Mr. Bobby watched as his high school kids filed in and found pretty much their regular seats. A few scattered around as they did almost every day, since Bobby didn't focus on the whole assigned seats deal as long as the kids were quiet and didn't jump around when the bus was actually moving, He had found over more than ten years as a school bus driver that a little bit of kindness and adaptability went a long way, especially with High Schoolers.
If the kids took the impression that it was you and them against the administration instead of the administration and you against them, things went a lot smoother most days. You'd have the occasional need to bark out for everybody to return to assigned seats, but nine days out of every two weeks would be fairly quiet.
Once the mass of teenagers had flowed onto the buses, the lead driver began to pull out into the road which ran alongside the school where most of the buses parked and headed for the sharp right turn that would distribute them into the city streets.
Bobby took advantage of the slow advancement of the line of buses towards the turn to glance up and watch as the kids did their normal slight juggle in the seating arrangement. There was always somebody with a homework assignment that needed to be discussed or a couple of girls that wanted to discuss what a boyfriend had done during third period. As long as nobody did anything disruptive, Bobby tended to ignore such things. High school is a time when social life is very important, after all. Plus, moderation in enforcing the seating chart usually bought you a pretty fair amount of goodwill. Most of the kids would choose a seat at the beginning of the year that would fit with their priorities anyway, whether it was being close to their friends or towards the center of the bus because they didn't want to get motion sick, things like that.
Of course, part of that was that the mischievous ones tended to migrate towards the back, as far from the nosy bus driver as possible. A lot of time, you'd have one or two very sociable kids towards the front where they could greet and say goodbye to everyone on the bus. A lot of the more introverted and quieter ones would also tend towards the front half so they could avoid the social maelstrom often created by the "bad apples" in the rear seats.
Today, there seemed to be a general gathering further back than normal. Bobby didn't say anything to point it out, but he did keep an eye in that direction. A good driver developed instincts, and this didn't feel like a fight brewing or one of those kinds of problems that sometimes drew a tighter crowd. Bobby watched for any telltales like a puff of smoke.
He also noticed that one of his girls that usually tended to be up front in a seat by herself was back amidst the "troublemakers." Clara was easy to notice, due to her quiet nature as much as her brilliant blue hair and very adult figure.
Many kids tended towards extremes during the adolescent years. Their bodies, especially, would demonstrate features that would later define them. You had the big kids that would often gentle down into only slightly obese adults, but for a few years while their height caught up with the rest of their growth would be quite portly during these years. These contracted with the ones that looked almost skeletal at times but would round out as they aged. Then you had two sub-species as far as apparent age. You always had a few that looked like they were still in middle school or even elementary, most of whom would have a final growth spurt at 19 or 20, the so-called "late bloomers." The opposite of these were the ones who looked like they could frequent one of the local bars without causing too much notice, whose growth had often occured early and now already appeared to be at least college age.
This was the group Clara fit in. With her blue hair and pierced eyebrow, she looked more like the manager of the local Hot Topic in the mall than like a teenager. In everything but her eyes she looked to be an adult. Her eyes still retained that innocence of experience. Not sexual innocence, but the innocence of not having bad memories that spring up on occasion. Her dark clothes and pale, pierced skin were a fashion choice. Bobby expected that she would probably drop the goth look in a few years and be one of those young ladies that he didn't recognize when they called out a greeting in public. This could happen often. A child you took to middle School for three years would recognize you, but this being seven years later than you last saw them would render them unrecognizable.
Clara looked like she was being led back into 'trouble territory.' One of the brasher young men, Johnny, led her to a seat about three rows from the back. Bobby made note of this because these seats were at just the right distance from all five internal cameras that you could only get a view of the kids in them from about the neck up. Those who had been caught doing something they knew the bus driver couldn't see sometimes ended up seeing a video or a photograph that revealed these seats were less observable than either the seats further forward or the last three rows.
Having turned out of the school, Bobby looked a couple blocks ahead. Hopefully, they had a traffic guard ahead who would prioritize the buses and get them out onto the main road quickly. Some days it would take as much as ten minutes to get the slightly reduced bus phalanx out and on their way to the suburbs and rural outleighers of the county. Having made it to the road that looped around the cemetery, Bobby knew he was in good shape until he made it across the bridge and past where two comfortable lanes on each side narrowed into two,total.
