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After school, Greg got his things from his locker and trudged down to the
science room. Mr. Cuttingham was busy with another student, so Greg just sat down
and waited. When Mr. Cuttingham finally got to Greg, he told Greg to finish his
report on the stickbug. Now, disliking bugs is bad enough, but having to do a
report on them is just horrible. When it was time for Greg to go home, he had
managed to write down five sentences. He wandered outside and down to the bus stop
(which was a block down the street) and waited until a bus would arrive. He often
did this, so everything was familiar to him. Why, he could walk there with his eyes
closed. Yet, something was different. There was an eerie silence that disturbed
him. There were no people or cars. "Maybe I took a wrong turn when I was walking,"
thought Greg. But he didn't have time to think long because, as if out of nowhere,
there came a bus which read, "Fear Journey."
"What a very peculiar name," Greg said aloud as he was climbing the stairs into
the bus.
"Yes, very peculiar," repeated a short man with a stubby gray beard. That man,
most likely, was the bus driver.
Greg put a coin in the box and said "47th Street, please."
"47th Street. Hmmm, not many people go there anymore."
"Nope," Greg said, not really understanding what the bus driver meant because a
lot of people lived on 47th Street. "Excuse me, Mr. Bus Driver."
"Call me Mr. Likable," he interrupted. "OK, well, Mr. Likable, how come I'm the
only one on the bus?" Greg asked.
"It's not very busy these days," he replied.
"Oh." Greg picked up a newspaper and began reading. After he was done with the
comic section, the front page, and the entertainment section, he looked up and was
astonished to find that he was no longer in an area he knew. In fact, he wasn't
even in the city anymore. He was in a jungle. He stared in horror as thousands of
trees that looked like huge grass passed by. The bus stopped at an old run-down
sign that just barely read "47th Street."
"OK," Mr. Likable said, "This is your stop, right?"
"This isn't how my street looks!"
  
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