And in this chaos, Risa has a sudden realization.
This is not part of the plan.
The system might have a million contingencies for state wards trying to screw with things, but they don't have a plan of action for dealing with an accident. For the next few seconds, all bets are off.
Risa fixes her eyes on the front door of the bus, holds her breath, and races toward that door.
3. Lev
The party is big, the party is expensive, the party has been planned for years.
There are at least two hundred people in the country club's grand ballroom.
Lev got to pick the band, he got to choose the food—he even got to select the color of the linens: red and white—for the Cincinnati Reds—and his name, Levi Jedediah Calder, is stamped in gold on the silk napkins for people to take home as a remembrance.
This party is all for him. It's all about him. And he's determined to have the best time of his life.
The adults at the party are relatives, friends of the family, his parents' business associates—but at least eighty of the guests are Lev's friends. There are kids from school, from church, and from the various sports teams he's been on.
Some of his friends had felt funny about coming of course.
"I don't know, Lev," they had said, "it's kind of weird. I mean, what kind of present am I supposed to bring?"
"You don't have to bring anything," Lev had told them. "There are no presents at a tithing party. Just come and have a good time. I know I will."
And he does.
He asks every girl he invited to dance, and not a single one turns him down.
He even has people lift him up in a chair and dance with him around the room, because he had seen them do that at a Jewish friend's bar mitzvah. True, this is a very different kind of party, but it's also a celebration of him turning thirteen, so he deserves to get lifted up in a chair too, doesn't he?