It's just starting to get dark; I can’t watch the scenery going by outside very well, so I stick my headphones on.  Listening to classical music always calms my nerves.

I notice a lady and her son climb on the bus - he gets a seat but she stands in the aisle and clings onto one of the overhead poles. She's tall and skinny, with scraggly blonde hair past her shoulders. I wonder if she's the type of annoying person that can be caught at regular intervals sucking the ends of her hair. Gross. 

Her son has the same thin blonde hair she has, only he's about fourteen and it looks better on him.

               I glance out the window, switching my attention back to my music after she catches me staring at them and views me suspiciously with a pair of sunken blue eyes.

The bus starts to pick up speed on the highway, and my body lurches a little so I brace my sneakers on the back of the seat in front of me, I can hear the engine strain. My music picks up and just as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries really gets underway, there's a flash of blinding white light. The music makes me think for a split second that I'm looking into a twinkling fairyland, which is ridiculous. It takes me a second to realize what it really is.

               Headlights.

               Later I'm told a car came down the wrong side of the highway, but in that split second it  seems like a blast of light from some hellish other world.  My breath catches in my throat; I feel the entire bus creak and shudder, and then we're sliding sideways.  The dark landscape outside flows past in a dizzying surreal display. My breath stops and over the gentle strains of violin music in my ears I can hear people screaming. Or is it me? My body lurches sideways in my seat and the side of my head smacks into the window with a crack, sending a bolt of pain through me. Stars skitter across my vision.  Dazed, I watch out of the corner of my eye as the lady standing in the aisle is thrown down, screaming.  When her head strikes the ground, a bright spatter of red decorates the grey floor.

               The spinning seems to stop for a split second, but before we even have time to breathe there's a second shuddering impact.  This time it feels like an earthquake rattling my bones. I see the lady lying in the aisle slide forward a few feet.

               Then there is no movement at all; everything goes quiet.  I'm clutching the back of the seat in front of me, leaving dents in the fake leather, and my fingers have gone numb and white.  I look at the lady lying face down in the isle. She doesn’t move, her right arm is flung out crookedly above her head, her fingers splayed wide as if she's waving; the other arm is trapped beneath her body. All I can see is the back of her thin blonde hair, and the trickle of blood making a crimson trail from beneath her hairline down the centre of the dirty floor.

               Is she dead?

               Someone wails. It's the boy. The woman's son. I watch as he tries to go to her, his legs keep giving out and he can’t seem to get there.

Everyone is moaning and someone is yelling over and over, “Oh God! Oh God!"  

There's a horrific metal scraping sound, the bus shudders a little bit and the woman in front of me shrieks hysterically.  More yelling, fainter from outside. Sirens shriek eerily in the distance, which makes it all seem scarier somehow. More real.

               A man just down the aisle from me seems to be in a better state of mind than most of us. He says, “Well that was quite the ride,” and he reaches out to place his hand on the neck of the woman lying in the aisle. After several seconds he announces,

“She’s got a strong pulse. She’ll be alright.”

               Her son is still crying.  I look around. Some people are groaning and holding their heads or necks, one lady is clutching her mouth with wide eyes, blood running from between her fingers.  Cautiously, I touch the side of my forehead and find a sizable goose egg there.

               The bus driver struggles to get out of his seat, looking dazed.

               “Is everyone okay?”

               Most people nod, some groan.  My head is starting to throb with the beginnings of a headache, as if it has permission now that we're out of danger. 

               “What the hell happened?”  A teenage boy sitting across the aisle from me has his headphones around his neck, tinny music still blaring out of the earpieces.

               “Someone was coming down the wrong side of the highway,” the bus driver says grimly. “I think someone else rear ended us though. I’ve got to go check on them.  The ambulance is on the way; don’t get up if you feel dizzy." He turns to exit the bus, staggering down the stairs.

               I'm not sure what to do - some people are getting up now, others are still sitting to nurse their bruises.  I don't feel dizzy, just shaky, so I stand up to test my legs. My head swims a little, but I manage to shake it off and take a few steps forward, carefully picking my way around the unconscious form of the woman and her distraught son.  I feel like I should say something to him.

