Page 1 of Lone Star Longing
Prologue
LACEY DAVILA STEPPEDup on the bus, but didn't remove the hood of the rain jacket that was keeping her dry. She didn't lift her gaze to meet that of any other student as she made her way to her seat, slinging her backpack to the seat so that it hit the side of the bus with a thud.
“Hey,” Mrs. Driscoll, the bus driver, chided, barely waiting until Lacey followed her backpack before rolling the bus forward.
Lacey tuned out out the chatter going on around her. She knew without looking who was on the bus: Poppy, Austin, Bridget, Sofia and Javi. She didn't want to listen to their boring, childish conversations.
She’d heard her dad crying last night. Man, that was a horrible sound. Her dad, big and strong, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, crying because his wife had left with three of his kids. Would have been four, but Lacey insisted on staying. She couldn't leave her dad on his own, to take care of himself. He would forget to eat, he wouldn’t know how to do laundry, he would just be a mess without her. Her mother didn't need her, but her father definitely did.
She didn't really know how to make things better, so she was just there, quiet, but there. She thought her dad appreciated that but she couldn’t be sure.
She had a test today, otherwise she would have convinced her dad not to let her go to school in the downpour. Unlike her mother, he would have let her stay home. West Texas had few enough rainy days, and Lacey wished she was home, under her quilt with a non-school-related book. Spring Break was too long ago, and summer was too far away. Plus, she’d have to get a job this year because she was finally sixteen. Not a lot of possibilities for jobs in Broken Wheel, Texas.
She didn't understand why her dad didn't want to live closer to the base in San Angelo. He had an hour commute every day, which was another reason her mom left. He was exhausted by the time he got home, and didn't help her, though she kept a list for him, right beside her list for Lacey, Dalton, Tanya and Luke.
Maybe her dad didn't like being treated like one of his children, Lacey reasoned, though she didn't think her mom had the same thought. She just wanted help.
Lacey wished she could sympathize with her mother more, but while she loved her mother, she saw how much her dad did for the family.
She glanced up when the bus stopped and let Con McKay and his younger sister Claudia on. She sat up straighter. Con and Claudia never rode the bus. Con drove a beautiful red pickup, giving Claudia a ride, along with his girlfriend Britt. Lacey had heard, because Claudia was in her English class, that Con had gotten grounded for being out too late with Britt, and they were sentenced to ride the bus until the end of the school year, that their dad had taken the keys to that shiny red truck. Lacey figured there was more to the story, because she didn't think breaking curfew was worth losing your truck for almost two months.
Claudia made her way to the back of the bus with Bridget Tippler, and Lacey felt a little guilty for not offering the seat beside her, but they weren’t friends, exactly. Lacey didn't have a lot of friends. She’d stopped making them in elementary school, when she had to leave them every two years when her dad got transferred.
Con plopped a couple of seats behind Lacey, clearly not letting his punishment get him down as the other boys on the bus, all younger, greeted him like he was a rock star. Lacey could see where that would go to someone’s head, and he soaked up the admiration until they pulled up to Britt’s bus stop.
Con rose as Britt stepped on, clearly not as at ease with Con’s punishment as he was, especially, Lacey figured, since her hair was plastered to her head from the short run from her bus shelter to the bus door. Con reached for her hand to pull her down the aisle and they dropped together on a different seat, Con nuzzling her damp hair.
Lacey forced herself to turn away. Con was so handsome, and a god to all the girls at Douglas Consolidated High. She didn't have a crush on him, like most girls did, because she just didn’t, all right?
She turned to look out the window at the pouring rain, the water rushing down the ditches at the side of the road. The rain on the roof of the bus was deafening. The boys behind her were shouting, but she wasn't going to waste the energy trying to figure out what they were saying to each other. Instead, she watched the sheets of rain through the window.
Yeah, it would have been a great day to stay in bed and read.
She was reaching into her backpack for a book, even though she didn’t like to read in a moving vehicle, when Mrs. Driscoll hit the brakes suddenly, tossing Lacey against the seat in front of her. She pulled her hand out of her backpack and looked up.
Mrs. Driscoll was opening and closing her hands on the steering wheel as the bus sat at a complete stop. Lacey glanced back at her fellow passengers, then out the side window of the bus. The water was rushing downhill, and rising closer to the tires of the bus from the ditches on the side of the road. Lacey had to wipe away condensation as she pressed her head to the window and peered down. The road, mostly caliche, was eroding beneath them. Lacey tried to picture where they were on their route, but she truthfully never paid that much attention. She thought maybe the dry creek, because she thought she’d seen one of those gauges to measure the depth of the water. She didn't see the gauge now.
She heard a scream from behind her—Claudia, Bridget or Britt?—as the bus jolted beneath them. And then the bus lurched forward.
A knot formed in Lacey’s stomach when she saw the rushing water ahead of them, the bus inching toward it. Another scream, this time certainly Britt, as the front of the bus swung sideways, pushed by the water. Lacey kept her head pressed to the glass to watch the progress as Mrs. Driscoll fought for control, losing as the bus resisted the rushing water. Lacey could see the water swelling as it came in contact with the body of the bus, churning brown and frothy up toward the window where she watched.
Lacey snapped back from the glass, wanting to see the progress but fearing it at the same time.
“Hey! Hey, the water’s coming in the bus! Hey!” Javi Saldivar shouted from the front of the bus, motioning toward the doors. “Hey!”
Nearby, Mrs. Driscoll strained for control of the bus, but nothing she did was successful in getting the front wheels back on the road. Suddenly the bus pivoted, tossing Lacey out of her seat and across the aisle into Austin Driscoll, the bus driver’s son, who caught her head before she slammed it into his window.
She couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own breathing and the roaring of the water and the screams of the other passengers. She tried to push herself off of Austin, but the bus was tilting, tilting.
It landed on its side with a splash, and water was everywhere, pouring in through the windows beneath them, cascading over them from the floor. Her head was submerged for a moment, her legs trapped against the seat so she couldn't push herself upright. The water and the position of the bus kept her legs above her head, and even when she tried to put her hands on the window below her to push herself up, she couldn't.
Lacey’s hand was wrapped around the strap of her backpack so she wouldn't lose it, but the thought raced through her mind...why did she need it? She didn't need anything in it, and she was going to drown holding onto it, weighing herself down. She worked frantically to unwrap it, but the water made the fabric hard to manipulate. Panic had her panting before Austin gripped her hand, snapped open a knife and sliced the backpack free. Then he shoved her, his hands on her shoulders and his feet against her stomach, to push her upright so her head was above the water.
Only then did she realize she’d been pinning him below the water, too.
She glanced around to see the others fighting to find their orientation. The seats made movement almost impossible, and with the bus sideways, they were standing on the windows, their bodies held in their spots with the seats below them and the seats above them.
She saw someone—Con, she thought, reach for the hatch on the roof, one that looked too narrow to escape from. He popped it open, and the alarm blared, adding to the cacophony of rushing water and panicked cries.
