"I need to know what happened. I've been told that Steve let you all out of the bus in some park."
     The man with the suit and no tie was accompanied by the school disciplinarian who was cueing his eyebrows and appearing self-consciously bland, as if he weren't psychotic. "This gentleman owns the school bus company. He has some questions for you."
     "You," the man said, having scanned the entire population of the bus before reaching the face that looked the most despondent, the person most obviously ready to crack at the slightest provocation--That was me. 
     "Did he let you off of the bus?"
     "He wanted us to line up in military formation for this thing he wanted to do and--"
     "Did he let you out of the school bus to do that?"
     "We were supposed to salute and say 'Bus 22 is number one.'"
     "Did he or did he NOT...let you off of the bus!"
     "Yes, he let us off, but it was--"
     "That's all I need to know."
     The two men skipped down the steps and out across the parking lot, their jackets fluttering.
     The driver shut the door with a clap and my face tingled, as if the repressed back-bus chatter were scrimmaging there until the coast was clear.
     "Well. I'm probably gonna get fired now."
     My head ticked as it was prone to ticking when the universe demanded absolute stillness.  I dug at the folds of my gym bag. I could see him in the big rectangular rear view mirror. He was looking at me.
     "That was all it took was to hear from that one guy (me) that I let y'all out of the bus. I was just tryin' to do somethin' nice, somethin' 'bout bein' number one."
     He started the engine. His face was the mirror, two eyes and the brim of a hat like the inverse, cartoon view a mouse would get if it were to crawl inside of his ear. The mirror liquefied with the vibration of the engine. In unison, we joylessly hopped over bumps and leaned into turns. He continued lamenting aloud, but none of us could see his mouth. Maybe he had stopped talking and was broadcasting his thoughts. The coil of the CB swung freely. When his eyes weren't watching the road, they were watching me. Eventually, he seemed to neglect the road entirely, as if the shadows falling across my face were navigation enough.
      At my stop, which was second to last, the bus hissed to a halt and I walked up the aisle with restrained urgency. If I had simply run, he may have tripped me, or shut the door at the last moment. So I mottled past, catching a final glimpse of his face, which was  worn and itchy looking. His presence seemed to be sighing, not in a lugubrious way, but like someone who had just finished an inconsequential task, like clipping his toenails, and was wondering what to do next: go to sleep or think about cars. He was still looking in the mirror, possibly at my empty seat.
     I hit the pavement and walked in the manner of John Travolta with his can of paint, (It was a defense mechanism, the remedy to being eleven years old, a panacea to either sputtering hysterics or proclaiming that your stomach feels squishy--ie walking away from a headlock or walking out of  Footloose) and did not look back.
   Actually I looked back after ten steps or so. The final passenger turned his head and regarded me blankly. I wondered if there were some other world to live in, if Steve was about to go there. (A place where number 22 could in fact be number one) I wondered if my house was still the same color, if the television would still work when I got home.