“Relax. I’m kidding. Sort of. I think. It was just a really creepy kid. Or employee. Whatever. He had a name tag like he works here.”

“Was he around your age?”

“Yeah?”

“Was his name Robert?”

“No. Oh wait. Yes? His name tag said ‘Bert.’ Why are you laughing?”

Mom doesn’t say anything until we get to the van.

“Well, it looks like you just met your fellow carpooler. That’s Bert Akers, Mr. Akers’s son. He’ll be riding to school with you and Coralee too.”

“No. No. No, no, no, no.”

After she stops laughing, I make her explain. Apparently, Mr. Akers has about a million kids. But I guess Bert is the youngest and everybody else is grown and gone. So Mr. and Mrs. Akers live over in Royal Oaks now too, and Mom, because she is a crazy person, offered to give him a ride so he wouldn’t have to take the bus.

If your name is Robert, why in the world would you go by Bert? Why not Rob or Bob or Bobby, even? Unless you’re one thousand years old or on Sesame Street, it proves you are beyond bizarre. These are all the things I do not say to Mom as we cross back over the bridge on Route 9.

What I do ask is the obvious. “Why can’t he just ride the bus like everybody else? He’s got two good legs.”

“I think he’s been having a rough time on the bus with some kids from school.”

I think about our strange conversation and the blinking thing. I can totally see this. He’s probably on the spectrum. But I bet he’s never been tested. I bet they hear “spectrum” here and think colors of the rainbow, not autism. And the bus is probably where all the bullying happens. It makes sense; there’s only one adult and a busload of un-seat-belted kids, and that adult is supposed to keep both eyes on the road. That bullying never really happened to me, though. Everybody who rode the short bus was in it together. We had to save our strength for the school day.

“I still don’t get it.”

Mom brakes a little too hard.

“Look, Ellie, Mr. Akers was kind enough not to press charges against your grandfather, who was driving with a revoked license, and he also agreed to split the cost for repairs. Taking Bert to school is the least we can do.”

I see how Mom is trying to place Band-Aids over all the broken people. It’s what she does. But today, after the school visit and the hospital visit, I just can’t handle it. We have enough pieces to put together in our own lives without adding more.

“Oh, I get it. You’re going to fix all the crazy people now, right?”

Mom pulls the car over so fast, the seat belt cuts into my shoulder.