Ms. Bixby's Last Day (14 page)

My jaw drops.

I can hardly believe our luck.

You could say Ms. Bixby saved me, but
that
would be melodramatic. All she did was pick me up. It was all a matter of luck.

She found me in a snowstorm, up to my knees, six grocery bags hanging from my arms and wrists. I'm not sure how she spotted me. Probably recognized my coat. Or the hat that I wore—blue with a yellow floppy fuzzball on top and giant earflaps that nearly hit my shoulders, borrowed out of the closet from Dad. She found me and she pulled over and opened her window and called my name. And I didn't want to stop because I figured she would ask me all sorts of questions. It wasn't school, we weren't in class, and I didn't have to explain, to her or anyone. So I trudged on, pretending not to notice her, but then she honked her horn and leaned over and said, “Do you need a ride?”

I wasn't sure what I needed, but I looked at the car with its heater and music both blasting and the mile of foot-high snow I still had to trudge through and figured a ride wouldn't hurt. Just this once.

And that's how it started between me and Ms. Bixby. She just happened to be passing by.

I feel a warmth surge through me. It's him. The last one in the line of oncoming passengers. Torn jeans and blue shirt. One
hand holding a brown paper bag. Dragon clawing its way up his arm.

George Nelson.

The flipwad who stole our money and ruined our day.

But I don't really see him. What I see is Ms. Bixby pulling up along the side of the road and asking me if I need a ride. I see her tapping on the steering wheel to one of her favorite songs.

I see her standing over me, both hands on my shoulders, telling me that sometimes you're beat before you even get started, but it doesn't matter. You keep going. No matter what.

And I realize the day's not over yet.

THE INLAND TAIPAN IS CONSIDERED THE MOST
poisonous snake in the world, but it's not the most dangerous. The odds of surviving a snakebite from an inland taipan are one in a hundred thousand, unless you're a herpetologist and carry antivenom in your back pocket. Of course, the odds of getting bitten by one are almost nil, unless you live in the middle of Australia, and even then it's highly unlikely. You have a much better chance of getting struck by lightning or knocked unconscious by a falling coconut.

Some things are simply more dangerous than others. The odds of being eaten by a shark are one in four million, and the odds of being injured by a toilet are one in ten thousand,
making toilets four hundred times more hazardous than sharks. I don't know what the odds of being injured by a toilet with a shark in it are. During my one and only encounter, I managed to get out alive.

Numbers don't lie; you can count on them. That's a joke Topher told me, though he had to stop and explain it, which can be frustrating, I know. But numbers are comforting. They let you know what you're up against. They let you know what you're getting into.

Ms. Bixby read us a poem a few months ago, about two people who were soul mates and were separated by some twist of fate. The speaker—that's the imaginary guy in the poem, I'm told—was complaining about how miserable he was without this other woman and vowing that he would find her again no matter what. Ms. Bixby agreed it was sappy—her word—but she liked it because it used lots of metaphors and she's big on metaphors. I'm not that fond of metaphors, or poetry, for that matter—I think life would be easier if everyone just said exactly what they were thinking—but Ms. Bixby loves them both, so we were forced to read about this man and woman who were supposedly destined to be together because fate said so. When she finished, I raised my hand.

“I don't buy it,” I said.

“And why is that?” Ms. Bixby said.

“Because what you're describing is statistically impossible,” I said.

Ms. Bixby was intrigued. She leaned forward in her reading chair, which I assumed was my cue to continue.

“There are approximately seven point two billion people in the world. You're telling me that you really believe you will find one person out of
seven billion
who's the exact right person you're
supposed
to be with?”

Ms. Bixby didn't even stop to think about it. “I'm not saying
I
will, necessarily. But I think people do, yes. The man and woman in this poem were soul mates. They were destined to be with each other. That's what the poem's about.” She called on someone else as I fished in my desk for my calculator. Then I raised my hand again.

“Yes, Steve.”

“All right. Assuming that it takes a minimum of five minutes to fall in love,” I began. There was a chorus of giggles in the class. Brian Frey said something like
Not with you
, and Rebecca gave him a dirty look. I ignored him and started tapping in numbers.

“Actually, it doesn't even have to take
that
long,” Ms. Bixby said. “Ever hear of love at first sight?” Again more snickering. A few groans. I glanced over at Topher, who was sitting right
beside me, then went back to my calculator.

