Bus LXVI

Louisa: You really love her, huh?

Jack: Who?

Louisa: Lizzie. You keep staring at the sandwich wrapper she left on the kerb.

Jack: Promise not to laugh? When I think about her being with anyone else, I get this empty feeling in my chest. I can’t bear it.

Louisa (sympathetically): Maybe it’s just a heart attack

Bus LXV

Louisa: Anything happen in assembly?

Jack: I was chosen as ‘Gifted’

Louisa: What’s that mean?

Jack: Get to go on special trips and stuff

Louisa: I hate that. We’ll be segregated soon enough in the real world – can’t we at least be equal in school?

Jack: You were chosen too

Louisa (proudly): Who, me?

Bus LXIII

Jack: Doesn’t it kinda get you down that we scramble for the backseat every day, twice a day, like a pack of dogs? I mean, is it worth the hassle? It’s just a seat.

Louisa: Everyone wants the backseat. If they all want it, there must be something good about it...so we should want it too.

Jack: We can’t tell what we want by ourselves?

Louisa: Hell, no

Bus LXIV

Louisa: I’m doing a project on the Moon landing

Jack: Clearly a hoax

Scott: Tell me about it. A piece of rock that floats round us in a circle? How dumb do they think we are?

Louisa: It wasn’t a hoax

Jack: Of course you think that. You’d rather believe the official story than your own eyes, cos your own eyes make you feel scared and alone.

Louisa: And you’d rather believe some cranky website, cos not looking other people in the eye makes you feel special and unique

Bus LXII

Jack: They’re switching on the Mr Gogol Memorial Fountain tomorrow lunchtime

Louisa: So there’ll be no queue in the canteen? Score.

Jack: I thought perhaps you might want to pay your respects

Louisa: Pay my respects? Only time he spoke to me was to complain about my shoes being dirty.

Scott: Hey, remember that time his trousers fell down in assembly?

Louisa: Ha ha, yeah. Classic.

Jack (wiping away a tear): He was a true British hero

Bus LXI

Scott: How was New York?

Louisa: Brilliant. It felt like my reward for all those years of depressing caravan holidays.

Scott: Me and Em are saving up for a caravan holiday. We both put a tenner in the jar whenever we’re paid.

Louisa: Good for you. Here, have a pound on me.

Scott: Thanks, Lou. We got sick of being the only kids who always stay home. Sometimes it feels like there’s a warehouse full of cash and we’re the only ones who don’t know about it.

Jack: You don’t know about the warehouse full of cash?

Bus LX

Louisa: Another year begins

Jack: I need to start taking the first day off. That way I’d skip the anecdotes. Last year Kurt Goldberg spent an hour telling me how he’d entered his dog into all these contests, and the dog never won even though his granny was one of the judges. Turned out she kept voting for the wrong dog.

Louisa: Anecdotes can be fun if you like the person

Jack: Yeah, but how often does that happen?