Because I knew exactly where our stop was.
The bus rolled right past it, and my son didn’t even try to stand up. That was what scared me most. He just stayed in the front seat beside the driver like he expected it. I followed them another few blocks before the bus finally turned into the transportation yard behind the school. By then I was shaking so badly I almost missed the entrance.
I parked and hurried over. The driver was already helping my son carry a small cardboard box off the bus. When they saw me, both of them looked surprised. The box was full of books. Children’s books, chapter books, old paperbacks with worn covers. My son immediately ran over and said, “Mom, look! We finished another one today.” I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
The driver explained everything in about thirty seconds. A few months earlier he’d noticed my son always reading alone while the other kids got loud. They started talking about books. Then, with permission from the transportation supervisor—but unfortunately without ever telling me—he began letting my son stay on the bus after the last stop once a week while they sorted donated books for a literacy program. The conversations my son thought he wasn’t supposed to tell me about weren’t secrets at all. The driver had told him, “Let’s keep today’s surprise books quiet until we know which kids are getting them.” A seven-year-old heard that as: “Don’t tell your mom what we talk about.”
The supervisor apologized immediately for not contacting me. The driver did too. Nobody had meant to hide anything. They’d just handled it badly.
That evening my son carried the cardboard box into our living room and showed me the book the driver had given him for finishing his first chapter novel. Months later, I still catch him reading it under a blanket with a flashlight. Inside the cover is a note the driver wrote: “Never stop turning pages.”