Brave New Girl by Catherine Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

bit of a relief.
    I put my earphones back in, but even with my music playing I could hear them laughing and giggling like fifteen-year-olds.
    I loved these buses, these little buses that went anywhere – not like the double-deckers. These buses, Mum’s buses, went through all the back streets, crisscrossing the estates. Once I’d got over the stupid idea of Mum smelling of bus, I was really proud. I would wave at her when she went past. Most of the time she was concentrating really hard so she never saw me, but I would always point her out.
There’s my mum.
I stopped doing that when Christina said it was stupid, she was
only
a bus driver.
    I shuddered, remembering. Mum always said no one was ever
only
anything.
    On the empty seat next to me was the local paper, folded up so you could only read half the headline:
Olympics
. All the headlines round here had been Olympic this or that for so long it felt funny thinking the Games were actually going to happen.
    I shook the paper out and flipped past the latest stories of jackings, school plays, and celebrities opening shopping centres. The only decent thingabout our local paper was the problem page, but this week even the problems weren’t as problemy as my life. Not a patch on it:
Girl, 13, shunned by sister even though she was trying to do something good
.
    I turned another page.
School Singing Stars Chosen for Olympics.
There was Denny’s choir with Denny beaming out from the middle of the photo. Mum would be over the moon.
    I took out the page and folded it carefully so the picture was in the middle. They’d even spelt his name right underneath,
Denzel Campbell, age 10
, and he didn’t look too bad, not like the big-headed, little brother, wind-up machine he could be in real life. I smiled back at the picture before putting the page into my bag. Denny would have it framed, and Mum would tape it up on the flip-down mirror in the front of her bus, next to the one of Arthur dressed up as the Gruffalo when they had Book Week at his nursery last year.
    I turned the rest of the paper over.
Kutest Kiddie Kontest
, it said. Underneath the headline were twenty or so square portraits of kids, some babies but some as old as nine.
Keep those entries flooding in
, it read.
Local photographer in Kingsland Centre this weekend, all welcome!
If Arthur wanted to get his picture in the paper,maybe there was something I could do about it.
    â€œHigh Street!” the bus driver called out. I’d been so busy I hadn’t noticed we’d arrived.
    â€œThanks, Carol.” I always say thank you to bus drivers, it makes them happy.

    The Cave was empty. Mehmet, Dad’s cousin, who’s around twenty and head waiter, was having a cig on the pavement outside.
    â€œHaven’t you got tables to wait on, then?” I said.
    â€œPlace is emptier than Tesco’s car park at midnight. S’been like this for nearly a month now,” Mehmet said and blew out a big, blue cloud of smoke. Sasha used to have a sort of crush on him until she smelt those cigarettes. “I don’t know how long...” Mehmet stopped mid-sentence and threw his half-smoked cig into the gutter.
    I looked to see what had made him jump. I should have known. It was Nene. I tried not to smile. I was glad it wasn’t just me who was scared of her. Dressed head to foot in black, she launched into a verbal attack on Mehmet, full volume, non-stop Turkish. I couldn’t catch a word of it, but her size, short and square, and her face and tone, made her seem more like one ofthose vicious little Staffordshire bull terriers than a little old lady. I stepped back. She stopped, looked me up and down like I was lower than dirt, and went inside.
    â€œHello, Nene,” I called after her. She didn’t bother to look round and, to tell the truth, I’d probably have fallen over if Nene even tried to be nice to me.
    Mehmet looked at me, shrugged, and scurried in after