“Your mom will be okay,”I say quietly.

               Outside it's chaos.  The air is filled with smoke and the high wail of sirens.  I blink at the seizure-inducing flashes of red and blue that are lighting up the night.

People on the opposite side of the highway have pulled their cars over and are sprinting towards the bus, which is sitting lengthwise across the asphalt. I turn my head and my neck protests the motion, but I ignore it when I see the smoking wreck of a car that's ploughed its way under the back of the bus.  It's stuck underneath all the way up to its dashboard. 

               The bus driver is there, trying to pull the passenger side door open, but it's locked or stuck.   One of the people finally reaches me, a tall kid with shaggy black hair.  He sticks his face in mine, grabbing my arms.

               “Hey, are you okay? Are you in shock?”

               I blink at him. “No, I don’t think so.”

               “Is anyone on the bus hurt?”

               “One lady. She’s unconscious in the aisle,” I say numbly.  The guy runs past me and up the bus stairs, and my eyes shift back to the crushed car on the back of the bus.  I think I might puke.

               People flood off the bus now, complaining and talking loudly.  One lady keeps repeating in a high annoying voice, “Where are the ambulances? You think they would be here by now. The police are here. Where are the ambulances?”

She finally stops when two ambulances come racing down the highway, followed closely by two more police cars.

               I watch as the first paramedics climb out, jogging toward the crushed car.  The second set of paramedics comes to us. One is a man with short bristly hair, the other a petite brunette women. 

               The woman calls out as they arrive, “Is anyone seriously injured?”

               The people milling around point them to the lady inside the bus, and the male paramedic runs back to the ambulance while the brunette climbs aboard.  My heart is beating at a normal pace again, and my knees don’t feel as much like jelly as they did before.  More police cars come wailing down the highway, blocking off the road as they start directing traffic.  One or two of the officers walk among the shaken up bus passengers.

               “Okay folks,” one of the officers is saying. “Just wait until the paramedics get a chance to check you out, then you can all go home.”

               The paramedics and police have managed to get the man out of the squished car and onto the stretcher.  The ambulance races away just as the second set of paramedics comes down the bus steps carrying the unconscious lady on a stretcher.  They've bandaged her bleeding forehead, and the shaggy-haired kid is following them, talking to the lady’s son.

               “She’ll be okay.  Want me to ride in the ambulance with you?”

The kid is whimpering and nodding, clinging to the guy like a barnacle.

               A third ambulance pulls up with another pair of paramedics, both men.  One looks older, his brown hair starting to go grey, the other one, a short guy with close cropped brown hair looks a bit nervous, like maybe this is his first big accident.

Yeah. Mine too.

               “Okay everyone,” the older one waves his hands at us, “We’re going to check out one person at a time, just to make sure you’re all okay.  If you have any neck or back pain, let us know and we’ll take you to the hospital.”

               I finally sit down in the middle of the road knowing it will take a while to get through all of us.  A few other people sit down as well, and I find myself next to the man who had described the accident as “quite a ride”.  I wonder if he's some sort of adrenaline junky.  He doesn't look like it - he's wearing a suite and tie and his hair is jelled immaculately.  He looks like a banker.

               “You okay?” He asks.

               I realize he's talking to me.

               “Oh...yeah. I’m okay. You?”

               “I’m just fine.”

               We're silent for a moment, watching the paramedics question people.

               “You think you’ll get on another bus?”

               I look at him sideways. “Uh...not sure. Will you?”

               I'm not sure how to take this guy. He doesn't even seem shaken up. I mean, his tie isn't even crooked or anything.

               “I guess you can look at this two ways.” He steeples his fingers together as if he's deep in thought. “You can either go about your life scared, refusing to get on another bus, thinking to yourself Gee, next time I might not be so lucky, or you can take this experience as a sign that you are lucky and meant to have another chance.  Then you can seize your life by the reins and steer it in the direction you want to go.”

               I'm staring at him now. 

               He shrugs his shoulders. “Just a thought.”

