Toy Against Toy
Chapter Three
The kids in Ms. Frizzle's class were on the Magic Schoo Bus in Minnesota. All except for Dorothy Anne, who hadn't shown up before ten, and as Ms. Frizzle had said, there's have been no time to do anything had they not left then. So they commenced the travel across fifty states in six hours. The Magic School Bus could take it.
They had been parked for the past twenty-eight minutes while Mrs. Frizzle went on a stroll with Liz. Carlos and Wanda were in the front, with Janet and Mikey in the very back, as the back was the only placwe to hook up a wheelchair,the seats usually taking up that space being absorbed by the bus' own mechanism.
"Stop messing with those buttons, Carlios."
"I'm just trying to have a little fun, Wanda."
"Idf you cause the bus to disintegrate, it will not be fun."
"I'm sure Ms. Frizzle would have kept that eventuality from jhappening."
"I wonder what's talong her so long," Kiesha said.
"At my old school, teachers didn't leave students alone on a bus for half an hour."
"We're not at your old school, Phoebe," Wanda said.
The glass doors opened and four kids climbed aboard, two boys and two girls. One of the boys wore a backwards red cap. One girl had dark hair while the othewr girl's hair was strawberry-blonde. The boy had very light hair.
"Excuse me, but this is our school bus."
"Of course it is," said one of the girls. "We just thought we might check it out. Something odd is happening in Bailey City."
"As per usual," said the boy with a backwards cap.
"Shouldn't you guys be in school?" Arnold asked.
"Shouldn't you?" one of the girls who had just come up adked, shrewdly. She had dark hair.
"We're on a school bus," Kiesha said. "You four were just walking around."
"Right," said the boy with light hair, who seemedf quite bashful.
"No point in standing around," the boy with a backwards red cap said. He grabbed Phoebe's hand and pulled her toward the back of the bus. She seemed startled but went with him.
"What are a bunch of kids doing unsupervised on a school bus?" the girl with dark hair asked.
"Our teacher has left us for a while," Carlos said.
"She'll be back soon," Wanda said.
"Well, our teacher's a vampire," said the girl with strawberry-blond hair.
"Liz! They won't believe us."
"Your name is Liz?" Ralph asked the girl with strawberry haur, who had piqued his interest.
She nodded.
"We have a pet lizard named Liz. Class pet, I mean."
"I'm not a lizard!" Liz screamed, her cheeks flushed.
"I didn't mean to imply that," Ralph said. "Please sit next to me."
She took a seat on the aisle across from him. He scooted over to be near her. She did not move but stared down at her nails.
"It's fie by me if you think your teacher is a vampire," Ralph said.
"Vampppire-teachers are nothing on magic school buses," Wanda said.
"Excuse me, did you say magic?" the girl with dark hair asked.
"Yeah. This school bus can do all sorts of things."
"Like what?"
"Turn into a spaceship or a submarine or shrink or drill through the earth," Carlos said.
"That's impossible."
"No, it's not. I'll show you."
Carlos punched a button and the ground shook beneath them. They all felt as if the were being peeled back, and somehow a negative integer hung over them.
"I think I know what an orange feels like now," Kiesha said.
The bus had come to a stop. All the seats looked different, somehow.
""Carlos, what did you do?" Wanda yelped.
"I just pushed a button, that's all."
"And turned the bus into a boxcar, from the looks of it,' Kiesha said, coming in.
"Hey, is that a clock?" the girl with dark hair asked.
Several heads turned to it.
"Yeah, it looks to be one," said the boy with light hair.
"What time does it say?"
The boy with light hair crept closer. He puzzled over it for a moment, before saying, "It seems that the hands are indicating that it is the seventy-ninth year of the twentieth century."
"1979! Egads! That's a couple of decades ago."
"Carlos, I'm manning the controls from now on," Wanda said. "We are going back to the present."
She sat down and was about to press a button that would activate the time panel on the mainframe, when there was a knock on the door.
Carlos pulled down the lever to open the bus doors…..the bus could've opened them itself, but it preferred to let Carlos do the work this time. Wanda glared at Carlos but put on a passive look when the four newcomers stepped on board.
"We're trying to solve a mystery," said the youngest, a boy of eight.
"Cool, I like mysteries," the girl with dark hair said. The boy smiled at her.
"Geez, Benny. You don't have to blab to everybody," said the twelve-year-old girl who had come on the bus. She wore a violet-colored shirt.
"Look, I'm sorry guys, but the bus is rather full," Wanda said, waving for the four newest people to leave.
"It's a boxcar, not a bus," the fourteen-year-old girl who had just stepped on the bus said. She was the second oldest person present, the boy next to her being the eldest. He looked to be fifteen.
"That's what I meant, boxcar," Wanda said.
"You said bus."
"Tongue slip, you know?"
"No, I don't. A boxcar is a boxcar and a bus is a bus."
"We might as well tell them, Wand," Carlos said. He faced the fourteen-year-old girl and said, "This bus is a boxcar right now. But it also can turn into a Ferrari or an airplane or a—"
"Time machine!" the twelve-year-old girl exclaimed, her eyes on the clock.
"It's just a clock," Wanda said. "It goes forward in time based on the year, sixty seconds a minute."
"Then why is there a red line traveling from 1999 all the way back to 1979?"
"Carlos drew it with a marker."
"No, I didn't, Wand. We might as well just tell them the truth."
"We don't need a quarto of 1979ers to go blab that time-travel is possible."
The fifteen-year-old boy laughed heartily. "What did you call us?"
"Nineteen seventy-niners."
"Not that. The other word."
"A quarto."
He continued laughing. Wanda gave him a stare and he stopped after a moment.
"Sorry, it's just that I never thought me and my siblings would be called after one of the methods Shakespeare's plays were distributed in his day."
"We should introduce ourselves," the girl with dark hair said. "I mean, there are how many of us here? And we don't know each other's names."
"I'm Carlos, she's Wanda."
"I'm Melody," said the girl with dark hair. "You know Liz' name, and that's Howie."
The boy with light hair waved.
"My name's Henry," said the fifteen-year-old boy. "This is my sister Jessie, and that there is Violet."
"Our youngest brother is Benjamin," said the girl with a violet-colored shirt.
"Benny," the boy corrected, gazing out of the window. Melody waited for her moment to talk to him. She wanted the introductions to be carried out, first.
Once everyone had introduced themselves, except Janet and Mikey, and Phoebe and the boy with a backwards hat (Melody said he was called Eddie), Wanda went back to the controls.
"Aha!" she said at last, punching a button.
Suddenly they felt as if a peel was enveloping around them. All except Henry, Violet, Jessie, and Benny felt this, but they felt a cocoon forming around them. As did everyone else, once they crossed the 1999 mark on the clock. After that, it was as if the cocoon had been placed in a burlap sack, the burlap sack in a cardboard box, the box in a refrigerator, the refrigerator in a safe, the safe on a sailboar, the sailboat on a frigate, the frigate on an airplane, and the plane in a building the size of the pentagon. And the hands on the clock moved faster and faster, till they came to a dead stop on a small, thin number, 2776.
"Look who's sent us whirling through time now," Carlos said.
"I didn't mean it!" Wanda exclaimed. She was rapidly punching at the controls, when the bus' doors opened and its tongue reached in, causing them all to stick to it by saliva and pulled them, our dropping them on the groujnd.
They were in a dome-shaped building, and they looked around dazed.
"Where are we?"
"Youa re in Panem," said a man with a bristly mustache.
"What's Panem?" Melody asked.
"A place that welcomes you…as Tributes."
He grinned at them maliciously.