bad about what I was destined to do. The phone conversation didn’t go well. In fact, it ended with the two of us yelling at each other.

  Big deal.

  I couldn’t control how selfish other people were. They could be helping me and experiencing what I was. Instead, they were all choosing the weak way out.

  Because I had been so good, Thomas and Millie agreed to let me take the school bus to and from school once I was reinstated in school. I was still grounded, but they were going to allow me that. It was nice of them, but I knew that deep down they were just trying to get out of having to drive me.

  So, the Monday after my three-week suspension I was standing out at the front gate of the manor, hoping that the dragons would do all right without me for the day. I had left them as much water and hay as I could possibly get them. I was also hoping that school wouldn’t be too painful. I hadn’t really been back since the bus incident, and then there had been that cornstalk problem. I usually felt good knowing that at least I would have Kate and Wyatt on my side, but now I didn’t have that.

  “Whatever,” I said, trying to act tough.

  The bus pulled up to the gate, and the door opened. I hadn’t been on a school bus since I had almost died on one. I was surprised to feel a little leery. I climbed up the few steps, and the door closed behind me.

  “Morning, Beck,” the bus driver, Steven, said nervously.

  I didn’t take it personally, seeing as Steven was nervous about everything. He was the last person I thought should ever drive a bus with kids on it.

  There were only a few people on the bus so far. I could see Kate sitting near the back next to a girl named Mindy. As I was walking down the aisle I heard a big kid with bad teeth say, “I wonder what he’ll screw up today?”

  I walked past without talking back to him. I was a bit off my game. Normally I would have never let a comment like that go without saying something, but I needed to keep my nose clean.

  I walked past Kate, keeping my eyes up and facing forward. I could see she was consciously gazing out the window so she didn’t have to look at me. It bothered me that she looked so pretty.

  I sat down in the back row and threw my backpack into the seat next to me to make sure nobody would sit there—it really wasn’t necessary, seeing as nobody would want to anyway.

  The bus stopped and picked up a few more kids. A couple of stops later, we had our full load and began heading down the winding mountain road into Kingsplot. I looked at everyone on the bus and tried to figure out where I fit in. I didn’t want to go back to school, and I had thought it would be nice not to be driven and lectured by Thomas, but now the bus felt so uncomfortable and hostile. I knew I had made mistakes, but I was beginning to feel like people were treating me unfairly. I hated the feeling in my mind.

  It was about a thirty-minute drive down the steep, twisty road before we reached the edge of Kingsplot. Students were talking and laughing as Steven carefully drove. Kate was two benches up, talking to Mindy. I couldn’t clearly hear what they were saying, but I heard the word prom.

  My chest tightened with embarrassment. I felt like a jerk for hurting Kate, but part of me was happy that we weren’t going. It was she that had broken up with me, and now she wouldn’t get to go to prom because of it.

  Kate said something about buying a dress.

  I leaned forward and tried to listen closely. I figured Kate had just bought a dress for something normal. I mean, I’m not a girl, but I know that sometimes they buy dresses.

  “ . . . Wyatt’s taking . . .”

  Wyatt was taking someone to the prom? That was more than a little surprising to me. I knew Wyatt wanted to go, but I couldn’t imagine who he had tricked into going with him.

  “He’s picking me up . . .”

  Some skinny kids with matching blond hair were talking too loudly for me to eavesdrop properly. I was getting bits and pieces, but none of it made sense. My mind was busily trying to piece together all the words I had heard—dress, Wyatt, picking. The only way I could string the words was in a way that didn’t make any sense and made me sick. Kate was going to the prom with Wyatt?

  The thought was absurd. It was like hearing someone say that all dogs now loved cats. I couldn’t believe it. I listened more.

  “It’ll be fun,” Kate said. “. . . good memory . . .”

  Good memory? That was the line I had used on her. I was the one who had informed her of the fact.

  I don’t know what got into me, but suddenly my hands were opening and closing, and the back of my neck felt like it was two hundred degrees. My eyes grew blurry, and when I blinked, all I could see was red. I felt like I was turning into a much skinnier, paler version of The Hulk.

  I stood and stomped up two rows. I looked down at Kate.

  She didn’t look surprised at all to see me, which made me even madder.

  “You’re going to the prom with Wyatt?” I asked, hating the way I sounded and hoping she would respond by laughing at how absurd the idea was.

  “I don’t know why that’s any of your business,” Kate said coolly, her blue eyes looking directly into my brown.

  I looked away from her gaze.

  “This was your choice,” Kate said without emotion.

  “You broke up with me,” I argued. “I think that was your choice.”

