Author: Eva Hays

“Thank you for calling Teletravel helpline. All our operators are busy right now, but we’ll be with you shortly. You are now first in the queue.”
I pull the phone away from my ear. The screen blinks at me. Call time: 67 minutes.
Beneath my thighs, I can feel the vinyl of the school bus seat. The wind in my hair. My sweaty arm, rubbing against my sister’s. In one eye, I see my bus driver’s face in the enormous elliptical rearview mirror, her eyes shaded by large square sunglasses, her face pockmarked and her thin hair pulled into a floppy bun. In the other eye, I see through my kitchen window into the backyard where acid rain beats down. My fingers play with an old rubber band, trying to anchor me in the present.
The line fumbles into a connection. “Thank you for calling the Teletravel helpline. This is Lynne speaking. What are your concerns today?”
I grip the phone tighter, gritting my teeth. The pain in my jaw, surprisingly, helps. “My headset is malfunctioning. I can’t take it off.”
“Have you tried pressing the release button above your left temple?” Lynne’s voice is bored and saccharine.
“Don’t you think I’ve already tried that?” I shout. I jostle the button one more time to be sure, but the headset doesn’t budge. “I’ve been reliving the same random memory for hours!”
“Calm down, ma’am,” Lynne says. “I’ll connect to your headset and disable it virtually from here. I just need your device code.”
In the rearview mirror, the bus driver’s head snaps up as she sees something out the back. Her pink-painted lips smear into a gaping frown.
“That man behind us threw an empty bottle out his window! I can’t believe it. He just littered in that field. Did anyone see?”
None of the kids on the bus answer, and I share a glance with my sister. Behind us, a boy from the grade above mocks his math teacher’s accent to a friend.
The bus driver lifts her glasses off her face and shoves them into her hair. Her eyes connect with mine through the mirror. “Call the police! Call 911 on him! We can report his license plate.” Now she raises her voice, chewing her gum between each word. “Someone in the back read me that license plate, quick!”
My fingers shake on the phone screen, dialing the numbers. A kid in the back starts reciting letters, so I repeat them into the phone, my fingers tangled in an old rubber band I must’ve dug up from my pocket.
“Ma’am? Hello, ma’am? Your device code is only numbers, no letters.”
I repeat the license plate again, just as the kid in the back tells me, beneath the reflected stare of my bus driver in the mirror.