Glory Girl

by Betsy Byars

  For the past five minutes Anna had been watching the car lights coming closer. She had now begun to wonder if it really could be Uncle Newt’s car. She had the feeling that Uncle Newt would have stayed back, merely kept the bus in sight. This car was moving steadily closer.

  Anna got up. Holding onto the seats, she made her way forward. She slipped into the seat opposite Angel. “Angel?”

  “What?” Angel did not open her eyes.

  “What did Uncle Newt’s car look like?”

  “Ancient.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Rusty, junky, falling apart. The first time I saw it I thought it had been abandoned. Then I saw him behind the wheel.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  Anna went back to the window. The car was even closer now. In the glow of the headlights she could see the sleek hood, the high chrome bumper, the smooth paint. “It’s not him,” she said to herself.

  She raised her eyes. Farther back on the road, she saw the lights of another car, but Anna didn’t have much hope that that would be Uncle Newt either. She leaned her head against her arms and closed her eyes.

  The rocking movement of the bus was putting her to sleep when a light in her face startled her. She opened her eyes.

  The car was directly behind the bus now. Anna straightened. She thought at first that the car was going to pass, but it was too close. She leaned against the glass for a better view. At that moment she recognized the boy in the plastic jacket. He was beside the driver, leaning forward, grinning up at the bus. His drooping eyelids made slits of his eyes. He turned to the driver, said something, laughed.

  For a moment Anna froze. There was something sinister about the boy’s expression. She remembered the look in his eyes at the restaurant, the anger in his voice as he had said, “Nobody calls me a punk.”

  She got up. Swaying, she made her way quickly up the aisle. “Dad?”

  “Don’t bother your father,” Mrs. Glory said in a strained voice. The windshield wipers were acting up again. Each time they slowed, her pulse quickened.

  Mr. Glory did not look around. He was lighting another cigarette from the one he had just finished smoking.

  Anna sat down in the seat behind him. “Dad, those guys are behind us.”

  “What guys, Anna?” Mrs. Glory asked. Anna had her attention at last.

  “The ones in the restaurant. You know, Mom, the ones who came over to our table, the ones Dad yelled at?”

  “Did you hear that, John?” Mrs. Glory leaned across the aisle anxiously. Her round knees punched into the opposite seat.

  “I heard.”

  “Dad, I think they’re going to try something.”

  “What, Anna?” Mrs. Glory asked.

  “I don’t know—force us off the road or something. They’re too close.”

  Mr. Glory’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror to check the headlights of the car behind. Then he stepped on the gas. Mrs. Glory clasped her hands over her heart as the bus began to shimmy. Danger was everywhere now—in the sluggish windshield wipers, the boys behind them, the trembling bus. “Please, John,” she moaned.

  “Please what? Please let those punks run us off the road?”

  “We don’t know that’s what they’re going to do. Maybe they’re in a hurry. Maybe they want to pass.”

  “They can pass if they want to,” Mr. Glory snapped. “They have room.”

  “John, they don’t. Slow down and move over a little. Please!”

  With his lips clamped on his cigarette, Mr. Glory glanced down at the speedometer. He eased up on the gas pedal. Forty-five … forty … thirty-five … thirty …

  Anna glanced from the speedometer to the back of the bus where the lights of the other car lit up the window.

  “If they wanted to pass,” Mr. Glory said beneath his breath, “they’d pass. Pass, you punks!”

  “What’s happening?” Joshua asked, rising from his sleeping position. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Anna said. “Just some boys trying to be funny.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing, just—”

  Joshua scrambled down the aisle and looked out the back window. “It’s a Thunderbird,” he called. He knew cars. His voice rose. “And it’s getting ready to bump into us!” At that moment the Glorys felt the jarring thud as the car struck the back of the bus.

  The Rockford Accident

  THE JOLT FLUNG THE Glorys forward and then backward in their seats. Angel’s eyes snapped open. Matthew awoke as he hit the seat in front of him. The sound of Mrs. Glory’s sharp scream hung in the air long after they had recovered.

  “John, pull over,” Mrs. Glory said then in a soft, pleading voice, her hands again over her heart. “Stop. Let them pass.”

  Mr. Glory did not answer. His eyes darted from the rearview mirror to the road ahead.

  “What’s happening now?” Anna called back to Joshua. He was at the window again, his forehead against the cold glass.

  “Nothing,” he reported. “The Thunderbird’s still there, and it’s not slowing down. They’re blowing the horn!” His last words were lost in the long, arrogant blast of the car’s horn.

  “John, please!”

  At the wheel of the Glory bus, Mr. Glory started to tremble. This was something he had never been able to control. All his life the combination of helplessness and fear had caused his bones to rattle. As a boy his nickname had been “Shaky.”

  “John!” Mrs. Glory cried sharply. She moved to the edge of her seat. She felt she had lost her husband’s attention. He seemed to be in a trance. “John!”

  “He’s coming at us again!” Joshua called.

  The Glory family tensed. Anna braced herself against the back of her father’s seat. Her knuckles were white.

  “Hold on,” Mrs. Glory cried.

