“Why must it be raining after such a wonderful afternoon?” I questioned myself.
I stared out the window of the school bus, feeling both gloomy and happy. I was hugged by the girl of my dreams but also punched in the stomach by a famous bully. Both of them were in the bus with me. I turned around to look at my dream girl. She smiled back shyly. When I was trying to face the front again, I glanced upon the bully, flashing a smug. Chills ran down my spine. I shivered. Was the bully the Grim Reaper? What was with that bully? I looked at my belly and tried to ease the pain by rubbing it. I pushed the thought aside. As the bus turned right to Hougang Avenue 6, a loud thud was heard by all of the students. We faced the front and about a hundred metres ahead of the bus, a roadside tree had fallen.
All of the students including the driver and me gasped in terror. To avoid the worst case scenario, the bus driver tried turning the bus around but it skidded across the slippery road caused by the rain. Everybody started screaming wildly. My instincts told me to jump out of the windows but when I tried, my head bumped against metal bars. Ouch, that hurt! I felt so dizzy and somehow felt like vomiting.
“Brace yourselves for impact!” the bus driver exclaimed.
Upon hearing that, I dashed to my seat and tried putting my seatbelts on quickly but I was too late. The impact was so strong that I was flung to the other side of the school bus. I landed on the floor again.
“Ugh, what is happening?” I questioned aloud.
No one answered. I looked around the bus. The damage was horrible. Some people were bleeding and moaning still conscious, while the other few were out cold. My head was hurting and only then did I realise that my head was bleeding. The bus had a deep dent on the side which caused some students to fall out of their seats. Sadly, a large splinter from the tree trunk got stuck into the bully’s head. What kind of fate did he meet? A sad one. Out of the blue, someone started moaning. As I moved along the aisle, I crushed fragments from the glass windows. The moaning came from the driver’s seat. I looked to see the driver bleeding from a branch, pierced in his stomach.
“Here... use... this,” he mumbled feebly. His face was pale and he was in absolute pain. He was writhing and his eyes were closing, his lips curled. He held out a mobile phone its screen was crushed.
“Stop talking! Save yourself first!” I told him with worried expressions.
By the time I tried to shut his mouth before he started talking again, he had already died of blood loss. Holding the phone in his right hand, I grabbed it and pressed what seemed like a ‘Switch On’ button. White light appeared on the screen showing icons that were hard to see. I turned around a final time to ensure that no one else was injured. Seeing my dream girl, I approached her. She was knocked out. I pushed aside her hair to look at her face. I walked to the bully, took off my wool coat, and covered his face. For some reason, I felt upset about the fate that the bully met. It must have been because he was my classmate.
Joe Jones, a person feared for what was called ‘wedgies’, had a soft side to him. He was kind and gentle at his home. I knew that when I visited him to give him homework from the teacher when he was sick and absent from school. It seemed that he acted tough because he was always caned at home from the information told me. Jane Summerton, the beauty of my class, was admired by many boys. Although, at her condominium that I once visited, she liked to order her maids around. I turned around and went out of the bus. The pitter-patter of the droplets of rain was annoying. My white t-shirt got soaked by the rain. Soon, I was sneezing. I dialled the police office’s number.
“Hello, this is Corporal Ong. How may I help you?” the officer asked.
“I am Ahmad Tirmizi, a student of Sunshine Primary School, one of our school buses has crashed. We have a lot of casualties that the students had met and two deaths. Will you send some ambulances and help me out?” I explained the situation.
With that statement, I heard shouts of commands over the phone. The phone ran out of battery and the conversation was cut short. Now all there was to the situation was to wait. I looked to the sky, asking God why had this happened.
