Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

I’m just a poor old bus driver, guess you wouldn’t
remember.”
It seemed impossible, but somehow this man was
doing a dead-on impression of my middle school bus
driver, Mr. Barron. A man so despised, so foul
tempered, so robotically inflexible that on the last day
of eighth grade we defaced his yearbook picture with
staples and left it like an effigy behind his seat. I was
just remembering what he used to say as I got off the
bus every afternoon when the man before me sang it
out:
“End of the line, Portman!”
“Mr. Barron?” I asked doubtfully, struggling see his
face through the flashlight beam.
The man laughed and cleared his throat, his accent
changing again. “Either him or the yard man,” he said
in a deep Florida drawl. “Yon trees need a haircut.
Give yah good price!” It was the pitch-perfect voice of
the man who for years had maintained my family’s
lawn and cleaned our pool.
“How are you doing that?” I said. “How do you know
those people?”
“Because I am those people,” he said, his accent
flat again. He laughed, relishing my baffled horror.
Something occurred to me. Had I ever seen Mr.
Barron’s eyes? Not really. He was always wearing
these giant, old-man sunglasses that wrapped around
his face. The yard man wore sunglasses, too, and a
wide-brimmed hat. Had I ever given either of them a
hard look? How many other roles in my life had this
chameleon played?