Happy people live here

underwater, which would probably be a good place for an alien to live, cause people here could be kind of pushy and sometimes kind of rude too. And if you were different, like if you were an alien or something, most people would probably be pretty rude to you and really boring as well and they’d make you feel stupid and not at all fun, for not being anything like them.

Linda had never sat in Graham’s car. She wanted to, all the time. She always asked, though, hoping Graham would change his mind. He’d always tell her though that her shoes would only scuff the upholstery or that he car had just been perfumed and “You can’t have two perfumes, Linda, it’ll make the car smell like a beggar’s vomit.”

Every important person that Linda knew drove a car. And all those important people were so very smart. They always said things that make people nod their heads and agree and when Graham spoke, nobody ever said the opposite of what he was saying, even if that’s what they were thinking.

Rich people were so smart.

True.

But as smart as they were, Linda had never listened to any of them talking about how much fun a bus ride could be. She’d heard them many times, whilst cleaning a probe or picking at her sandwich, talking about how fast their cars could go or how big their pecs had gotten or what they’d do to The Receptionist if they got her by herself. But she’d never heard any of them talk about how fun a bus ride could be.

Linda sat on the bus, one hand gripping the loose hand rest and the other, a plastic bag with her change of clothes and the tape she had with her favorite songs that Graham let her get from her car before he made her hand over the keys.

The bus was rocking around so much the seat wasn’t squeaking anymore, it was squealing. And she could see the ground below going by really fast, through the little bits of rust in the seat in front of her. It looked just like on the cartoons when they drew lots of lines behind the car to show that it was going really fast. The 217