9 Ch9-We Are Survivors

Chapter 9 We Are Survivors Finally Mrs. Kormel fixed the flat tire and said we could get back on the bus. She was all sweaty, and her hair was messed up, and her hands were covered with grease. She looked too tired to be mad at me or Mr. Klutz or anybody else. She just got into her bus driver's seat and hit the

gas. The bus lurched forward, and we all fell back in our seats. It was really late. Andrea com- plained that we might have missed social studies. Ha-ha-ha! That was fine with me. I hate social studies. Why is it called social studies anyway? Mrs. Kormel was driving fast! We were far from school. It looked to me like we were still in the middle of nowhere. The road was really bumpy, and it was wet from the rain. Mrs. Kormel was having

trouble keeping the bus in the middle of the road. I was afraid she might drive right off the side of the road. And what happened next was the most amazing thing in the history of the world. Do you want to know what happened? I'm not going to tell you. Well, okay, I'll tell you. Mrs. Kormel drove right off the side of the road! "Bix blattinger!" shouted Mrs. Kormel. The bus skidded to a stop. Some kids even fell out of their seats! It was hilari- ous. You should have been there. "Is everybody okay?" Mrs. Kormel asked. "Yeah!" me and Michael and Ryan said.

"That was fun. Can we do it again?" "We're stuck in a ditch," said Mrs. Kormel. "We're not going anywhere." "What are we going to do now?" asked Emily. She looked like she was going to cry. I was amazed that Emily hadn't cried yet. She usually can't go five minutes without crying about something. "I don't know what to do," Mrs. Kormel said sadly. "My cell phone is dead. I guess we'll just have to wait for help to arrive." "Too bad Striker Smith isn't here," I said. "He would know what to do." "If you hadn't thrown that dumb doll out the window, none of this would have happened!" yelled Andrea.

"He's not a doll!" I yelled right back at her. "Zingy zip!" yelled Mrs. Kormel. Everybody was really depressed. We just sat there on the bus. There was nobody around. No houses. No stores. No nothing. Nobody was going to rescue us. It felt like we had been on the bus a million hundred hours.

It occurred to me that we might not only miss the rest of the school day, we might miss the rest of our lives! We could sit there forever. We could die out there! Suddenly I felt hungry. I wished I hadn't given my sandwich to that first grader. I was starving. I was afraid my stomach might eat itself. My friend Billy who lives around the