“Fine. Let's say
one
minute,” I conceded. “Assuming that you meet a new person every minute of your life from the day you are born—which is completely impossible, by the way—and assuming that you live to be, let's say, eighty-five, which is generous, especially for boys, that means that you could conceivably meet . . . forty-four million, six hundred seventy-six thousand potential soul mates before you die. That still leaves . . .” My fingers flick along the keys. “Seven billion, one hundred fifty-five million, three hundred twenty-four thousand people you will never even
meet
.” I paused to let the magnitude of the number sink in. “I'd say it's much more likely that we will never come across the person we're meant for, even if that person exists.”

I held up my calculator to show her, just in case she didn't believe me. All eyes flicked from me to Ms. Bixby. She shrugged.

“‘Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love,'” she said.

I set down my calculator. “Huh?”

“Just think about it,” she said. Then she made everyone take out their writing journals so we could all experiment writing our own sappy love poetry.

I looked over at Topher. “She's crazy,” I said.

“You're crazy,” he told me.

“But seven billion people,” I repeated.

Topher shrugged. “Never tell me the odds.”

The first thing I think when I see him boarding the bus holding his brown paper bag and dropping his coins in the box is:
Impossible
.

The second is:
No. Not impossible, just highly unlikely. Stranger things have happened.

The third is:
If he sees us, he will kill us. He will strangle us in our seats.

I duck, dragging Topher with me, then turn and whisper for Brand to do the same. The incoming passengers step up, the clink of their quarters no longer giving me a shiver of satisfaction. I can hear the riders brushing up against the seats, making their way down the aisle. The bus is only half full, plenty of space, but there is a chance—a statistically significant one—that George Nelson could come all the way to the back, sit down right across from us, right next to Brand. I listen for footfalls. Wait for the shout. To see his face appear up over the seat in front of me.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm afraid of. He stole
our
money, after all. If anything, we should be looking for
him
. But for all the adventures Topher and I have been on together—battling ninjas and pirates, defusing nuclear bombs and piloting renegade spaceships—we've never faced a real criminal before. We've
never faced a real
anything
, actually.

I suddenly realize this is the second time I've had to hide from someone today.

Brand peeks over the back of the seat, one hand motioning us to stay down even as he pops his head up. He turns and whispers, “It's him!”

“I know,” I say.

“Him who?” Topher says, then takes a peek himself. I can't help it—I steal another glance as well, just to confirm. George Nelson is sitting three rows behind the driver, well in front of us, looking out the window. He hasn't seen us, or if he has, he's not showing it. He's got a set of buds plugged into his ears, and his head bobs up and down. We don't have to whisper. Between the bus engine and the headphones, there's no way he can hear us.

I'm thinking maybe he will get off at the next stop. I'm thinking maybe we will stay on the bus until he leaves. I'm thinking there is no way we can let him see us.

The fierce look on Brand's face tells me exactly what he's thinking.

“It's fate,” he says.

It's not fate. This is just really bad luck. But apparently I'm the only one who thinks so. Beside me Topher is nodding, and Brand has made his hands into fists. I think about the time he
nearly socked Trevor Cowly after Trevor called us the Nerd Patrol for seventh time. The two of them got into a shoving match by the swings, and Trevor ended up facedown in the mulch. There's a picture of it in Topher's sketchbook. Sort of.

Brand has that same look on his face now. “We are going to get our money back,” he hisses. Topher is still nodding. Once again I'm forced to point out the obvious.

“He's a grown man,” I say. “He has a
tattoo
.
Of a
dragon
.” Though admittedly it could be a tattoo of a baby unicorn and I wouldn't feel any better about it.

“There's three of us and only one of him,” Brand says, which strikes me as faulty logic, even if it has a basis in arithmetic. Three ants are no match for one tennis shoe. “He took our money. He's gotta pay.”

I shake my head. The thought of confronting George Nelson makes me want to throw up. I'm certainly not hungry anymore. “There's nothing we can do. We can't even call the police,” I remind him.

Brand's face blossoms into a devious smile. “Steve, you are a genius,” he says.

“What does
that
have to do with anything?”

“What you just said. Is there any juice left in your phone?” he asks me.

I look. I'm at 2 percent. Maybe a minute of battery life left.

“It doesn't matter,” Brand says. “Just give the phone to Topher and be prepared to get off at whatever stop George does.”

I don't want to give my phone to Topher—I know what happened to his last one. And I certainly don't want to get off at whatever stop George does. But Brand says somebody needs to hang back with the phone and stay out of the way, and with his swollen ankle, Topher's the best man for that job.

“Stay out of the way of what?” I ask. But Brand says don't worry. He has a plan.

