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Chapter Two
Buses and bitches.
On those rare occasions I was home and not sleeping, I found myself gravitating towards my window. Sometimes I’d see her and sometimes I didn’t. It wasn’t like I was looking for her or anything, I was just a nosey fucker.
Piper was what our town considered perfect. She was the most popular girl at school, friends with everyone, and beloved by everyone else. The rumours floating around about her dating the jockstrap Mason Carter were the wishes of a bunch of romantic wankers who were more worried about how perfect their children would be than if they actually suited each other. Of course, they did suit each other. He was Mr Popular Arsehat seventeen years running. Always with a smile and a nice word for everyone. They were the same person in two bodies.
Or, so everyone thought.
Sometimes, I wondered if there wasn’t something else in her eyes. Something she kept hidden and buried deep. Something masked by wide smiles, loud laughter, and never a bad word. Something that had me suddenly conscious enough about global warming to leave my ute at home and get the bus to and from school.
I saw it in the way she jumped every now and then when someone spoke to her suddenly. Like she’d been miles away. I saw it in the way she put her headphones on, closed her eyes and breathed deeply on the bus. Like she was calming her nerves. I saw it when she was in her backyard, when she thought no one was looking, the way she didn’t always have a spring in her step and a smile on her face.
“Can you pick up some things from the shops for me after school?” Mum’s voice interrupted my internal monologue as I shovelled the fifth piece of toast into my face.
“I can’t,” I mumbled around toast. “I’m getting the bus.”
She looked me over suspiciously. She had a right to be suspicious. It was me and I was getting the bus instead of driving the ute we both knew I only pretended I wasn’t completely in love with. Then again, the woman got suspicious when I actually said words to her instead of grunting like the Neanderthal she thought I was.
“You’ve been getting the bus for the last two weeks,” she said.
I nodded as I washed down toast with coffee. “What’s your point?”
She shrugged, but she did a fucking awful job at being nonchalant. “I don’t have a point.”
“You always have a point.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “It’s just awfully coincidental that you’re getting the bus now. The same bus down the same road at the same time as the girl next door.”
Coffee went down both my windpipe and my school shirt. “Excuse me?” I coughed. “A guy can’t care about the environment now?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “The environment?” she clarified, and I nodded as I tried wiping my shirt down. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“Have you got a problem with that?”
She chuckled. “You’re just usually so much better with your excuses. I’ll give you a pass because you lost most of your coffee.”
We both looked down at my shirt.
“Go and get a clean one on, I’ll wash that tonight.”
I started shucking my shirt. “I’ll miss the bus.”
“Then drive,” Mum said, fighting a laugh.
“How will the environment feel about that?” Let it not be said that I didn’t double down at the stupidest of times over the stupidest things.
Mum smirked. “I’ll drive you to the bus stop.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Oh my God,” she laughed. “He’s using his manners. This must be serious.”
I threw my shirt at her. “Funny.”
“What?” she asked innocently as I headed to my room for another shirt. “I’m sorry! I fully support your new love of our planet!”
“Yeah, you sound it!” I called back as I pulled on the shirt and grabbed my tie and backpack. “Can we go?” I asked.
