Free Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass Page B

hometown to take a fourteen-hour bus ride?
    “Who can tell me why they call a total solar eclipse Nature’s Greatest Coincidence?” Mr. Silver grins as hands shoot up all around the bus. We’re barely out of town and already I feel like I’m back at school, not knowing the correct answers.
    Mr. Silver calls on a lady in the front and waves her up to the microphone. He places the sun hat on her head and says, “Whoever has the hat, has our attention, folks.” She giggles, adjusting it on her head. Then she says, “The only reason we can see an eclipse is because the moon and the sun happen to look the exact same size from earth. But really, the moon is 400 times smaller. It’s just that coincidentally, the sun is 400 times as far away as the moon, so they look the same size to us. If the moon were even a few miles smaller across, it wouldn’t hide the face of the sun when it passed in front of it.”
    Mr. Silver lifts the hat off her head and puts it back on his own. “Thank you for that concise over-view, uh —”
    “Rebecca,” the woman says, leaning into the mike.
    “Thank you, Rebecca!” Everyone claps and Rebecca makes a little curtsy before carefully making her way back to her seat.
    I still hear that clacking sound. Every once and a while a quick
hiss
joins in. Pink Sweat Suit Lady doesn’t seem to notice. Although she’s so old she could be hard of hearing. None of the other adults notice either so I guess it’s just a normal bus noise and I’m being paranoid.
    “I’m going to let you all relax in a minute, but I just want to introduce my assistant on this trip—Jack Rosten. Where are ya, Jack?”
    My face burns when I hear my name. “Uh, I’m back here,” I say, lifting my hand.
    “Stand up, Jack,” Mr. Silver booms. “Let everyone see who ya are.”
    I stand up awkwardly in my seat, and the folder goes flying onto the head of the person in front of me. Very coordinated.
    “Jack here is going to be my right-hand man. Anything you need and I’m not around, you can ask him. Right, Jack?”
    I smile weakly as everyone cranes their necks to look at me. The last time I was the center of attention like this was when I was a stalk of broccoli in the third grade play and forgot my one line. It was something about how broccoli is an important antioxidant or some-thing like that. The whole audience stared at me until finally the carrot stepped forward to deliver her line about carrots being good for the eyes.
    “Pssst, I think you can sit down now,” whispers Pink Sweat Suit Lady, tugging gently on my sleeve.
    I quickly sit. The guy in front of me slips my folder through the seats and I take it.
    “I didn’t know you were such an important figure,” she says, offering me another piece of licorice. I’m too shaken up to take it. How am I supposed to be this guy’s right-hand man when I don’t know anything about anything? I’m starting to think I made a big mistake. At least at summer school all I’d have to do is sit there.
    Mr. Silver is talking again. “Now everyone lean back and enjoy the countryside. We’ll stop for lunch in a few hours.”
    The chatter picks up again and then eventually people either drift off to sleep or start reading. It doesn’t take long for corn and wheat fields to replace the strip malls and office buildings. I bury myself in reading the articles. All the words I had heard when I first got on the bus are explained in there. I guess it sounds interesting, but I honestly still don’t see what the big deal is. I take out my sketchpad and a thin charcoal pencil and start drawing. Mr. Silver becomes a tall, thin alien in a sun-hat. Instead of standing in front of a bus, the alien is at the front of a spaceship. A pudgy wizard in a high pointy hat stands next to him. I’m the wizard.
    I thought Pink Sweat Suit Lady was sleeping, but she leans over and looks at my picture before I have time to jerk it away. “Remarkable likeness,” she jokes. “You must really