The day Brand sat down next to us, there were six other empty seats. I know because I counted them. Of course, of the seven total empty seats, three were at all-girls tables, so I understand why he might have avoided them, but there was still only a 25 percent chance that he would sit next to us.

One in four is better than one in seven billion, but it's still against the odds.

When he sat down at lunch with us that first day, I remember looking over at Topher. It was a look that said,
Tell him to go away
.
I
couldn't tell him because I'm a firm believer in not saying anything that will get me either beat up or into trouble. But Topher didn't say,
Go away
. He said, “Sure. Have a seat.” So Brand sat down with us and I counted the empty chairs.

That first week I tried everything I could think of to
convince him that he didn't belong with us. I tried pretending he didn't exist. I forgot to invite him over to my house after school whenever I invited Topher. I sent him a note from Mindy Winkler asking if he would sit by her at lunch instead, but that backfired when Mindy had to get her braces tightened the next day and didn't even bother to come to school, making Brand wonder who the note was from. I said I didn't know.

It wasn't that I didn't like Brand. He had never shot any spit wads into my hair. He never tried to push me down the stairs or burped in my face. All he did was sit down at our table at lunch. But at the time, I hated him, just for sitting down, because I wasn't sure what it meant. Because it had always just been Topher and me. To make matters worse, he seemed nice and he had seen all the right movies and knew lots of good jokes, and Topher obviously thought he was cool, which meant there was a chance—a good chance—that over time, Topher might choose him over me.

And that simply couldn't happen.

We are ninjas. That's what Topher says as we get off the bus. Stealth and subterfuge. Actually he says subtlety, but I think he means subterfuge. Though I suppose a ninja could be subtle too. Until they cut your head off with a katana.

We don't have katanas. I have a Carhartt multipurpose
tool that has a knife blade on it sharp enough to cut mud. We didn't even think to bring forks for the cheesecake. Topher says it doesn't matter. We just need to
walk
like ninjas. We aren't beheading anyone.

I don't know how ninjas walk, but I assume it is on their tiptoes, so I walk on my tiptoes, though after a while that hurts and I just walk regular but slow, keeping against the brick walls of the buildings we pass. I am with Topher, who walks like a ninja with his toes chopped off, limping and stumbling and reaching out occasionally to put a hand on my shoulder. I am keeping an eye on Brand, who is on the other side of the street. He's the one trailing George Nelson, staying a good twenty yards away, waiting for “just the right moment.” I'm not sure what the right moment is. All I know is that he will give me the signal.

I suddenly feel the urge to pee—I didn't go at the bookstore when I had the chance—and I whisper that to Topher, who tells me ninjas don't pee. I tell him that is biologically impossible and historically inaccurate. He asks me if I've ever seen a ninja pee in a movie. I tell him I've never seen anyone pee in a movie. He says ninjas don't talk about peeing either and that we should maintain mission silence from here on out, so I just follow the sidewalk, keeping one eye on our target and the other on Brand, waiting for just the right moment.

George Nelson still has his earbuds in and seems completely
unaware of our presence no matter how we walk. Only once does he look in our direction, and I freeze, Topher nearly crashing into me. The man doesn't register us, though. He is just checking for cars before crossing—easier to do when you're not being chased. He crosses the intersection, then turns down a small alleyway behind a corner drugstore.

This, apparently, is the moment. Brand gives the signal, wildly slapping the top of his head with both hands, more
surprised baboon
than
stealthy ninja
, but unmistakable at least. Topher motions for me to go. “I'll be right behind you,” he whispers. Brand points to the alley's entrance and then makes some other motion with his hand, something about a tornado or a spinning ballerina, and then he sprints around the front of the Walgreens. Topher calls out behind me. “Go. Cut him off.”

I run a little faster, thinking about the lumpy cheesecake still jouncing around in my backpack, getting lumpier, and what a terrible idea this is, running to confront a grown man—a criminal named after a cop killer, no less—in a deserted alleyway in the middle of downtown. I say a quick prayer as I come to the alley entrance, pressing my back firmly against the wall, leaning to take a look.

George Nelson is there. He's stopped about twenty feet away and is looking at a poster pasted to a door. I look for Brand. Brand is the one who is going to confront him. I'm just supposed to make
sure he doesn't get away. Of course if he tries to get away, I don't know how I will stop him. My parents enrolled me in tae kwon do one summer but let me quit when the school year started back up. Straight As are more important than learning to defend yourself. In three months of classes I learned four words in Korean and how to tie my belt. If George Nelson wants to get past me, he will.