The School Bus

Chapter 1

Before the words came out of her mouth, panic had already filled her mind and body. "Where is Wil?" blurted his mother Joyce. "Oh my GOD, where is Wil?" she repeated as the sounds of her first question still hung in the air.

With fear now racing through every fiber in her body, Joyce stepped onto the school bus, looked from front to back, turned to the part time school district bus driver and pressed, Oh my GOD where is Wil?"

With first a blank stare that in and of itself could answer her question, the driver turned to Joyce and said, "I'm sorry ma'am, who are you looking for" With that, Joyce as would any parent, felt the blood pounding in her heart as she shouted, "my 3rd grade son, Wil. This is his bus stop, Oh my GOD, where is my son?"

"Wait! wait!" hollered Joyce as she jumped from the bus and quickly approached the toddlers who had already climb off the bus. "Where is Wil?" she frantically asked as she grabbed the arm of one of Wil's classmates and a neighborhood companion Alex Archer.

"I don't know Mrs. Sims, I was playing tick-tack-toe with Bobby ever since we left school." As thoughts of the unknown now raced through her mind, Joyce tried to calm herself as she squeezed young Alex's arm a little tighter before saying,"Look at me Alex...did Wil get on the bus before it left the school?"

"Yes ma'am, I saw him yelling out of the window at Scotty McCarver right before we left" answered Alex, oblivious to the significance of his answer or to the panic that had now overtaken Joyce, the bus driver and all the adults who happened to be at the bus stop to pick up the children.

"Call 911.. call 911" someone yelled as Joyce stood on the street corner now in tears and feeling sick in the pit of her stomach. "It's ringing now" said the bus driver has he paced in short circles as the magnitude of the event closed in on him.

"My name is Shawn Charlton, I drive a school bus for the district and I need to report a missing child." said the bus driver to the 911 operator who had answered the call."OK sir, what happened?" asked the voice of the other end of the phone that was now visually shaking in the bus drivers hand.

"I'm not sure exactly, but" continued the driver, "we made a stop on the bus route and one child is missing." "I'm pretty sure he got on the bus at the school but he's not here now" said the driver sounding confused and shaken.

"I need you to calm down sir" replied the operator to the bus driver who had become increasingly more animated as he tried to replay in his mind the stops and starts he had made on his afternoon route.

In what seemed like both 30 minutes, and 30 seconds at the same time, sirens could now be heard racing through the tree lined streets of the normally quiet neighborhood as local police raced towards the bus stop that was now the center of the world to a mother facing her worst imaginable nightmare. Her child was missing.


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