  The jolt came then, hard. Anna’s head was flung against her father’s seat. She heard her mother scream, heard Joshua yell as he was thrown backward into the aisle. She straightened. In the pale light from the dashboard her eyes were wide with her own fear.

  She wet her dry lips. “Maybe we should pull over, Dad.”

  Anna put her hand on her father’s shoulder as she spoke, and she felt him trembling. It was as frightening as feeling stone tremble. “Dad?” She had never thought of her father as anything but hard and unyielding. She said again, “Dad?”

  Mr. Glory did not answer. His shoulder jerked as he reached down to shift gears, again as he clutched the steering wheel. And beneath was the terrible shivering, as if his very bones had turned to ice. Anna was more alarmed by this than she was by the boys behind them.

  “Dad, are you all right?”

  As she leaned forward, waiting for his answer, Joshua screamed, “He’s coming at us again!”

  Instantly Mr. Glory steered the bus to the right in a desperate attempt to avoid the jolt. Anna was thrown sideways. Behind them, tires screeched.

  “That stopped them,” Joshua yelled in triumph. “They missed!”

  “For now,” Matthew added. Both boys were at the back of the bus now, peering with white faces at the car behind them.

  “I don’t believe this,” Matthew added. “Why doesn’t he leave us alone?”

  Joshua said, “I told you we needed a CB. We could call the police!” Joshua was holding onto the seat with both hands now, swaying as wildly as if he were riding a bucking horse.

  “He’s coming again!”

  “Dad, he’s coming!”

  Mr. Glory strained forward. His shoulders flexed as he steered to the right again. This time he went too far. Anna felt the front wheel slip off the crumbling blacktop and onto the soft earth. Mr. Glory yanked the wheel to the left.

  The bus wavered on the edge of the road, swerving back and forth. The headlights shone first on the trees to the left, then on the stone bank on the right. The Thunderbird passed, sending a spray of water up onto the windshield.

  At that moment the windshield wipers stopped
. Mr. Glory peered blindly over the steering wheel. The world was lost in a sheet of water. He hit the brake. For what seemed an eternity the bus wavered.

  Anna, with her hand on her father’s shoulder, knew the exact moment when her father lost control of the bus. He was pulling the steering wheel to the left with all his strength, and the bus turned to the right.

  Anna gasped as the bus went completely off the road. A flash of lightning lit up the world, and Anna saw trees looming ahead.

  For a moment the top-heavy bus swayed in the soft earth. Mr. Glory clung to the useless steering wheel, braced for the crash.

  Before Anna buried her head in her arms, the windshield wipers swept across the windshield for one last time, and Anna saw the trees directly ahead. She held on for dear life.

  Overturned

  THE HEAD-ON CRASH ANNA expected did not happen. At the last moment the bus ground-looped. Skidding in the soft, slick earth, it hit the trees sideways.

  There was the awful sound of metal scraping against wood, and a pause. Then, with a terrible slowness, like a prehistoric animal dying, the Glory bus turned over onto its side. It rested against trees, which bent beneath the weight.

  The shock jarred Anna from her seat. She plunged across the bus and landed against the opposite window, her shoulder jammed into the cold glass. Drums overturned and crashed against the side of the bus. People screamed.

  Then Anna was aware only of the sound of the bus motor, still running, of tires spinning uselessly in the air. The noises gave her a strange, almost safe feeling, as if the bus were trying to straighten itself and drive on as before.

  Anna raised her head. The headlights from the Thunderbird were shining on the bus now, and in that light Anna could see her mother beside her. Beyond, Angel was trying to sit up, and her father, somehow still suspended in the driver’s seat, was struggling to free himself.

  In the back of the bus one of the twins called, “Help!” The other, upside down, called a weaker, “Me, too!”

  Leaning forward, Anna heard the screech of tires as the Thunderbird drove away. The sound of the engine faded away in the distance. The light was gone with it, and the Glorys were left with only the dim glow from the dashboard.

  “Kids?” Mrs. Glory called. Her weak voice was almost lost in the sound of the racing bus engine. The engine was running stronger now than it had ever done on the road.

  “I’m all right,” Anna answered. “I’m right beside you.”

  “Angel?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Boys?”

  Before the twins could answer, one of the trees that the bus was leaning against snapped. The sound was as sharp as gunfire. The front of the bus dipped alarmingly. Then there was another crack. A second tree bent and broke.

  Anna’s hands flew up as she felt the bus sliding over the embankment to the creek below. She screamed. She tumbled backward.

  The bus thudded onto its top. It slid, hit a tree, hesitated for a moment, and rolled over again. Then it began its drop down the long steep bank.

  Anna’s body was being battered around the inside of the bus as if she were a toy. She screamed as she was slammed into the side of the bus. She struck a seat, felt another body fall against her back. She struck metal, glass, bit through her lip as her face smashed into the floor.

  She screamed again and again. She heard other screams, too, but these human sounds became lost in the terrible metallic groans of the bus as it slammed down the rugged bank.

  Nothing could stop it. It crashed into rocks. It flattened brush. It tore the limbs off trees. It turned over again.

  Then there was one last earsplitting splash, followed by a moment that sounded like silence because the only noise was that of water against the bus.

