Lost at the Start

16.

When I felt the change to an unfamiliar atmosphere around me, I became terrified to open my eyes after willing myself to the one person that knew I wasn't totally gone. Yet.

Even so, I dared to peek out into the world, hoping and praying Jackson was okay, that this had nothing to do with the bus accident and he was fine...

When I opened my eyes, I found myself on an unfamiliar sidewalk.

That is, until I turned around.

The middle school I'd spent three years of torture in was across the street, but I could easily see why I had appeared where I did.

About fifty daunting feet from the crosswalk that had been given poles and lines that were like highlighting a mistake on a paper so drivers would notice it, the bus I'd heard tell of was capsized, slanted slightly, in the right lane.

From what I could tell, it looked like an eighteen-wheeler—surprisingly pulled into the school's bus parking lot, looking pretty banged up itself—had somehow hit the bus, but I couldn't figure out how...This happened.

The best thing I could think of was that maybe, for some God-Forsaken reason, the eighteen-wheeler had tried to pass the bus, or maybe rear-ended it and the bus hit a water pocket it didn't take very well. I wasn't an expert with automotives, though, so I really didn't know.

It also kinda looked like at least two other cars had slammed into the bus, presumably before anybody could get to the scene...Or maybe right when it happened, because no one knew what was happening...

All I knew for sure was that roadblocks had been placed on either side of the accident, and there were two ambulances, one fire truck, and three cop cars surrounding the area.

I saw what appeared to be EMTs going in an out of the open back door on the bus, emerging either with kids that couldn't get out themselves or escorting those that could, taking them over to what looked like an impromptu area to check and see if they'd suffered any damage.

As I watched the madness, including police milling about, probably trying like I had to make sense of the mess, I was glad I'd appeared so far away, so I couldn't tell if any of the victims the EMTs came out with were Jackson.

But the very thought that one of them could be him made my heart shatter like blown-glass.

If...If something happened to Jackson...I...

I shook my head feverishly, but I couldn't ignore the sick feeling in my stomach, the cold sweat popping up over my skin and making my hands clammy. I was petrified to know there was a chance I...That he...

Swallowing thickly, I started to walk towards the carnage.

Even if the roadblocks hadn't been there, getting hit by a car would've been the least of my concerns; considering I was both dead and incorporeal at the moment.

But how much a car could or couldn't hurt me was little comfort at the knowledge that on had most likely at least hurt Jackson if not actually...Actually...

I choked back the vertigo threatening to overwhelm me as I watched one poor kid on a gurney get wheeled into one of the ambulances.

It looked like about half the kids all had some kind of injury, some minor, some not-so-minor, and the other half were all shell-shocked. And showing it.

At first, I started to relax a little. The EMTs had stopped going in and out of the bus, which meant they'd probably gotten everyone out, and none of the faces I could see getting checked out raised any red flags.