The school bus was wrong.

  None of this was normal, but this? This was something else.

  I know what color a school bus is supposed to be, and this wasn’t it.

  The yellow was tht. Too artificial. Like someone had painted over reality with a color that didn’t quite belong. It hurt, like, the yellow was s it hurt to look at it. Its color sharper than necessary, almost liquid, like the afterimage of a neon sign burned into my retinas. The more I stared, the more I felt like it wasn’t a color at all—just a cept pretending to be one.

  But that didn’t stop me from walking toward it.

  I couldn’t stop. I tried! I tried to bite my lip, yelling in my head, anything…

  My body moved on its own, my legs carrying me forward no matter how much my brain screamed at me to turn and run.

  I forced my eyes to the side of the bus, looking for something—anything—that would make sense.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  SPATIAL DISTRICT SCHOOLS – NO. 321

  My stomach twisted.

  Spatial District?!

  What the hell kind of school district was that?

  And the 321…

  It reminded me of someone ting down.

  I dug my heels in, fighting against whatever force ullioward the bus. My mind was screaming STOP. STOP. DO NOT GET ON THAT BUS.

  A…

  I stepped forward.

  The doors hissed open.

  A man sat in the driver’s seat. At least, I think he was a man. His face was so aggressively pin that my brain refused to process it. No wrinkles, no stubble, no lines—like a freshly-printed mannequin of a human being. His cap cast just enough of a shadow that I couldn’t quite tell if he had eyes.

  But I felt in my bohat something was off about him. He stared down at me with the kind of look you give someone who’s already lost.

  “Boy,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You have no idea what yetting into.”

  The door smmed shut behind me.

  The first thing I noticed was that I was the only one on the bus. This bus looked, no, felt old. There were no cobwebs, no dust, no spiders or skeletons sitting in the seats. And that’s what was so off putting about it. The seats were , spotless really, but the colors were saturated unnaturally. The air in the bus felt stagnant, stiff, and lifeless.

  I swallowed hard, my throat dry. I didn’t want to sit too close to the driver. If he was w with Lana—and at this point, I was sure he was—I wanted as much distance as possible.

  I slid into a seat he back.

  Outside, the Meadowbrook Mall was still there. Then the bus moved, ay shifted like a skipping record. One moment, the sunlight was warm against my skin. The , shadows stretched long and jagged across the parking lot.

  I blinked.

  The sky was burning e. Then deep purple. Then bck.

  Too fast. T.

  My hands ched the seat in front of me. “What the hell—”

  Then it was night.

  Then—

  A tunnel.

  A tuhat should.

  There are no tunnels in Bridgeport. I’ve lived here my whole damn life. This pce does. It ’T exist! Where am I?

  Panic surged through my chest. I pushed myself up, gripping the back of the seat in front of me.

  I turoward the driver, my voiing out hoarse.

  "Just where the hell do you think you’re taking me? Where are we? What day is it? Because it was just sunny a few seds ago! Who are—”

  The tunnel swallowed us whole.

  The air ged. No, it vanished, aric feeling the moment before a storm. The air simply stopped and the world held its breath.

  A pressure built behind my eyes, slow at first, then crushing. Something ressing against the inside of my skull.

  I gasped.

  No air!

  My knees buckled, and I hit the seat hard, my head swimming.

  What the hell is happening to me?!

  A low chuckle drifted from the front of the bus.

  “Rex, kid,” the driver muttered. “You’ll hurt yourself if you fight it.”

  My teeth ched. Fight what?

  I forced myself to look up. The turetched endlessly ahead of us. I couldn’t see the exit. Only darkness.

  The driver didn’t even g me as he spoke.

  “I get it. First day in a new high school." He chuckled, shaking his head. "Believe me—this ain’t like no high school you’ve ever heard of.”

  The tunnel swallowed us whole.

  For one horrible sed, I felt like I was floating. Like gravity did anymore.

  Then—

  Light.

  We burst out of the tunnel.

  I gasped. My breath came ba sharp, frantic bursts, my heart pounding in my ears.

  And outside the window—

  The sun was rising.

  Wait.

  What?

  I blihe sky ale gray, clouds rolling over a ndscape I didn’t reize.

  Thin, skeletal trees lihe roads. Their branches were barren and twisted. Like they had died a long time ago.

  And beyond them, in the distance—

  A town.

  A town I had never seen before. It didn’t look like any city i Virginia that I had ever seen. And perched above the town like a looming vulture, a school.

  My chest tightened.

  “here the hell am I?” I rasped.

  The bus slowed.

  The driver smirked, leaning ba his seat, but his expression didn’t match his eyes.

  His ft, empty eyes.

  The droaned open, the hiss of air breaks sounding weirdly like a sigh.

  “End of the line, kid.”