Author's Notes: This is relatively old, and yet somehow I feel drawn to it. I don't think I'll be updating it any time soon, it can stand on its own okay. Emo this, so if you don't feel like being vaguely depressed, bypass this one. Heh. Enjoy.

000!000

The night was beautiful, so dark and stunning. Nicole sat on the swing on her front porch, one leg folded under her and the other resting on the floor, lazily rocking the swing back and forth. Her husband, Shawn, came outside to stand against a column. He sighed, his breath fogging out into the air and dispersing. He turned and stood in front of his wife’s swing.

“Hey.” She said halfheartedly, scooting over so Shawn could sit down.

“I put Tara to bed,” he murmured, slinging an arm around Nic’s shoulders. “She told me to tell you she loved you.”

“She says that every night, Shawn.” Nic murmured. Shawn’s breath came out ragged and foggy again, and he bent down, scraping a stick off the floor and putting it to his mouth, simultaneously letting out a puff of air.

“Remember that? When we were little?” Shawn waved the stick in the air as if it were a cigarette and smiled ruefully. “We’d pretend we were smoking as we ran around outside. We found it great. Our parents, not so much.” He tossed the stick on the ground and sighed. “What is it, babe?”

“You know what day it is.” Nic said shortly, jerking away from Shawn, who shut his eyes for a moment, thinking.

“December twelfth?” He guessed. Nic nodded.

“Anniversary of Mom’s death.” She mumbled, scuffing her shoe in the dirt on the slatted floors. Shawn let in a breath between his teeth and stared at Nic, who sat under the stars, vulnerable and scarred.

Her auburn hair turned a radiant blonde in the parts where the moonlight hit it just right, and her deep green eyes stared at her fisted hands, which rested tamely in her lap. The scraps of light raining down from the sky seemed to pool at her right arm, illuminating the white scar that ran up the arm, from the knife she’d taken to it at a young age.

Rice, their six-year-old adopted daughter, padded out onto the porch, peering at her parents with large owl eyes.

“Mommy?” the word fell like a stone on the shoulders of Nicole, who sputtered and felt tears begin to work their way down her cheeks.

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Shawn murmured, standing up and taking Rice’s hand. “She’s just thinking about her Mommy right now.” Shawn looked over his shoulder at his wife, who had adopted the fetal position and tucked herself into the corner of the swing, her head resting on the chains that led to the ceiling. The swing let out a feeble creak and Shawn sighed to himself and shut his eyes. A few moments later, the swing set itself into a rocking motion, and Nic shut her eyes. Shawn led Rice inside, enticing the girl with promises of a movie and ice cream before bed.

In reality, he just didn’t want her to see the scars.

000!000

Nic’s mother, Martina Redicage, drove a school bus.

This was a fact that Nic, especially at age seven, was overjoyed with. Since her father wasn’t around, and he never had been as Nic was born out of a one-night stand, it required the younger girl to go on every route her mother drove.

On this particular day, December twelfth, Martina was taking Nic along with her to do the high school routes. Out of all the routes, Nic hated the high schoolers. They made fun of her and jostled her because she was so much younger than the rest of them, and she hated it. Logically, she dragged her feet in the apartment as her mother ran around getting ready for the day.

“Let’s go!” she snapped, grappling for Nic’s coat on the rack by the door and tossing it at her daughter, rolling her eyes at Nic, who sat in her chair at the bar in the kitchen, lazily twirling her spoon about in the milk leftover from her cereal. “Nicole Esther Redicage, get out of that chair, get your bag, and let’s get a move on!”

At 6.05 in the morning, neither of the girls was particular communicative. Nic deposited her bowl in the sink, padded over to her bag, tugged on her coat, and left the apartment, running through the parking lot and clambering into the big yellow bus parked at the back by the dumpster.

“It’s cold.” She complained, leaning her head over into the driver’s seat as her mother started the bus up and manually snapped the doors shut.

“I’m working on it, Nic,” Martina snapped, rubbing her own upper arms and looking up at her brooding daughter in the rearview mirror. “Now sit back.” Nic grudgingly fitted herself into the corner by the window and stared out at the inky blackness as the bus gained momentum and made it to the suburbs where they stopped to pick up the route.

Nic was fascinated by houses. She’d never lived in one, so all her life, passing by them thrilled her. When Martina took Nic to her parent’s house, Nic spent the whole time running around and repeatedly coming back to her mother with pieces of fascinating information.

“Mom! They have three bathrooms!” She’d crow. “And the kitchen, it has an island!” Martina could feel the blush creep over her face time and time again. One time, Martina’s father, Rocky, had shown Nic his wife’s walk-in closet. The scream of delight that emitted from Nicole’s lips was so loud that Martina felt sure the neighbors could hear it.

So, now, as the school bus came to stops on street corners, Nic’s face was pressed to the glass of the bus, staring at the architecture of the houses by streetlight. She was fascinated by the development of a new home being built between two existing homes, and had been chronicling its passage from slats of wood to a home for the past year and a half. She felt a jolt next to her, and turned to see a much older boy, probably sixteen or seventeen, sitting in the seat next to her.

“Er,” Nic slipped her knees up to tuck under her chin and put her backpack in front of her as some form of a shield. “Hello?” The boy stared at Nic, his eyes blazing.

“Twerp.” He muttered vehemently, fixing his eyes on the aisle as a girl in a tight skirt sauntered down the aisle. Martina snapped the doors shut, pushed the brake button, and drove off.

It was the next five minutes that would haunt Nicole Redicage’s days and nightmares for the next twenty-two years.

Something happened to the bus. Nobody knew what it was, or how it malfunctioned. But right as Martina turned a corner, the wheels in the back refused to turn, causing the bus to turn and flip repeatedly down a hill, landing in a forest thicket in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.

The bus was upside down, and everyone sat on the ceiling, rubbing their limbs and checking their neighbors. No words were passed, nobody needed them. Nic shimmied past the boy who had sat next to her, who was now pressed up against the back door, ripping his shirt into bandages for a boy in the back who hadn’t been quite so lucky. She threw herself at her mother, who lay abstractedly by the controls, a sticky wetness coating the control panel of the bus.

Just then, the sun rose, and Nic saw the wetness to be blood. Martina hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, and her neck had snapped. The girl turned and surveyed the bus from her vantage point at the front, and cried.

The police and ambulances came ten minutes later, from an anonymous tip from someone driving past. They carted her mother past on a stretcher, murmuring to themselves, and leaving Nic curled up in a ball on the floor in the woods, her tears watering the soil.

Nobody cared.