Inter school bus stops, day two

Chris walked home, the same way he always did. He didn't like driving his car to and from school, and besides, a walk was good.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason he was walking. He wanted to say hi to that Nora girl again, she seemed pretty nice, and their conversation had been cut short when Clarke showed up. Not that Chris minded terribly, but he did want to see her again.

He scanned the lines of people waiting for the buses, hoping to see her. It didn't look as though she was there. Maybe she was sick... Oh well, Chris thought. Theres more where she came from.

He turned and headed for home.

Another long, hard day. The problem with school is that she had to go everyday. Because one does not achieve success by half measures, school always continued when she arrived home. Her parents made sure of it.

She fought through the hordes of hostile students again, all of whom seemed to hate her personally. A contrast to her private school in her old town, where everyone was nice to Robert Frasers daughter, just in case he pulled some strings and had their mortgages called in.

She thought briefly of yesterdays encounter. It was a nice ray of sunshine in her day; a stranger being nice to her.

She walked through the masses avoiding eye contact. She reached her bus stop, the furthest away from anything, and noticed that Chris was walked steadily the other way.

Now she had a dilemma. Should she call out? Would he hear? If he heard, what would they talk about? What if he heard but ignored her? What if he had just been mocking her yesterday, and today would be a cruel and hostile as any of the others?

Her brother, Sean, came into view. He was fifteen, and a year below her at school. Just like her father, too. Except Sean played soccer. Her father had never played soccer.

" Hey, Nora." Nora smiled. At least her brother was nice. It seemed that most of the boys around the place were completely uncivil. Their good upbringing held strong, even among the rabble.

" Look, I just need to catch up with Chris. Just wait a minute."

He sprinted after Chris, who was powering over the horizon. He caught up with him, and started talking. It was at times like these that Nora wished she had inherited the aimiability gene from her father, instead of the reclusive, anti-social awkward gene from her mother.

Chris heard someone running up behind him. He turned to look, hoping it was Nora. It was her brother, Sean.

"Hey Sean. You wanted those CDs right? I've got them here, you got the money?"

Chris made a modest earnings from selling pirated CDs. He mainly did music, although he also ripped DVD movies and copied games.

"10 bucks, 5 per CD right?"
Sean had asked for a couple of System Of A Down Mixes.

"Great, here you go. I would have labelled them, but I was in a bit of a rush last night. Hey, is Nora here today?"

Chris spotted her over where she was yesterday, and thought it'd be a good idea to catch up with her. She seemed like a pretty nice person.

"Hey Nora, hows things? Get home OK yesterday? Parents weren't too stressed, I hope?"

Nora smiled. " I got home alright yesterday."

It was true. She had arrived home okay. The receptionist had taken her to her fathers office. They had rung her mother, and told her that she woudl be late. Her father had said that the town-to-home bus had broken down, so Nora had walked to his office. This made her mother worried; that Nora was walking around town like that on her own, even worse, a town that she didn't know.

They hadn't told her the truth. It was probably for the best. Her mother was always suspicious of her fathers receptionists. Nora didn't know it it was justified or not; she didn't really care.

She looked at her brother.

" So, how do you boys know each other?" She figured it might ignite a conversation. If it didn't, well, that was bad luck.

"How do we know each other?"
Chris was reluctant to tell Nora that he knew her brother through selling illegal music. He tried to have a "Nice guy" image, not a "Software pirating nerd" one.

"I've just seen him around, he'd lent me one of his cds and wanted it back. When does the bus get here?"

Nora glanced at her watch. It was a reflex action that she had built up over time. She didn't really need to check it; she already knew the time accurately enough for the purposes of discussion. It read 3:34:27

" It should get here in about fifteen minutes."

Every week Nora would re-time her watch to the Sky TV time. Her watch had a tendency to get two seconds fast over the course of the week. So the time was really about 3:34:28.5, it being Thursday.

She smiled, then looked down. " Look, I am sorry about bailing yesterday. It's just that it started to look like not such a good idea. I hope you didn't mind too much."

She would have said 'I hope I didn't embarass you in front of your friends', but decided it would sound too cliche, and just too incredibly...well, happy.

Out of the corner of her eye, Nora could see her brother figeting. She supposed that he would want to talk to her and find out what was going on. She was actually quite glad; her brother would have all the information on this Chris fellow, and would give her what she needed to know. It was Seans business to know everything and everyone. At least, he liked to think it was.

Chris was surprised that she apologised, he knew exactly how she felt.

"Nah, that's cool, Clarke's a bit of a dick sometimes, who knows where you would have ended up if you got a lift with him."

Noras bus would be here soon. It was kind of sad, Chris wanted to keep talking. No last minute crash this time, sadly.

He stood around, thinking of something to say, hoping that she would.

" Clarke did seem a little strange."

Nora had private reservations about people whose friends were a little odd. As her father always said, Birds of a feather Flock together, and nice as Chris was, she had to look at his flock.
Chris didn't seem to be looking to say anything, so Nora grasped for a conversation topic. Awkward silences made her feel awkward.
" So, what type of music do you like?" she remembered that they had been passing Cd's before.

