Bea knelt in the aisle and stuffed her own parka inside Michelle Arsenault’s tiny pink snowsuit, then padded the legs and arms with all the toques and scarves within reach.
“Who’s got meat in their lunch today? Anyone?” The kids shrunk in their seats. “If you’ve got it, I want it.”
Blair Tocher threw her his lunch bag. Bea ripped it open and tore through the plastic wrap with her fingernails. Peanut butter, that was fine. All animals liked that, right? She smeared the insides of the sandwich all over the snowsuit.
“Nobody’s got baloney for lunch? Sausage? Spam?” She tried to sound normal, but her voice was high and shrill.
“Give her your lunches,” came a growl from the driver’s seat, where Rosie hunched over the wheel. “Do it or I’ll take us into the ditch.”
Bags rained on Bea’s head. Pork sausage on thick homemade bread with mustard and a lick of golden syrup—that would be Manon Laroche’s grandkids. Baloney and cheese on brown—could be anyone’s. Cookies, apples, celery with Cheez Whiz, those all went inside. The meat she smeared on the outside, grinding the greasy dregs into the snowsuit’s knit cuffs and fuzzy hood.
“Okay,” Bea said. She hefted the snowsuit in one arm and grabbed the fire extinguisher with her other hand. Then La Vitesse hit a pothole and the whole world spun around her.
“Try steering around them, Rose,” Bea called from the floor.
“We got a logging truck coming.” Rosie’s voice was strangely deep.
“The horn. Hit the horn, honey!” Bea scrambled up the aisle on all fours. “He’s got a radio, he’ll call for help.”
She waved her arms as Rosie blasted the horn. High in the truck’s cab, a man in a trucker hat and stubble. Sunglasses though it wasn’t even full light yet. One hand on the wheel with fingers raised in a lazy wave while the other hand brought a white Styrofoam coffee cup to his lips for a sip. The truck flashed by.
“Did it work?” Rosie asked.
Bea ran to the first empty row and dived for the side window. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass and watched the truck disappear around a curve.
“No,” Bea said. “He wasn’t looking.”
She limped up the aisle.
“I didn’t turn on the hazard lights.” She reached around her daughter and flicked on the hazards. She hit the warning lights too, the big orange traffic flashers front and back. Then she turned to the kids and took a deep breath.
On her left and right, all twenty kids, their precious little upturned faces. Tear-stained. Some contorted in fear. Most blank with shock. Her fault. She’d failed them all.
“It’s a dragon,” she said. “A big one.”
Hinton didn’t have a real library. Technically, the high school library was open to the public during school hours, but the librarian had ideas about the kinds of people who should be allowed to walk through the door. And in grade eleven, Bea had been banned. That might be sixteen years ago, but as far as she knew, she was still banned.
Still, Bea needed information and the library was the only place to get it.
After talking to the Mountie, she’d parked her bus at the hockey arena and walked over the playing fields toward the high school. Across the road, the pulp mill’s stink-stacks belched rotten-egg vapor that drifted over the high school in a yellow haze.
She slipped into the library, walked softly to the reference shelf on the back wall, and pulled out Encyclopedia Britannica Volume D. The entry on dragons was subtitled “mythological creature.” She examined the illustrations. Clearly her dragon was the European type. Its snaky head and batlike wings matched the picture.
In European myth, it said, dragons terrorized entire valleys. After eating all the sheep, they’d start eating children.
Sheep. The sheep in the picture were fairy-tale versions, white and fluffy—nothing like bighorn sheep, with their sleek brown fur and curling horns. But the sheep under Roche Miette were gone. Did that mean the children were next?
“Bea Oulette.”
Bea slammed the encyclopedia closed. Mrs. English watched her over the edge of her reading glasses.
“You’re not allowed in here,” she said. “You’re banned.”
Bea slipped the book back on the shelf and padded toward the door, keeping her eyes low.
“High school was a long time ago,” she said softly as she passed the checkout desk.
“Not for me,” the librarian snarled. “Don’t come back.”
Bea stood on a bus seat, reached high, and yanked open the rooftop safety hatch. It popped up easily—Bea kept the hinges well oiled. She steadied herself with one hand on the hatch’s open edge and put her foot on the seatback, holding the greasy stuffed and smeared snowsuit between her teeth. With both hands, she shoved the hatch fully open.
Still awkward, but steadier now as she poked her head and shoulders through. Her hair whipped her face.
The dragon kited behind the bus. It scrabbled at the roof with its forelegs, raking its talons along the metal, looking for purchase. It lost its grip and fell behind, twisted in the air, then extended its long neck and beat its wings hard to catch up again.
All along the roof, long shiny marks gashed the paint and road dust. It was only a matter of time before it hooked a talon into La Vitesse.
Bea yanked the stuffed snowsuit through the hatch.
“Here,” she yelled. “Do you want dinner?” She held the snowsuit by its waist and danced it, the arms and legs flopping. She pitched it at the dragon, then grabbed the hatch handles and slammed the hatch closed.
“Floor it, Rosie,” she yelled.
But La Vitesse was already moving fast, and the highway intersection was on the horizon. No choice, they had to turn.
Bea lunged up the aisle.
“Slow down, honey! You won’t make the turn.”
“It didn’t work.” Rosie had her eyes on the side mirror. She wasn’t even watching the road.
“Slow down now!”
Bea grabbed Rosie’s shoulder and tried to pull her from the seat. The bus swerved. Rosie hunched over the wheel, gripping it with both hands, knuckles white, her whole body tense.
“Get out of the seat.” Bea’s voice rose, high and shrill. “Rosie, get out now.”
A ripping sound of nails on metal. A gash of sunlight appeared in the ceiling over the left rear seat.
“That’s a problem,” Rosie said in a low, ominous voice.
“Slow down or we’ll flip,” Bea pleaded.
Rosie nudged the speed down a little. Bea grabbed two armfuls of kids from the seats behind Rosie and pushed them into seats opposite.
“Everyone on the right side.” No time to be gentle. She grabbed arms and shoulders—whatever she could get a grip on, and then leaned in, pressing a seat full of the littlest kids under her belly. “Hold tight.”
A popping sound. Bea twisted to look. Just above the smeared rear window, three talons punctured the bus’s roof. The window itself was dark. The dragon hung from the back of the bus.
“Sundaes,” Bea shouted. “If we make this turn, I’ll buy you all sundaes.”
“Hot fudge,” Rosie said, and swung the wheel.
When she was a teenager, Bea took books from the high school library. Not often. Not every book. Just the good ones. But it wasn’t stealing, not at first. When she started, she’d bring the books back. That’s how she got caught.