The other bonus of catching the bus was that I got to ride with Mia. She was a year younger than I was, but she was such a swot that she was actually in my year level at school. Her being a swot was not such a bad thing, because it meant we could share the bus without ever having to bother about the awkward chit-chat that neighbours waffle on with, like isn’t the weather hot/cold/windy/worse than/better than this time last year; what’s that thing flowering in your garden; did you see that Chan’s corner store have got breakfast cereal on special; isn’t it ridiculous how busy the street is getting, there’s no parking for visitors; are the McNabs going to sell up or not; what the Lees paid for their new kitchen … all that kind of pointless blather.
And neither of us ran our life via the scho