While the bus struggled up the hill, Bobby looked up to the mirror again.Johhny was seated now, but he didn't see Clara. He made a mental not to keep checking every little bit, until he was certain nothing disturbing was happening. She seemed to him to be a fairly composed young lady, but possibly vulnerable to some of the harder "games" some of the young men played. One of the few things that had not changed about high school was that boys still chased girls with impunity and often with a lack of the respect or basic humanity they would learn later in life.
Bobby's normal appoach to the high school love affairs was to leave them alone as long as it wasn't disturbing the other passengers. There was rarely anything happening in the bright afternoon sun that was racy enough to cause a disturbance anyway and the driver calling out things that would only make the situation more apparent wasn't going to be helpful.
As they crested the hill near Knob Park, Bobby took another look back in Johnny's direction. He was still in the same seat and Bobby still didn't see Clara. Some of the other students seemed very interested in that seat, so Booby would keep an eye out, but at the moment it seemed everything was fine.
Bobby turned on the blinker to turn by the Tractor Supply Co. and make his first stop. He would drive up this road and stop at two apartment complexes before crossing over the freeway and heading for the more rural part of his route. He'd lose about ten passengers at each of the two apartment complexes, cutting his bus population almost in half. Once he'd pulled over and hit the switch that opened the door and started the red lights flashing, Bobby looked back to see if could better assess where Clara had gotten to. He noticed several boys holding out there phones as they got up in the back of the bus, Not in the "damn,I need to pause this YouTube video while I walk of the bus," way, but more in the stiffer stiller manor that meant they were taking a photo.
One of the boys must have forgotten their flash was on. As the brighter light flared through the back half of the bus, I caught a different kind of flash. Of bright blue. In the third seat from the back... but not at shoulder level. That would have been enough to make me suspicious without the gesture.
One of Murphy twins, hunched over for a moment and, lifting a fist, made a pumping motion at his chin level. This provoked a small burst of laughter, which was quickly shut down by the twin that had made the gesture, who again failed in his poor attempts at subtlety: He clearly pointed at me while shaking his head and raising a finger to his lips to indicate to the other three boys that were getting off the bus of the need for silence.
That essentially clinched it. If what I thought was happening, was happening, I couldn't leave it alone. Sure, the cameras on the bus wouldn't necessarily capture direct evidence. But they would certainly capture the gesture and mockery from the Murphy twins and if there were even the slightest bit of blue in the area that was blocked by the seat backs of the rows that surrounded Johnnys, it would cause a minor scandal. One that would probably be almost a point of pride for Johnny in later years, but could create major problems for Clara... and for Bobby himself, who would possibly lose his job if he didn't react to the obvious. If the surrounding kids hadn't been filming, he might have been able to handle this in a different manner. One that would create less of a reputation for Clara
But his hands were kinda tied now. The fairly high odds that those boys would show those videos to their friends at school, and that a teacher would "accidentally" see it over a shoulder was too much to risk. Such scenarios almost always ended up with the "blame" on the bus driver, who "should have known." As the two sets of parents each tried to focus the responsibility on the shoulders of the child that wasn't theirs, the bus driver almost always ended up as a safe scapegoat whose sacrifice was somehow seen as a way to at least salvage the parents reputations.
Bobby knew what he had to do. He'd honestly rather not do it. Clara hadn't seemed reluctant as she was walking back with Johnny and there hadn't been any commotion. If Bobby left things alone it would at most be one of those seven-day wonder bits and it would get forgotten about, which was probably what would be best for the kid he cared about in the situation. Johnny he wasn't worried about.
He pulled the keys out of the ignition and slowly started walking to the back of the bus. Nice and slow so everyone could get situated.As he finally approached the seat where he figured all the activity had been, Johnny sat up straighter and then Clara came into view, slumped down low and looking away from everyone, eyes focused on the floor. The population of the surrounding seats was still very interested and at least one of them was still recording. Bobby knew that had to be taken care of first.
"PHONES DOWN!" He roared, "and if I catch any hint of this on any social media, I'll make a personal visit to all of your parents so they know exactly why you're in the hospital, understand? Now everybody to the front half of the bus for a minute. Johnny and I need to have a talk."
