I know exactly what a school bus looks like.

               This wasn’t it.

               This was wrong. The yellow was too bright—too artificial—painful to look at, like ordinary yellow had taken too much LSD.

               Looking at it made my eyes itch.

               But just before I’d climbed on, I’d squinted at the side of the bus:

               SPATIAL DISTRICT SCHOOLS – NO. 321

               Now, sitting on the bus, the full weight of everything began to hit me at once.

               My stomach lurched.

               Spatial District Schools?           

               What the hell was that supposed to mean?

               A man sat in the driver’s seat. At least, I think he was a man.

               His face was so aggressively plain that my brain refused to process it. No wrinkles, no stubble, no lines—like a freshly-printed mannequin of a human being. His cap cast just enough of a shadow that I couldn’t quite tell if he had eyes.

               But I felt in my bones that something was off about him. He stared down at me with the kind of look you give someone who’s already lost.

               “Boy,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

               The door had already slammed shut behind me.

               There was no leaving the bus now.

               The first thing I noticed as I made my way to sit down—I was the only one on the bus.

               This bus looked, no, felt old.

               But there were no cobwebs. No dust, No spiders or skeletons.

               Nothing was noticeably off.

               And that’s what was so strange about it. The bus itself looked like it could have pulled out of 1983, except—the seats were clean.

               Spotless.

               The colors were saturated unnaturally.

               The air in the bus felt stagnant, stiff, and lifeless.

               And the air on the bus felt tingly. Electric.

               Alive.

               I swallowed hard, my throat dry.

               I didn’t want to sit too close to the driver. If he was working with Lana—and at this point, I was sure he was—I wanted as much distance as possible.

               I slid into a seat near the back.

               Outside, the Meadowbrook Mall was still there.

               Then the bus moved, and I saw the driver take a quick look at me in the mirror.

               “You ready for this, kid?” he asked.

               We pulled forward, driving down the Meadowbrook Mall exit and toward I-79.

               Then—reality shifted like a skipping record. One moment, the sunlight was warm against my skin. The next, shadows stretched long and jagged across the bus windows.

               I blinked.

               The sky was burning orange. Then deep purple. Then black.

               Too fast. Too wrong.

               My hands clenched the seat in front of me. “What the hell—”

               Then it was night.

               Then—

               A tunnel.

               A tunnel that shouldn’t exist.

               There are no tunnels in Bridgeport. I’ve lived here my whole damn life. Where the hell is he taking me? Where am I?

               Panic surged through my chest. I pushed myself up, gripping the back of the seat in front of me.

               I turned toward the driver, my voice coming out hoarse.

               "Just where the hell do you think you’re taking me? Where are we? What day is it? Because it was just sunny a few seconds ago! Who are—”

               The tunnel swallowed us whole.

               The air changed.

               No. It vanished.

               I tried to take a breath, but my lungs refused to pull anything in.

               The air simply stopped and the world held its breath.

               A pressure built behind my eyes, slow at first, then crushing. Something was pressing against the inside of my skull.

               I gasped again. My eyes filled with stars.

               No air!

               My knees buckled, and I hit the seat hard, my head swimming.

               What the hell is happening to me?!

               And I gasped, pulling in a mouthful of air.

               “What—”

               A low chuckle drifted from the front of the bus.

               “Relax, kid,” the driver muttered. “You’ll hurt yourself if you fight it.”

               My teeth clenched. “Fight what?”

               I forced myself to look up. The tunnel stretched endlessly ahead of us. I couldn’t see the exit.

               Only darkness.

               The driver didn’t even glance at me as he spoke. “I get it. First day in a new high school." He chuckled, shaking his head. "Believe me—this ain’t like no high school you’ve ever heard of.”

               “No! I have no idea what you’re even talking about! Why’re you calling me ‘kid’? What happened? I’m a forty-four year old man!” I yelled, trying to rationalize my way out of this.

               The driver just scoffed. “Not anymore you ain’t.”

               I shook my head. “You’re not making any sense. None of this makes any sense!”

               And he just shrugged and kept driving.

               “Where are we going?” I demanded.

               He finally glanced back at me. “Hey, if you think there’s been a mistake, take it up with the boss-lady.”

               “Who?”

               “Geez, kid, you’re dense. You already met her.”

               Lana.

               Then—

               Light.

               We burst out of the tunnel.

               I gasped.

               My eyes stung as bright, white morning sunlight exploded onto the side of the bus.

               Wait.

               What?

               I blinked. The sky was pale gray, clouds rolling over a landscape I didn’t recognize.

               Thin, skeletal trees lined the roads. Their branches were barren and twisted. Like they had died a long time ago.

               And beyond them, in the distance—

               A town.

               A town I had never seen before. It didn’t look like any city in West Virginia that I had ever seen. And perched above the town like a looming vulture, a school.

                              My chest tightened. “W…w…where the hell am I?” I rasped, rising to my feet.

               The bus slowed.

               The driver smirked, leaning back in his seat, but his expression didn’t match his eyes.

               His flat, empty eyes.

               The doors groaned open, the hiss of air brakes sounding weirdly like a sigh.

               “End of the line, kid.”