The driver leaned out. I couldn’t hear my father’s first words over the engine, but I saw him point toward the back of the bus. His expression changed when he found me through the window. He didn’t shout. He looked at my hands holding the dress together, then at the scissors still in Annika’s grip.
“Stella,” he called. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said, though my voice caught. “I don’t think so.”
Annika lowered the scissors to her side. “It’s a misunderstanding.”
“Put those on the seat,” the driver said. His voice had sharpened. “Now.”
She hesitated, then set them beside a backpack. The driver radioed the school office and asked them to send an administrator and the nurse. He told everyone to stay where they were. Nobody laughed this time. Maya lowered her phone only long enough to look at me, and I nodded toward it. She lifted it again.
My father stayed at the open door. Later he told me he had wanted to climb straight down the aisle, but he could see how crowded it was. I could barely move without brushing against someone, and I was holding my dress closed with both hands. He asked the driver for a blanket instead.
A boy near the front passed one back, seat by seat. I wrapped it around my waist. Only then could I let go of the torn fabric. My fingers had gone stiff from gripping it.
“I’m Dr. Fox,” my father said to the driver. “Stella’s father.”
The name moved through the bus. Some students knew it from the hospital fundraiser posters that appeared around town every spring. Others knew my surname but hadn’t connected it to his. Annika’s face changed, though she tried to hide it by sweeping her hair behind her ear.
“Dr. Weston Fox?” she asked.
Dad didn’t answer her. He was watching me as the nurse hurried across the pavement with the assistant principal behind her. The nurse climbed aboard first and asked whether I could walk. I said yes, but when I stood, the blanket slipped. Maya caught one end and tucked it securely around me.
“I’ve got your bag,” she said. She pulled the canvas strap from under my shoe and slung it over her shoulder.
The assistant principal, Ms. Bell, stopped beside Annika. “Leave the scissors where they are. Come with me.”
“She bumped into me,” Annika said. “I was fixing a loose thread.”
Maya’s phone was still in her hand. “That’s not what happened.”
“No one asked you,” Annika snapped.
“I am asking her,” Ms. Bell said. She turned to the driver. “Please keep the students on the bus until another administrator gets here. We need names and statements.”
Annika’s gaze flicked from Maya’s phone to my father. “You can’t seriously think I meant to cut her. It was a joke.”
I had heard that word used to close conversations before. It had followed comments about my shoes, my bus route, and the lunches my mother packed. This time Ms. Bell didn’t let it end anything. She asked Annika to come outside, and the two of them stepped down onto the pavement.
The nurse walked me to the front. I kept my eyes on the metal strips across the bus floor. As I passed, a girl moved her knees aside without being asked. Another student whispered that she was sorry. I didn’t know what to say, and I was grateful the nurse didn’t make me answer.
Dad stood back until I reached the door. Then he held out his coat. I took it, and he helped me put it over my shoulders without disturbing the blanket. He asked again if I was hurt. I shook my head, but the nurse noticed a red mark on my wrist where I had caught the edge of a seat.
“Let’s have a look indoors,” she said. “You can decide what else you need when we’re somewhere private.”
Dad picked up my bag from Maya. She hovered by the door, phone pressed against her palm. “I have the video,” she told me. “I started when she took out the scissors. I didn’t know she was actually going to do it.”
“Thank you,” I said. I meant it, although I couldn’t yet bear to see what she had recorded.
Ms. Bell asked Maya to stay with the other students for a few minutes and not to send the video around. “We’ll arrange a way for you to share it with the investigation,” she said. “And you can call your parents.”
Annika gave a short laugh. “You’re treating me like a criminal over a dress.”
“I’m treating this as a serious incident,” Ms. Bell said. “You may call your parents too.”
We went through the side entrance to the nurse’s office. The room smelled faintly of soap, and a paper cover crinkled when I sat on the examination table. The nurse checked my wrist and asked whether the scissors had touched my skin. They hadn’t. She offered me a spare pair of sweatpants and a school T-shirt from the cabinet.
I changed behind a screen. My dress was torn from just below the waist almost to the hem. One of the small stitches along the white collar had come loose too, where I had pulled at it. I folded the dress carefully and placed it on the chair. Seeing it there made my face burn in a way the bus hadn’t. On the bus I’d been too busy trying to cover myself.
My father waited outside while I changed. When I called him in, he didn’t immediately reach for the dress or the folder. He sat on the other chair and asked whether I wanted my mother there. I nodded. He called her, put the phone on speaker, and let me tell her what had happened in my own words.
