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—Why?

She folded her arms.

—I want to know why. You better not just be trying to get me to hang around longer.

I laughed.

—Well, they're loud and they smell. They get in the way. And they're really kind of ugly.

She smiled.

I took this as encouragement and kept talking, something that's rarely gone well for me in my life.

—And they're haunted.

She raised her eyebrows.

I raised a hand.

—No, no. Really. This is so strange. I don't know. Just this thing. Kind of started. Something happened and I started not liking them.

She laughed. Sort of.

—Because they're haunted?

I rubbed the spot between my eyes and squinted.

—Yeah, OK. Um, let me think.

—You're lying. You're so trying to sucker me.

—No, I'm not.

—You totally are. You're trying to think of something funny to say. You are fucking with me and you are so busted.

I laughed again.

—No. It's just that it's complicated and I sometimes, I don't know, forget exactly how.

I looked up at the sky outside the window.

A piece of it snapped off and dropped and hit me on the head.

And it was all there again, the whole thing, back in my head, one picture, entire. No longer broken into the little fragments I liked to keep it scattered in. Fragments hidden on ghost buses cruising LA. Freighters of lost things. But not of me.

I looked at Soledad, who'd just helped me to put it all together again.

And I thought, How kind of her.

—No, I got it! Yeah, huh, it's funny. You know. Because, it's not like I forgot. It's more like I think about it all the time. So I kind of forget it's there. Like white noise?

She tilted her head.

—Web?

—Yeah, funny thing. Totally fucked up, but funny in a distinctly not ha-ha way.

—Web. Hey.

—Weird how I had to think really hard to remember the … details? Details. Yeah.

—Are you OK?

—Yeah, I'm fine. So I was on this bus. I was teaching. I was a teacher before. Did I tell you that? I was. My dad always wanted me to be a teacher. Well, not always, but that's a long story. So I was a teacher. And I was on a bus. With my class. Fifth grade. Ten- and eleven-year-olds. Great age for kids, I think. Because they're really coming into their own as people, but the hormones haven't gone entirely berserk yet. They're mostly still kids. So my class and two other classes a little younger are on this bus. It's a field trip. Remember those?

—Sure.

—Yeah. This was cool. Did you grow up in LA.? Cuz when you grow up in LA., when I was a kid anyway, you always, sooner or later, you always go up to the Griffith Observatory. The planetarium. But it had been closed for renovations for like a year. Then it reopened. So we were going. I'd had to twist arms to make it happen. Field trips are a major production these days. So we were going. And we're riding in the bus. Lalalala. Kids talking, yelling, texting to the kid in the seat next to them. Kids in the back of the bus shoving each other and playing with toys they're not supposed to have because they start fights over them. I'm walking the aisle, talking to kids. Talking to this kid Tameka. Cute girl. She's pissed at one of her friends over this hat she's been wearing that no one else had, but now her friend is wearing the same hat and she doesn't understand how her friend could bite off her style like that. And we were talking about that. So then. Um. Crap. What happened then? Oh, yeah, man, how could I forget this part? So then, yeah, there's like a noise, like, like, like when you dent a soda can and pop it back out. But louder. There's a couple sounds like that. And someone screamed for the driver to stop. Crap, who was that? Oh, oh yeah, it was me. So I screamed for her to stop. And she did. And the kids. Some ran for the door. But I told them to get on the floor. Under their seats. And most of them did. Then I thought, Crap, we should get out of here. Or did I yell it? Anyway, I yelled at the driver to drive away. But she was on the floor, too. Aaaaand. There were sirens. And a helicopter. And it happened really fast. But pretty soon there were cops and they came