Hmm. A decent conversation starter here. At least there was something before the bus arrived.

"Oh, I listen to anything really. Metal mainly, System of a Down, Metallica, that kind of stuff. Clarke likes Garage beats, techno, that kind of stuff. We're not really alike, but I've got a decent car so he makes it his business to try and out-do me. Gets on my nerves, if the truth be told."

He thought he should exlpain the CD thing.

"I've got a bit of a business selling cds. Pays for most of my stuff, but isn't exactly legal I'm sad to say. Doesn't matter, I've never been caught."

He wondered how Nora would react.

There are some things which you instinctively know are wrong. You don't even have to be a partically morally inclined person to realise this. Nora was a very moral person, and prided herself on being thus. Like most conscientious people, though, she stretched the definitions of 'right' and 'wrong' to suit her purposes. Only when it came to other peoples purposes, she, like most other conscientious people, was subbornly unflexible.
Nora could not pretend that she did not have any pirated Cd's. However, she could honestly say that no one had profited from her lawbreaking. (one might argue that she had acted more immorally than someone who allowed people to profit from their lawbreaking. Nora's way, people only lost money. At least _someone_ benefitted from the other peoples.)

However, let he without sin cast the first stone. Nora woudl disapprove, it being an Immoral Thing, but she wouldn't condemn.

" Oh, okay." Well. She didn't really want to go there. " So, what kind of car do you have thats made Clarke so competetive?"

Nora didn't know anything about cars. The colour and the number of doors were about the extent of her knowledge. But she didn't doubt that Chris woudl fill the silence easily.

Gerald leaned on the fence, thinking his pathetic, nondescript thoughts. People walked past, in front of him, and he kicked himself at every one that he didn't have the confidence to introduce himself to.
The play ran the same every day without fail. The people walked on by, and Gerald was paralysed. A girl from another bus smiled at him as she went past, and he wondered if she laughed at him or smiled to him when he looked back.
And Gerald knew by heart how the routine finished: His bus arrived, and it was a quick and painless "Exit stage left".
The ultimate anticlimax.

Chris was a bit surprised by the last comment. Nora didn't seem like the kind of person who would be interested in cars, but he decided he should probably enlighten her since he asked.

"It's just an Audi S6, a black sports model. Nothing too great on the outside, but I've modified the engine so it's great for racing. Clarke's car is more for show, but he likes to think it's a better racer than it actually is."

He felt that the conversation was declining slightly. He was dead certain that Nora didn't reall care about cars, he needed to find something that she would talk about.

"What do you usually do after school? do you play any sports?"

He hoped to find a common link in hobbies or something, to turn the conversation around.

" Actually," Nora said, " I play a bit of music. The alto-sax."

She underrated her involvment in music, and tried not to tell too many people; there was a prevailing image of "band geek" around, and American Pie hadn't done much to help it. It was a funny thing; even people who hadn't seen the movie knew all about the band geeks. Nora herself hadn't seen it, and she knew all about the band geeks. At least the alto-sax was a cool instrument, though.

" I used to play soccer, at my old school, but I wasn't much good at it. I could never see the
point. This year it was so much harder to get into a good team, and I really didn't feel like it. It would have been easy to get into one of the lower teams, but they are made up of 3rd formers who don't know how to play, and pretty much expect to lose. I hate losing. I would rather not play than lose. How about you?"

"True. I used to play the Tenor Sax, but it got boring. I'm not the kind of person who plays music, i write some lyrics every now and then, but otherwise i just listen to it."

Chris felt that he'd finally found something to talk about, albeit a bit late.

"As for playing sport just to win, that's kind of stupid, isn't it? Although in a team game, if your team sucks it does get boring. I do Karate, it's pretty fun. I prefer it to team games, you don't have to worry about anyone else working with you when you play."

" I do like team games. I've never actually tried sports where you dont have a team. I don't know if I could keep motivated enough; when you are in a team, you need to keep getting better, or else you let everyone else down."

She stopped for a minute.

" I guess thats why I don't like being in a bad team. When I am in, I'm in, and I expect everyone else to be equally so."


She smiled, but glanced at her watch. The bus should be arriving any minute.

Chris saw Nora glance at her watch, and instinctively did the same. The bus would be arriving any minute. He felt that he should be going home too.

"Well, it was good to see you again, I should really get going though."

As if on cue, the bus appeared from around the corner.

"Hey, if you're not doing anything tomorrow night, would you like to see a movie? Theres a few good ones on at the moment."

Tomorrow night was Friday, a good day for the movies.

"I could pick you up, and drop you at home afterwards if you needed a lift, it's no problem really."

The bus pulled up as Chris waited for her reply.

The bus pulled up. If she didn't hurry, she woudl have to stand up for most of the way home.

" Um. Do you think you could ring me tonight? I probably can come, but it depends on a few things. My number is 431 1686."

She smiled. " Seeya."

And got on the bus.

And realised just how weird the situation was. Well, weird for her. She figured that out there in the normal world people would think that this kind of behavior was normal.

She was too slow for a seat, it turned out. She would have to stand on the way home.

Sometimes life sucks.