Second Fiddle by Siobhan Parkinson Page B

today, not much whiz and bounce. It had gotten terribly hot. I suppose that was why.
    Three twenty-one. Still no sign of Gillian. Maybe she’d got delayed. In that case, there would be no point in her coming to meet me here. If she had any sense, I thought, she would have decided to go straight to the bus stop, hoping I would think to meet her there instead. Yes, that’s probably what had happened, I told myself. I checked my watch again. Still three twenty-one. If I raced, I might make it. I’d forgotten to check the timetable, but I was pretty sure the bus went at three thirty or thereabouts.
    I was sorry now that I was wearing my going-visiting clothes—the too-tight summer dress and a pair of light, open sandals, not much more than flip-flops, really. I’d have been better able to race through the trees in my runners and jeans. It was too hot for clothes like that, though, once you got out of the shade of the woods.
    I chased along, stumbling over roots and mossy stones. As I passed under the foresters’ hut, I noticed that the door was open. I didn’t have time to stop and see if Tim was about. I kept going. As I ran, I had the weirdest sensation that a scrap of violin music was streaming after me, wafting over my head.
    Once I emerged from the woods, I had a flat, paved road to run on and I picked up speed. By the time I reached the bus stop in the village, I thought my eardrums were going to burst with the force of the blood pounding in my head, and every bit of me felt swollen to twice its proper size. My heart was trying to leap out of my body and my lungs hurt every time I breathed. I slumped against the cool metal pole of the bus stop, in the shade of a large sycamore tree that grew out of the pavement, and gulped huge painful breaths. When I licked my swollen lips, I tasted salt. I found a tissue and mopped my sweat-beaded face with it. I wished I had something to drink, but—wouldn’t you know it?—I’d left my water bottle cooling in the stream.
    Gradually my heart began to settle back into its place inside me and I could breathe at a more normal pace. Where was this flipping bus, after all that running? I dabbed the sweat off my eyelids and checked my watch. Three twenty-nine. A whole minute to spare. And where was flipping Gillian? I looked around. Not a solitary other person. July. People were away on their holidays or out in the sunshine, gardening or catching skin cancer, not waiting for a smelly, hot bus to the next town.
    Here it came now. I couldn’t see it yet, but I could hear the clanking, rumbling, wheezing sound it made. It sounded as if it were about a hundred and had emphysema. I was amazed that it was going to be exactly on time. It never was. Blast Gillian anyway! Where could she have got to? All that running for nothing! Didn’t she want to find her father? I leaned against the bus stop and closed my eyes. Perspiration still clung to me. I could feel the clamminess all over my skin, under my clothes.
    The bus clanked and rumbled closer and closer, the noise seeming to get right inside my body. I stayed where I was, eyes closed, waiting for the horrible, smelly, noisy, belching creature to pass me by, move on, and leave me with some peace to decide what I was going to do next.
    But it didn’t do that. Instead, it stopped with a shudder, though I hadn’t hailed it. The engine’s rumbling was worse when the bus wasn’t moving, more concentrated. I opened my eyes just as the door clattered back, leaving the doorway gaping. The driver’s voice shouted cheerily at me over the noise of the engine: “Well, are you just making friends with that bus stop, or are you getting on?”
    â€œMe?” I said. “Oh, I’m just waiting for someone.”
    â€œYou mean, you’re not getting on? I stopped for nothing?” The bus driver pouted, pretending to be hurt that I didn’t want to get on his bus.
    I laughed.