Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous by J. B. Cheaney Read Free Book Online

the image is paler and completely washed out on some of the lines. He’s not so much overweight as puffy, with a face not ugly but forgettable. He doesn’t do sports, and his grades are only so-so. While Thorn streaked through the Centerview school system in a blaze of glory, Bender just serves his time, counting the days until he can graduate. Counting hours too: by the time he graduates from high school, he figures he will have spent 1,848 hours on a school bus.
    He did the math in fifth grade. First, he palmed a stopwatch from Mr. Finagle’s office while getting a lecture for sneaking into the girls’ locker room during a gym class and stuffing all the socks in the shower drains. Then he used the stopwatch to time bus rides to and from school, every day of the week. Then he divided by five to get the average number of minutes on the bus every day, multiplied by five days per week, thirty-six weeks in the school year, for eleven years, K–10 (by eleventh grade, he planned to have his own car and never set foot on a bus again). That made a total of 1,848 hours, which broke down to:
    two months,
    two weeks,
    two days,
    and fourteen minutes,
    plus a few seconds, which he seldom counts. Seconds would matter if he were calculating a voyage to Jupiter, but for the next four years, he just wants to use up that time in ways that resemble Thorn Thompson’s career as little as possible.
    â€¢ • •
    â€œHey!” Igor blurts, stumbling to one side as Bender bumps him away from the back seat.
    â€œI saw that, Bender,” calls Mrs. B from the front, her eyes piercing the rearview mirror. “Igor, let it go—just find a seat.”
    Igor probably would have let it go on his own, since he’s about three sizes smaller and two grades younger than Bender. But when Mrs. B tells him to, he has no choice but to do the opposite and punch Bender in the stomach on his way up the aisle. Bender’s arm whips back so hard it nearly knocks Igor down. “OW!”
    â€œFight! Fight!” cheers Spencer.
    â€œBoys! Do you want me to stop this bus and come back there?”
    Igor says no, Bender says yes, but it’s kind of under his breath. Mrs. B has never Stopped the Bus and Come Back There, but she’s always threatening to. He kind of wants to know what would happen if she did, but maybe not today.
    Matthew sits in the next-to-last seat, directly ahead. Bender studies his smooth dark neck and the sharp line made by his close-cropped hair and imagines drawing the hairline a little lower with a Sharpie pen. Would Matthew even notice? The guy seems to be in a world of his own most of the time.
    Shelly has plopped down a few rows in front of Matthew while Miranda stops just past the middle. They haven’t been speaking to each other for a week, ever since Shelly’s nursing home gig—which, everybody gathers, did not go well. She’s been huffy lately: probably arguing with her folks about Shoot the Star camp (as Bender calls it). Today her nose is so far in the air she doesn’t notice he’s sitting less than sixty inches behind her.
    Bender takes the rolled-up paper from behind his ear and clicks his mechanical pencil until a two-centimeter piece of graphite breaks off. Cupping his hand carefully around the paper tube, he sucks the lead inside, takes a breath, and spits it out.
    Shelly whirls around, a hand on the back of her neck. “Bender!”
    He’s already unrolled the blowgun and is staring out the window looking bored. “What?”
    It’s perfect: just the right amount of irritation, not overdone. He’s a pretty good performer, just not in a show-offy way like her.
    â€œYou plinked me!”
    â€œ Plinked you? How?”
    Mrs. B is negotiating an S-curve and can’t spare a glance in the mirror. That tiny piece of lead is invisibly rolling on the floor and nobody can prove anything. The perfect crime. He glances around and