People were getting out of their seats, moving to the front of the bus, clogging the aisle. A low rumble of conversation had started, mostly people grumbling or asking what was happening. I stood up, hand still pressed to my bloody mouth, trying to peer around people.

Outside it was chaos. Downtown traffic had stopped in clumps, and people were abandoning their cars and running toward the horrifying scene directly in front of us.

The road was gone, and in its place was a crumbling, smoking black hole. Already, over the sound of people's excited chatter sirens wailed in the distance and I could hear someone screaming outside. It was no pot hole, this thing. It had taken out an entire four lanes, the sidewalks on both sides and the fronts of several stores had been ripped off, baring their innards to the public. In the very center of the giant crater was a steadily burning ember that grew smaller as we watched. Even from inside the bus I could taste the bitterness of the thick black smoke that poured out of the hole.

"It's a God-damn meteorite!" A man beside me cried, and there were murmurs of astonished agreement from the rest of the passengers. 

Neanderthal's shaggy eyebrows seem to have fled permanently up into his bangs."I saw it hit! My God, it nearly hit us! Fell right in front of us! By the grace of God! If we'd been two minutes ahead of schedule..." he shuddered, as if he couldn't possibly bear to say the rest. We got it though. If we hadn't been a few minutes late, we would be the smoking hole in the ground right now.

Now that we had quieted down inside the bus we could hear people outside it screaming. I realized with a kind of dull horror, that some of the twisted, blackened mess in the hole was a set of traffic lights that used to be there, and the rest of it was people's cars. People driving home from work, or to a party, or to meet a date. People who'd been thinking about their mortgage or supper that night one minute,  had ceased to exist in the next.

Morgan's hand found mine, squeezed, and I turned back to her. Her face wasn't scared or horrified, she just looked...sad."Lucas?"

I wondered if I should feel guilty that my stomach was doing excited flips flops at the touch of her hand. Nothing like a natural disaster to put you in the mood, right? I must be a terrible person.

"Lucas, come on." I watched her lips move, forming the words. She turned and pulled me down the aisle. Neanderthal had opened the doors and we slipped out the middle with a flood of our fellow passengers. Some of us joined the groups of gawking onlookers snapping pictures and recording videos on their phones, getting as close as they could to the smoking crater. A woman screamed as a nearby store front collapsed further as the debris began to settle. Traffic was literally bumper to bumper, horns honking further down the road, drivers and passengers climbing out and running forward to see where all the smoke was coming from. Watching the looks on their faces when they stumbled to a halt in front of the newly created canyon in the middle of the highway was almost comical.

Onlookers yelled into their phones, describing the accident. And one woman nearly went into hysterics on the spot, screaming about not being able to get through to her husband, while her distraught friend tried to pull her out of the road. One man was running from car to car, attempting to convince people to move their vehicles out of the rode. I could hear him repeating the message to all of them: The emergency vehicles would need to get buy.

"We'll walk a couple blocks down. Then you can call your mom." Morgan said.

I blinked stupidly at her. "What?"

"You call your mom to pick us up, tell her we'll walk a couple streets down till it's clear. We'll meet her just outside the mall. She'll never make it through here."

I fished in my pocket for my cell phone. "Okay."

"Wait till we get in front of the mall though, it might take awhile."

We ended up dodging around groups of people running down the sidewalk. Some of them looked scared, but most looked eager, faces lit with excitement. As if she knew what I was thinking, Morgan said, "People are always drawn to an accident. It's human nature."

"Yeah, it's kinda sick," I grunted, looking back over my shoulder at the long black column of smoke behind us. Finally, sirens could be heard, faint at first, growing louder. Morgan and I looked up at a loud "wop, wop, wop" sound, as a chopper flew over us, heading straight from the smoke. The news was sniffing out the story, like vultures come to feed on the dead.

"Okay, call your mom."

"Right." Mom was going to flip. I would be banned from riding the bus for the rest of my life. She would wrap me in bubble wrap and stick me in the closet and I would never see the light of day again. 

I was beginning to think that wasn't such a bad idea though.

The phone rang twice before Mom picked up, "Hello? Lucas?" She sounded strange, shell shocked.

"Mom, yeah, it's me. Did you hear it on the news?" How did they get the story that fast?

"It's on right now." Mom said. "It's true? A meteorite?" She didn't let me answer,

"Where are you? You're not near there are you?"

"Uh, no," I lied, "the bus broke down so we didn't get that far.'

Morgan gave me a sharp look and I shrugged. No point telling my mother that we'd just missed becoming extra crispy. She didn't need to know all the details.

"Look, Mom, can you pick us up? We're in front of the mall right now."

"Us?" She honed in on the word like an eagle going for a mouse. "Is this the girl you like?"

"Mom," I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, "She's just one of my summer classmates. We ride the same bus." It was hard to believe she was grilling me about girls when we'd almost been smoked by a meteorite just now.

To my immense relief she said she'd be there in five minutes, and Morgan and I sat on the bench outside the mall. I dug into my bag and pulled out a bag of cheese snacks, opening them with shaking fingers. I needed them the way a smoker needs a cigarette, it would help the stress.

"I'm surprised you're not fat," Morgan observed.

"Thanks," I lifted one hand from the snack bag, watched it shake like and old man's, and clutched the bag again. "I'm wiry, I burn it off."

"Are you alright? You're really white."

I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the feeling of the foil bag between my fingers and the sharp cheese taste on my tongue. "Weird shit," I mumbled through a mouthful, swallowed and said,"...is happening to me."

"Pardon?"

" First I was hit by a bus, then some guy in his pajamas tries to stab me, then yesterday some nut job almost takes me out with a potted plant, and today a meteorite almost hits our bus."

"A potted plant?" Morgan said.

My eyes flew open. "I mention I got hit by a bus and the first thing you ask about is the plant?"

She smiled. "Sorry, I mean, what happened with the bus thing?"

I told her. I told her almost everything. How I remembered being inside the bus stop, in spite of what the doctor said. I even told her I remembered another person being there.

"The mind does funny things sometimes, doesn't it?" Morgan said.

I stared at her. Obviously she hadn't been at the bus stop, or she would have jumped up and said, "I was at that bus stop too!" or "I was hit by a bus last week as well, what a coincidence!" 

So that was it then, I'd dreamed the red sweater girl up and then pinned her identity on Morgan."Yeah," I said, "it sure does."