  “Don’t be dumb, Beck,” she said, trying to keep her voice down as everyone around us stared. “You know what happened.”

  “Beck, have a seat,” Steven yelled as timidly as he could from the driver’s seat. “All students are to stay seated.”

  I kept standing.

  “Take your seat,” he yelled a bit louder.

  I looked up the aisle toward the driver. Steven had his hands on the big steering wheel, and his eyes were facing forward. He looked up at the rearview mirror, and I could see his eyes.

  “Take your seat,” he insisted.

  I sat down in the empty seat across from Kate.

  “Can’t we talk about this?” I asked, my brain clearing just enough to know that I didn’t want it to end this way. I loved Kate, and she was very important to me. I knew that, but I was just having a horrible time convincing my mind to act right.

  Kate turned in her seat so that her legs were in the aisle and she was facing me. She leaned her head in closer as I did the same. Our noses were now only a couple of inches away.

  “Listen,” she whispered fiercely. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you had better think long and hard about it. It’s not just you that could be in danger.”

  “There’s no danger,” I whispered back. “It’s different this time.”

  “It’s not,” Kate said sadly. “You’re wrong, Beck, I . . .”

  I’d like to think that she was just about to say, “You’re wrong, Beck, I love you,” but I’ll never know because at that exact moment the bus swerved slightly, making all of us fall against each other.

  “Sorry,” Steven yelled back.

  I looked out the back window, and there, lying on the road, was a single tree. Steven had barely missed it. I turned back to Kate as everyone laughed about Steven’s driving.

  “Can we at least talk about all this?” I asked.

  Kate opened her mouth, but before anything came out, the bus swerved again, this time sending us all sliding to the right and up against each other. Everyone started yelling Steven’s name and complaining.

  I looked out the back window again. Standing in the middle of the road was a single pine tree. Unlike the first tree, however, this one was upright.

  Every hair on the back of my neck and arms stood up and screamed. Something was wrong. I looked over at Kate and tried to warn her.

  “I think we’re in trouble.”

  At that moment the bus hit what felt like two big speed bumps in a row. We all bounced u
p and down. One of the really skinny kids in the second row flew all the way to the roof and banged his head.

  I looked out the back window and saw two thin trees lying straight across the road like barriers. Kids were screaming and yelling things about Steven’s driving performance and what their parents were going to do when they told them.

  “Everyone calm down!” Steven yelled. “There’s some debris in the road.”

  Kate looked at me as if this were my fault. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said sort of truthfully.

  Two large objects hit the top of the bus, creating two huge dents. The noise of the impact popped everyone’s ears and signaled to most of us to stop holding back and scream with all our might.

  The two trees flew off the roof and rolled behind us. The long bus screeched around a tight turn, and as I was looking out the window, I witnessed a thick pine tree hurling toward the vehicle.

  “Look out!” I yelled.

  The tree slammed into the bus, cracking two windows and lifting the vehicle a couple of inches on the right side. The tires came down, and the whole bus skidded in the other direction. I could see Steven desperately trying to keep control of the steering wheel.

  “Stop the bus!” I screamed, wondering why Steven hadn’t already done so.

  Apparently the students in the bus finally agreed with me about something because everyone began to scream the same thing.

  “Stop the bus!”

  I could see how violently Steven was wrestling with the steering wheel, and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t stopping. My heart went out to him, having already been through my own bus ordeal. I didn’t feel just panic, I felt empathy. Another tree hit the opposite side of the bus. The crown of the tree shot through one of the windows and poked inside. It narrowly missed a couple of students.

  There was a new kind of screaming now as everyone moved away from the windows and into the aisle, all the while yelling, “Stop the bus!”

  A few of the tougher kids were adding swear words to their request, and some were hollering, “Landslide!”

  I knew that to those on the bus it seemed like the only explanation, but I also knew the truth. This wasn’t a landslide. Once again, nature was out to get me. Because the stone had already been planted and the dragons had hatched, I knew that wasn’t the cause. That meant the trees were out to take care of me—to kill me. I couldn’t easily see what my death would do for them, but then it struck me.

  “They want the dragons,” I said aloud.

  “What?” Kate asked, as she was balled up behind the seat.

  The road straightened out, and I could see through the front window that we were about to enter one of the few stone tunnels that the road traveled through. I thought that if we could reach the tunnel and stop inside we might be safe from falling trees for a while.

  I frantically climbed over the seats and backs of students to make my way to the front. Steven was still wrestling with the steering wheel.

  “Stop in the tunnel!” I yelled at him.

  “I can’t!” he yelled back.

