The Bus Ride from Hell

Hey Y'all!! What's up!!

"Okay. . .I have no idea what to write. I'm only writing in this dumb ass journal because of a court order. Picture that?!!! You save a whole bunch of lives and you get arrested and punished. It's so stupid. Well, anyways my name is Kendra Buttonwood. I'm 12 and I'm from a tiny town in Maryland that no one has ever heard of. So, about two weeks ago, I was with my 7th grade class on the way to visit some special Egyptian exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. We had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to get on the bus. It was still dark out when we boarded. We all brought a pillow from home. Like most school bus trips there was the time that we all conked out. Then there was a time when we were all awake at the same time and chatting away. I go to a teeny tiny school. Our class is only about 20 kids, so we each had a row of seats to ourselves. I was with my girls, Chanelle and Rolanda. We were talking about what we usually talked about, Beyonce. Specifically we were talking about what it would be like to be Blue Ivy Carter.

"Imagine how dope her bedroom must be?" Chanelle said. "She must have Louis Vuitton sheets on her giant canopy bed."

"Yeah, and white leather walls." I said.

"You can't have leather walls," Rolo said.

"Yes, you can. I saw it in that fancy decorating magazine that my mom gets."

"C'mon, now. You lying" Chanelle added.

"If I'm lying. I'm flying." As soon as I said that, a car just ahead of the bus hit something and flipped into the air.

"Yoooooooo!!!!" I heard Kareem say at the front of the bus. We were on the Tobin Bridge suspended 135 feet above the Mystic River and cars were swerving left and right to avoid the over turned car. In front of us a Range Rover slammed into a guardrail and we all watched in horror as a piece of the rail came loose and dropped into the river. Luckily for the driver, he managed to scramble back onto the bridge. Our bus wasn't so lucky.

The bus driver screamed "Oh shit!! as he slammed on the brakes and side swiped the guardrail knocking more of it into the river. I felt some of the tires skid off the bridge and the bus began a dangerous lean.

Mrs. Kosworth and Mr. Benheim were at the front of the bus yelling at us not to panic. My heart was nearly beating out of my chest. We were going to wind up in the Mystic River. If the fall didn't kill us then the icy January river water would have. I looked around the bus and saw some of the students crying, but many of them were crowded at the windows at my side where you could look out the window and see the murky blue water below. All the weight on one side made us lean even further.

It was about 30 degrees that day, but I felt beads of sweat collect on my forehead and the back of my neck. We were going to fall. I knew we were. We were going to fall and then half of us were going to drown in the river. There was a giant crunching sound as the guardrail completely gave way and the bus slowly tipped on its side and fell slowly off the bridge. I had no choice, but to act then. I stood up in my seat and punched through my window. I leapt and flew around the top of the bus, stopping just a few hundred feet in front. I flew at it full speed and placed both of my hands on the side and effortlessly flew it back to the bridge, placing it safely in the middle lane. Once I set it down, that's when I heard the splash. I turned around and some of the cars that the bus had slammed into were already in the river.

I didn't think. I jumped back into the air and then sped down into the river. It was colder than I expected and it took a second for me to able to see. I saw some of kinda of SUV with a guy behind the wheel and panicking. I can't fly underwater, not really, but my flight power allowed me to propel myself very fast until I was at the driver's door. I pulled it off its hinges. The man looked surprised to see me as the water rushed into his car. I broke his seatbelt and grabbed him under his arms as I propelled us quickly to the surface. I allowed both of us a minute to breathe once we broke through the water. Then I held him close, leapt through the air and flew him back on the bridge. I deposited him in front of my homeroom teacher. She gawped at me, with her mouth so wide that I could see the silver fillings in her back teeth. I didn't have time to stop and explain. I leapt back in the air, somersaulted and flew black down to just above the river. Despite what you see on TV, cars actually take a few minutes to sink below water. They are heavy machines. It's not like throwing a matchbox car in a bathtub. I saw three other cars slowly sinking into the Mystic. I moved as fast as I could. Two cars were still mostly above the water. I grabbed the white Toyota Corolla first and flew the entire car, with the family inside it, back up onto the bridge. Then I went back down and flew underneath the water to get under a VW bus. It was more of a challenge but honestly I think that for most people it would be like lifting a heavy box. I didn't strain a muscle even when I flew with it above my head and placed it safely on the bridge.

I flew back into Mystic once more to make sure that I hadn't missed any cars. Thankfully I hadn't.

When I landed back on the bridge in front of my teachers and the bus load of kids and the people that I had saved, I wasn't expecting cheers, applause, or even thanks. But I definitely wasn't expecting to be gawked at like I had done something wrong. Everyone on the bridge looked at me with suspicion. It felt as if they were all blaming me for the chaos that I had just saved them from. A part of me understood where they were coming from.

Super Heroes had only been around for about 60 years or so, but everyone was wary of them. The cops didn't like them because they tended to cause more problems whenever they intervened in a situation. Homelander of The Seven was known for stopping robberies or shoot-outs and emerging with a half dead or all dead suspect. When he intervened in the robbery of an armored truck he somehow ended up smashing the truck into the middle of the road and nearly fatally injuring the driver. The media always managed to make The Seven look like heroes, but a lot of us didn't buy it.

When my mother was little the world discovered that there were other supers who weren't part of The Seven. These could be your neighbors, your teachers, your dentist. That's when the government decided that they needed to be registered. My Nana told me that back in the 80's under President Regan (another reason that she hated him) congress passed the Super Registration Bill. Every super had to register with the government and carry a designation on their driver's license or state issued ID. The TV told us that supers that weren't registered were considered criminals and thought to be up to no good. Yes, even super powered children had to be registered.

My family (aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, and grandparents) all knew that I had superpowers. I was the only one out of the entire family. My mom told me from when I was little to never use my powers. Never. Not even in the house. Mom didn't trust the government and she said that she wanted me to have a normal childhood. Super powered kids were separated into special schools and sometimes sent to special boarding schools. They used to go to school with regular kids, but after a few accidents and a few fights between supers and normals, the parents protested and separate schools were built. Some supers like the Braithwaites of Baltimore were deemed so dangerous that they had to be sent to a special camp in order to protect society.

But I wasn't a Braithwaite. I'm Kendra Buttonwood and yet my teachers, my best friends, and the people that I had just saved looked at me like I was a criminal and the scum beneath their shoes.