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feet. The Averys had taken the first bench on the left so I swung in behind the driver.
    â€œWhat time’s your tour?” he rasped over his shoulder.
    â€œTen o’clock,” I said. “It’s an hour to Velouria?”
    â€œI’ll vaporize some fuel,” he said, slamming the door shut even as the bus lurched over the first speed bump.
    â€œIt’ll be so nice if we get there on time,” said Mrs. Avery. “It is so tough to schedule around two jobs, but it’s so worth it when you have a child, sir, you’ll see.”
    â€œWhy would you think I don’t have kids?”
    â€œDid you sub here last year? I don’t remember.”
    We took the last speed bump before squealing onto Casement toward Highway 33. I twisted in my seat and took yet another head count. Three seats back Grace reached around the cloud of staticky hair to tug out Franny’s earbuds, trying to be funny, but one of the cords snapped in two—Franny’s face went red, her bracelets clanking.
    â€œWell, Mrs. Avery,” I muttered, “last year I was teaching in Wahoo.”
    â€œPlease. Colleen.” A hand to her heart. “And my nieces are in Wahoo! Oh, but the youngest graduated the year before last. You would’ve remembered her, she’s big .”
    â€œThat’s so sweet!” called one of the girls, with an enthusiasm so rare for an eleventh-grader that I had to turn and see who it’d been: Franny blinked back a grateful mistiness while she clamped blue headphones to either side of her head. Their owner, Harv, slid back into his seat behind the Averys.
    An asymmetrical grin cut across Mama Colleen’s cheek. “Mind if I ask why you left Wahoo?”
    â€œWell, the sub lists aren’t too extensive in either place, but here there’s an extra dollar an hour.”
    Which was bullshit—Hoover actually paid worse. But we’d needed the change, and there’d been a cop named Holt in Wahoo who liked to walk down North Chestnut with his fists on his hips, and his ten-year-old son liked to knock kids onto the schoolyard gravel and say, “Aw, sorry,” and I said the son ought to be suspended but the administrators just stared from behind their potted spider plants. I’d been covering the tail end of a mat leave. I caught the tough kid passing a note that said jason is a faggit and told him to stay after school, then once he was alone in the classroom I deadbolted him in and went to the staff room to pour myself a coffee. By the time the custodian let him out the tough kid had peed himself for dramatic effect, but it turned out the administrators must’ve been on my side all along because they said they wouldn’t even phone the district provided I took my name off the sub list. I got things done by myself, see that? My Lydia had been dead a month so my thinking at the time had been crystal clear, forever sliding coins into the wrong parking meter.
    â€œOh, I see,” Colleen said. “I’m only picking your brain because my sister always complains how Wahoo smells like a sewage plant. Their house is right next to the sewage plant.”
    Anyone who says pick your brain can’t really be visualizing it.
    â€œNo, smell never bothered us, though I have to wonder with any of those operations what the discharge is going to do in the long run.”
    â€œOh, my,” she said, massaging her temples. “ I worry what it’s doing right now .”
    â€œHarv, hey!” Eric yelled from the back. “Isn’t that your dad?”
    Where Casement joined the highway, a blond man in a dress shirt was stapling a sheet of magenta paper to a telephone pole. The bus blew by him, ruffling his hair.
    â€œYeah,” said Harv, “he, uh—”
    â€œIs he, like, looking for work?” Eric asked.
    â€œShut it, Eric!” Franny yelled, holding a blue headphone out from her ear.
    Harv looked across at