"Are girls asleep?" The question was blunt and the fingers returned immediately to the wheel. Melanie scooted forward and signed that they weren't.

Now the twins, Anna and Suzie, delicate as feathers, were sitting up, leaning forward, breathing on the older teacher's broad shoulders, looking ahead. Mrs. Harstrawn waved them back. "Don't look. Sit back and look out opposite window. Do it. Now! The left window."

Then Melanie saw the car. And the blood. There was a lot of it. She shepherded the girls back to their seats.

"Don't look," Melanie instructed. Her heart pounded fiercely, her arms suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. "And put seatbelts on." She had trouble making the words.

Jocylyn, Beverly, and ten-year-old Emily did as instructed immediately. Shannon grimaced and peeked, Kielle blatantly ignored Melanie. Susan got to look, she pointed out. Why couldn't she?

Of the twins, it was Anna who'd gone still, hands in her lap and her face paler than usual, in sharp contrast to her sister's nut-brown tan. Melanie stroked the girl's hair. She pointed out the window on the left side of the bus. "Look at wheat," she instructed.

"Totally interesting," Shannon replied sarcastically.

"Those poor people." Twelve-year-old Jocylyn wiped copious tears from her fat cheeks.

The burgundy Cadillac had run hard into a metal irrigation gate. Steam rose from its front end. The driver was an elderly man. He lay sprawled half out of the car, his head on the asphalt. Melanie could now see a second car as well, a gray Chevy. The collision had happened at an intersection. It looked like the Cadillac had had the right of way and had slammed into the gray car, which must have run a stop sign. The Chevy had skidded off the road into the tall wheat. There was no one inside; its hood was twisted and steam plumed from the radiator.

Mrs. Harstrawn brought the bus to a stop, reached for the worn chrome handle of the door.