  The Glory bus had come to rest in the creek. It was upside down. The front of the bus was slowly sinking into the rain-swollen waters; the back was in the air. The whole thing seemed about to go underwater at any moment.

  The current rushed around the bus. The bus was lifted for a moment and carried forward. It came to rest jammed against some rocks.

  Inside the bus Anna lay where she had fallen. She was in the front corner of the bus, crumpled on her side. She opened her eyes.

  She could not see anything. The darkness was absolute. Anna blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The darkness continued. There was not even the memory of light.

  It was like the time Anna had gone into a cave. The Glorys had been on their way home from a performance in Virginia and, on the twins’ urging, they had stopped at Endless Caverns.

  Deep within the cave, the guide had cut off the lights for a moment. The darkness had been so awesome that everybody fell silent. No one moved. Even the twins, who had planned to play tricks on each other in the dark, were still standing stockstill when the lights came on again.

  Anna put her hand to her eyes. Pain shot through her shoulder, and she dropped her hand limply to her side.

  As she lay there, stunned, not sure where she was or what had happened, a streak of lightning jagged in the sky. It repeated itself, turning the world white with a light brighter than the sun.

  Anna, her eyes wide with shock and fear, looked out on a world literally turned upside down. The seats of the bus were overhead. The lightning flashed beyond them. She lay on the ceiling. Darkness and, somehow, water were below.

  The darkness came again, merciful this time. And Anna closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.

  Dark Water

  WHEN ANNA OPENED HER eyes again, her body was still twisted into the same corner of the bus. She did not know where she was. She did not even remember that she had, five minutes before, opened her eyes and in a flash of lightning seen the upside-down world.

  She stretched one trembling hand out into the darkness. She felt nothing familiar. The only sound was the rushing of water close by. There was nothing familiar in that, either.

  Suddenly she heard someone moan. “Who’s there?” she cried sharply.

  There was no answer.

  Anna shifted. She struggled to lift her head, and nausea swept over her. Her head throbbed. The taste of blood was in her mouth. Icy fingers wrapped around her ankles.

  “Mom?” Anna reached out and touched slivers of broken glass. She rubbed her fingers over the glass, wondering what it was. She touched cloth. Her fingers curled around the fabric.

  “Mom?”

  It was not her mother, only one of the costumes, fallen from its hanger. It clung wetly to her hand.

  The icy water was sweeping higher. It was above her ankles now. She shuddered with cold and pulled her feet out of the water. She paused and listened. Someone was moaning.

  Anna crawled forward. She touched someone in the dark—and gasped. “Who’s there?” Her teeth were chattering now. No answer. “Who are you?”

  Anna ran her fingers over the still face. “Is that you, Mom?”

  The icy water had risen about her feet again. As Anna tried to crawl out of it, lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The lightning turned the world white again, and Anna paused, frozen with horror.

  She saw her surroundings then so vividly that the image would be burned into her brain forever. The upside-down bus. Her mother’s still profile. Her father, suspended upside down in the driver’s seat, his arms hanging over his head as if in surrender. The costumes on the dark water. The body of Angel, her arm laid gracefully on the costumes, her long hair trailing into the water.

  Then darkness came and Anna clawed her way forward. As she knelt over her mother’s body, she suddenly heard a new sound, a rapping. It made no sense. “Mom, can you hear me?”

  She thought she heard her mother speak. She bent her head closer. “Mom!”

  It was then that she saw a light at the back of the bus. She looked up, squinting. A thin beam of light was shining around the inside of the bus, touching on the costumes, sliding over Angel’s pale face, Mr. Glory’s arms, then on her own face.

  “Is some
one there?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear and hope.

  The small circle of light was turned backward to shine onto a round face. Anna blinked. The face seemed far away, something at the end of a long tunnel.

  “It’s me,” a voice called. “It’s Uncle Newt.”

  Anna knelt where she was. She watched as Uncle Newt crawled into the bus, the beam of his flashlight bouncing over the walls, the dripping seats. He came toward her, his feet sliding on the slick, wet ceiling.

  “You all right?” He shone the light into her pale face. She nodded.

  “Well, you’re going to have to help me, honey. Can you move?”

  Anna nodded again. Uncle Newt stuck his flashlight under one arm and helped her sit up.

  “What happened?” she asked. “I can’t remember anything.”

  “You had an accident. Some boys run you off the road. I knew what they were up to, but I couldn’t stop them. Can you move your legs?”

  “I think so. My feet are numb.”

  “By the time I caught up with you, the bus was off the road and them punks leaving. I got there to see you disappear down the bank.”

  Anna swayed, and Uncle Newt caught her around the shoulders. He said again, “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I looked down the bank and saw where the bus was at—well, I thought you were goners.”

  “Where are we?”

  “In the creek. The bus is upside down. That’s why everything looks so strange, why the water is—” He broke off. “Right now we got to get you and your folks out of here.”

  “I can make it,” Anna said. “You look after the others.”

  “The trouble is I need your help. Can you take your mother on this side?”

  “I don’t know—I—”

  Anna lost her footing on the slick surface and went down on one knee. “Easy does it.” Uncle Newt helped her up.