A Few Miles on Our Souls

Chapter 4: The Bus

"This? This is 'riding in style' to you?" Lucas says with disbelief.

"Hey, you wanted something bigger than a normal car to road trip in. I delivered," Gatsby shot back.

Lucas, Gatsby, Skylar, Grayson, Zoe, and I are all standing side by side looking at this dingy old mini yellow school bus. It's three days after our conversation in the café, and we were all able to talk our parents into letting us go on this road trip. We realized pretty quickly though that we didn't want to cram six people into one car, so we started brainstorming. This is not what I had in mind.

"Does the thing even run?" Grayson asked skeptically.

"Yeah, I've kept it in top condition for years; it's my party bus," Gatsby replied.

"Huh," I said, mostly to myself.

"What, you didn't know that I worked on cars?" Gatsby says to me.

"Nope," I shoot back.

"Does this raise or lower your opinion of me?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Well I don't think it can get much lower."

Skylar makes a circle around the bus, looking it over. "I've got some ideas, I think I can shape this old thing up a little bit. I'm taking Zo and G to Goodwill. Can I have one of the hundred dollar bills Ari gave you?"

"G?" Gatsby asks.

"Yeah, Ash," Skylar responds. "If you're gonna hang with us, you're gonna need a nickname. We've all got one. Sky, Zo, Gray, Lu, and Al."

"Alright I guess. Let's go then."

Zoe, Skylar, and Gatsby all get on the bus and, after a few tries, Gatsby cranks it and pulls away.

Grayson, Lucas and I all look at each other, standing in the car lot behind Gatsby's house. "Well, what now?" I ask.

 Grayson answers, "Skylar and them probably won't be back for a few hours, so I guess we'll just hang out here."

We all walk back through the old car lot, hop the fence, cross Gatsby's backyard, and go inside. His parents are still at work, so we all go into the living room.

We walk in and pause. There's only one couch, so we all squeeze in, me in the middle. Jeez, I hate awkward situations. We turn on the TV and watch the latest episodes of the Walking Dead,  which is Grayson and I's favorite TV show. Lucas doesn't seem that into it, but he goes along with it.

Four hours later, we hear a school bus honk. We all jump up an run outside, and what we see makes us all burst out laughing. I double over, and Lucas is laughing so hard he lays down in the grassy front lawn.

Skylar has painted the bus pink.

Skylar, Zoe, and Gatsby all file out of the bus, Gatsby looking extremely annoyed and Skylar looking extremely giddy.

"TADA!!!" Skylar says proudly, waving her arms around. Then, with a slightly more wary tone, "Do you like it?"

"It's great, Sky," I say in between laughs.

"I LOVE IT!" Yells Lucas goofily.

We all board the bus, and my jaw drops. "Skylar, you're amazing," I say in awe. "How'd you do it?"

"Well first, I ran in three different Goodwill stores and bought all the stuff. While I was doing that, I had G tear out all the old seats. Then I got to decorating. There was some money left over, so I got Zoe to paint the bus. Sorry, all they had on sale was pink paint."

"I can't believe I'm going to be driving around in this thing," Gatsby said grumpily.

She replaced the driver seat with an old office swivel chair. She put two plush, comfy couches covered in fuzzy blankets and pillows right behind the drivers seat, with a table between them that could be folded up and stored behind one of the couches. Behind that were two huge king-sized mattresses stacked on top of each other and bedding. She covered the ceilings in tapestries, and put white Christmas lights along the edges oh the ceiling and the floors.

"The bed's for the three girls to share," Sky answered my unspoken question.

"What if the guys all want to sleep? There are only two couches."

She pulled an eno (A portable hammock) out from under one of the couches and attached it to two hooks she had Gatsby install, one in the front of the bus and one of the back.

"Cool," said Lucas.

"Ok, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," said Grayson.

No, it isn't bad at all. This trip might actually work out like I hoped it would.