               “What...”

                “Okay, you two.  My name is Jim.  Who wants to go first?”

We both look up at the older paramedic as he looms over us.

“Let’s get you looked at so you can go home.”

               “She’ll go first,” the man in the suit says. “I’m sure she has a life to get back to.”

               The paramedic motions me forward, and I get up, still staring at the man.

I mumble yes or no to the paramedic’s questions, glancing at the man in the suit from time to time. He appears to be looking at his nails now, or down at the ground by his feet once in awhile.

               “Do you have a ride home, or do you want one of the police officers to drop you somewhere?”

               I look distractedly down the highway. “It’s fine. My road is literally a five-minute walk from here. I’m sure the police are going to be plenty busy.”

               The paramedic fusses a little bit over me walking home but I manage to convince him I’m fine.  I sign his paperwork and look back at the banker man. I hesitate - I want to talk some more to this man who seems so casual about blood and crushed metal, but he's busy with the medics now.

I make my way off the highway and onto one of the walking trails that will eventually take me to my road. 

               I can’t get his voice out of my head. 

               Take your life by the reins and steer it in the direction you want to go.

               He sounds like a motivational speaker, but it's weird how directly his words apply to me.  Maybe he's a mind reader, but that doesn't make sense, because I'm pretty sure the only thing going through my mind the moment of the bus crash was Holy crap. I’m going to die!

               Maybe I wasn’t completely truthful with the medic; I do feel a little shaky, but I breathe the cool air in deep and try to steady myself as I walk.

I’m not dead. Heck, I’m not even hurt, aside from a bit of a headache. 

               Steer it in the direction you want to go.

               Maybe he is a motivational speaker and he just preaches to everyone he meets, even after they had a bus crash, especially after they had a bus crash.

But maybe he's right.  I could be dead right now. I could have flown sideways out the window, shattering glass and breaking my neck. I could have been lying in the aisle, bleeding. But I'm not dead. I'm alive and walking down the street on my way home.  I take another deep breath, this time enjoying the crisp, sharp smell of fresh air and the smoke from someone’s backyard barbeque.  The path I'm on takes me to my road and I concentrate on the feeling of my running shoes taking me from the uneven forest floor to the pockmarked pavement of the sidewalk.  A dog barks in the distance. There’s the faint sound of laughter and music from a house a few yards in front of me.  The overhead lampposts cast a mixture of light and shadow on the sidewalk that I step through on my way home, and I can hear the beginning sounds of a cricket choir starting up for the night.

               I am alive.

               My knees feel like jello now. I wobble my way over to a patch of grass in front of a blue and white shuttered house and collapse on the front lawn.  The lights from the windows of the little house stream down around me, and anyone looking from the window can see me lying here, sprawled out on the lawn like a wino at the end of his bottle. I don’t care.  My breath is coming fast and my legs shake.  My fingers curl around the blades of grass and I hold on like the world is turning upside down and I might fall off if I don’t have a firm grip on the neighbour’s lawn.  I can see lights in the sky, blurry spots a little bigger than the stars. They dance around up there, blocking out the pinpricks of stars, turning the velvet sky white.  I blink, shut my eyes firmly and they are still there against my eyelids.

               My head hurts.  It doesn’t hurt in a “Take two aspirin and see me in the morning” kind of way. It hurts in a “I got hit by a bus” kind of way.

               The sound of a door slamming makes me sit bolt upright.  Even in spite of my head, I realize I do not want my neighbour wondering why I'm passed out on his lawn. I scramble to my feet and jump onto the sidewalk just as he walks out onto his front step.

He gives me a wave, a lit cigarette in his hand trailing smoke in an arch as he does so.

               “Hey, Sam.”

               “Hi, Mr. Peretti.”

               I smile weakly and keep walking, feeling his eyes on my back. Did he see me lying on his lawn? He must think I’m a nut case.

               The shower is running when I get in the house. I leave my things sprawled out everywhere in the hallway so that he can see I’m back home when he comes out.

               My bed is like a soft cloud and I drift in and out until finally there is nothing.