The Rules
The summer just after I turned seven, my school bus sideswiped a cyclist. I was the only one who saw it happen, and up until I wrote that sentence today I have never told anyone. Not a soul. When it happened my face was pressed to the window as usual, my gaze turned outward to avoid unwanted attention from the crowd of rowdy schoolchildren hemming me in with eyes only for each other as they traded jibes. I never knew what to do with jibes. My vast vocabulary seemed to make things worse, not better. Silence and invisibility was safer. Be boring. Be insignificant. The bus seemed massive as it drew level with the teenager coasting down the hill on that insignificant framework of metal. I felt the sway as the wheels hit a bump in the roughly sealed road. The side of the bus slammed into him a few rows in front of my seat. There was no thump, nothing to be heard above the roar of our behemoth's engine, just a streak flying through the air - blue? some yellow maybe? - then the