The Ellie Chronicles by John Marsden

To my absolute astonishment no sooner had he sat down than he pulled out a book, turned to a bookmark near the end and settled down to read. I lifted it up as he read to see what it was. It looked old and dusty. The name was The Scarlet Pimpernel . I put it down again, gently, feeling really disorientated. This would be something like Van Gogh playing full-forward for the West Coast Eagles.
    After Homer got on, there was a long haul to the Boltons, at ‘Malabar’, then the Grahams and the Pereiras, then the Young twins at ‘Adderley’, and then the bus filled up so fast you couldn’t keep track of them all. There were lots of new kids on the buses these days, but we were lucky; we still had a friendly group, and once we got the Young twins it was like a party every morning. Shannon and Sam Young were a laugh a minute – no, sorry, take that back, a laugh a second. It didn’t matter how sleepy you were in the mornings, when they came bouncing down the aisle of the bus everyone woke up. Even Brad Davis, who slept through parties, footy games and exams, sat up to attention when the Young twins climbed on board.
    But today it was different. Everyone was so quiet. Everyone glanced at me as they got on and everyone waved or nodded or said hi or all three, but then they just sat in their seats murmuring away like magpies very early in the morning.
    In the seat ahead of me Sam Young picked up a black beetle on a tissue and was about to chuck it out the window. Before he did though he knelt up and showed it to me over the back of his seat. ‘Hey, Ellie,’ he said, ‘look what came out of my nose.’
    I laughed. But the laugh strangled itself in my throat when I saw Shannon frown at him from across the aisle. They were treating me like I was an emotional cripple. Well, maybe I was, but I didn’t like to be reminded of it.
    We got to school. I noticed that Homer had finished his book. ‘Can I borrow that?’ I asked as he went to put it away.
    ‘Sure.’
    I had no idea what it was but an old book that fascinated Homer was worth a bit of a look.
    Wirrawee High was a different place these days. There were so many new kids! The population of the school had gone from three hundred and fifty to six hundred and fifty. We didn’t have nearly enough teachers or buildings anymore. Every class had at least forty students and every bit of space was a classroom. Walk into the gym anytime and there’d be at least four classes going on, with each teacher trying to stop her kids from distracting the others.
    Some things hadn’t changed though. I smiled as I walked down the corridor every day, because every day I passed the window we had broken during the war. The school, deserted and silent, had been a good hiding place for us back then. We had smashed a window to get in, then stuck masonite and tape over it to make it look like old damage. No-one had touched it since. Maybe we should have offered to pay for new glass but what the hell, money was short, and schools were meant to have a budget for repairs, weren’t they?
    These days, luckily, being seniors, we got the best conditions, but even so, it was hard. There was no hope of getting any work done in your frees because the library was so crowded and noisy.
    The first few days back I got no work done. I sat through period after period and they could have been talking about making drugs out of pineapples or a school excursion to the top of Mount Everest or World War II being caused by someone popping a paper bag. I didn’t hear a word, didn’t learn a thing. Now that I wasn’t physically active, now that I wasn’t racing around pulling calves or cementing posts into the cattle yards, I could think of nothing but my parents.
    Time and time again the memory of their bodies, and the feelings of desolation, washed backwards and forwards, like a great internal tide. The way everyone avoided me or treated me like I had the Ebola virus made it all the worse. There’s nothing lonelier