Here is the school bus. Here is the school bus door, chuffing open with its familiar wheeze. Here are the school bus steps. Put your right foot on the bottom one. Haul your left leg up to the next. Here is mean Katie the bus driver, scowling out the big bus window. Here is your backpack, heavy and hurting your shoulders. Where is your sister Ivy who should be behind you, shoving you to hurry up? Ivy is not here. You and your sister had an accident. Now you are on the bus. Walk down the aisle. There's an empty seat. Sit down. Now everyone is on the bus. Now Katie shuts the door and shoves the big black gear stick.
Your first day back is over. The bell that is not a bell has blared, and the school day is over.
Jimmy Wilson is next to you on the old green vinyl seat. Jimmy Wilson, who has been silently in love with you since kindergarten. The bus jolts and bumps and groans and finds its way around the curves of Sterns Gorge. You are back on the bus.
Your sister Ivy and you had an accident.
The world should have stopped, but it didn't.
One month has passed since that day of the accident, the accident that you and your sister were in. One month has passed since that day at the end of March when time plucked you up and set you down again, here in this new place. In that month, Katie the bus driver stopped wearing her Dairylea windbreaker and Jimmy Wilson stopped wearing the fur hat that his uncle brought back from Russia. No more winter boots. No more mittens and scarves. Brown grass is now green. Every class has marched on: Goodbye Romeo and Juliet; hello Hamlet. Goodbye World War II; hello Korea. Goodbye, rudiments of sting theory, and hello chaos complexity.
Your sister Ivy and you had an accident. The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going.
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ALL RIVERS FLOW TO SEA by Alison McGhee. Copyright (c) 2005 by Alison McGhee. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.
Copyright © 2005 by Alison McGhee. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