  “You have to,” I said. “We’ll be safe.”

  “No,” Steven hollered. “I can’t, the brakes aren’t working. Something happened when we hit those trees.”

  The students nearest the front heard what Steven said and passed the news along in screams and yelps.

  “Push the brakes harder!” I told him, knowing personally how hard it was to stop a moving bus.

  Two of the back windows burst apart as small stones broke through the window. The trees were throwing rocks. We had to stop the bus in the tunnel or we would be beaten apart.

  “Stop the bus!” everyone yelled.

  I watched a dozen trees on the cliff in front of us rip themselves from the walls and dive down to the road we were about to drive over. The trees fell on the ground in straight lines, and the bus drove right over them, bumping and bouncing like a wild horse.

  The tunnel was only a few hundred feet away now.

  “Stop the bus, Steven!” I pleaded.

  “I can’t stop it!” Steven cried. “It won’t stop!”

  We shot into the tunnel, and everything grew dim. Everyone shut up, and for a few moments it was almost quiet as the bus hurled forward.

  I could hear myself breathing heavily, and sweat was running down my forehead into my eyes. I thought about just opening the door and jumping out. If it was me that the trees were after, then the rest of the bus might be okay. Of course, if that happened then I might die and my dragons would be left to perish underground.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  We shot out of the tunnel and continued to hurl rapidly down the mountain road. We were going fast, but Steven was doing a pretty good job keeping us on the road. This section had very few trees growing on the cliffs and for the moment nothing was hitting the bus or coming down on us. Students began to shift and move back to their seats as they whimpered and moaned.

  “Are we okay?” the big kid who had been such a jerk to me earlier asked me as I stood next to Steven.

  “I think so,” I replied.

  Steven was sweating like a cold glass of water on a hot day. His entire face was dripping perspiration.

  I glanced down the winding road and could see the second tunnel. I knew that a couple of miles below that tunnel there was a giant rocky section that would slow the bus down perfectly if we drove into it.

  “Hold on!” I told Steven. “After that tunnel is that rocky section. That’ll stop us.”

  Steven actually looked relieved as he pulled the steering wheel hard to the right to keep us in our lane.

  “Just keep the bus on the road until we get to those rocks.”

  I held onto the railing behind the driver’s seat and kept my eyes locked forward. Not a single tree or rock had assaulted us since we had come out of the first tunnel. I was hoping that maybe those trees were just warning me and that there would be no more problems today.

  Steven pulled the wheel to the left and everyone onboard flew to the side. They weren’t screaming any longer. It seemed as if we all knew how important it was for Steven to concentrate.

  The bus was gaining speed and each turn felt more violent than the last, but I could see the tunnel and knew we had a chance. Steven yanked the wheel to the right one more time and then straightened the vehicle out.

  The tunnel was up ahead.

  All of us held our breath as the bus sped into the tunnel. It was dim again, and I turned around and hollered out some instructions.

  “We just have to make it to the rocky field!” I yelled. “Everyone duck down behind their seats when we get there.”

  I really had no idea if that was what we should do, but when Kate and I had been traveling on that falling train, we had ducked down, and we were still alive. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt us to try that again.

  The bus shot out of the tunnel. We were getting lower on the mountain now, and there were clouds just fifty feet above us. I couldn’t see very far ahead, but I knew that the rocky section of land was only a few miles farther.

  Steven spun the wheel and pulled us safely through another sharp turn.

  “We’re going to make it,” he said, exhaling.

  Everyone on board began chanting Steven’s name.

  “Steven, Steven, Steven!”

  I turned and smiled at the group, and then swiveled to look ahead. We were not going to make it. Hundreds of pine trees were dropping out of the clouds and raining down on the road in front of us. It looked like the whole forest had ripped free from the ground and was now descending on us. We were nowhere near safety, and we were being ambushed.

  I screamed so that others would know they should too. Steven kept his hands on the wheel and closed his eyes. Trees bombarded the bus, slamming through windows and pounding the top like a group of angry gorillas. The bus flew up and down as it bounced over trees in the road. Rocks pelted the sides and top of the bus, c
racking and splitting all of the windows. Steven ducked as a massive tree trunk flew sideways into the front window, blowing the glass back and over all of us. I opened my eyes and could see the rocky field just off to the side.

  “Pull in!” I screamed.

  Steven turned the wheel slightly, and the bus jumped off the road and careened into the rocky field. The rocky ground grabbed the bus tires and slowed it down within a few hundred feet. Everyone flew toward me and then snapped back. I lost my grip on the rail and ended up in a ball on the steps in front of the door.