G'day everyone!

Well, this isn't the first time I've spontaneously started a fic and decided to post it, but I think this one might actually go somewhere. It's just a beginning really ... I'll see how it progresses ...

Anyway, here it is.

Holloway


Chapter I


“I’m coming! I’M COMING!”

Late as usual, Betty Holloway sprinted down the footpath, her hair falling against her eyes and her bag slapping relentlessly against her back. Ahead, the blue-and-silver bus churned forward, thick black smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe and enveloping Betty as she ran. She held her breath and ran on through, passing the bus stop and gaining ground on the moving bus.

“Adrian! Adrian, come on! I’m right here!” She cried, reaching the side of the bus. Desperate, she hammered on the metal side of the vehicle. “Come on, it’s not funny!”

She was vaguely aware of the pedestrians staring on bemusedly, some of them even jeering at her as she chased the 1102 bus to Floreat City Centre.

“Run, Betsy, run!” called a familiar taunting male voice from one of the bus’ back windows.

“**** off Toby!” she shot back, holding her bag steady with one hand while she punched the bus mercilessly.

A second later she happened to glance ahead and she could have sworn there was a light shining down from above: the traffic lights ahead had just turned amber. She wheeled back to the bus and, sure enough, its brakes were squealing as it came to a stop at the intersection.

Finally, Betty reached the glass doors of the bus. Inside, she could see Adrian, the dark-haired bus driver, grudgingly pulling a lever. With a sudden hiss, the doors collapsed on themselves and opened.

Panting, Betty straightened her fringe and grabbed hold of the guide rail as she stepped onto the bus.

“Thanks, Adrian,” she said lightly.

The driver, an olive-skinned man in his forties, had an annoyed, vacant look on his face. “Eighty cents, Betty,” he said tonelessly.

Betty fumbled unnecessarily with her bag. “I’ll tell you what, Adrian, I’ll give you seventy-five, because I had to make five hundred metres of the journey under my own steam.”

Adrian’s face creased and turned an appalling shade of purple beneath his three-day growth. “You know, girl, sometimes I wonder what I ever did to deserve someone like you on my bus route.”

“Maybe you ran over a cat?” suggested Betty.

Adrian ignored her. “You realise you’ve been on time only once this year?”

“I know, I know,” said Betty, looking down at the floor, “I don’t know what happened to me that day, either …” She looked back at the driver. “Look, I’ll do my best to be on time tomorrow, how does that sound?”

Adrian laughed, a deep rumbling laugh that made his sizeable belly quake. “Sounds like pigs flying to me. Eighty cents.”

Betty shrugged and tossed the money into the box, leaving Adrian to negotiate the intersection. At once, she became aware of the general cacophony about the 1102 bus. Over the pulsing of pop music coming from the radio, there was the general talking and catching-up, there were girls laughing and shrieking, boys guffawing and making strange and sometimes inventive sounds and a squeaky, frog-like noise that Betty had heard since her first day on the bus and still couldn’t quite place.

“Bets! Over here!”

Betty surveyed the bus to find her friend Daphne sitting sprawled out in their usual seat, fending off remarks from a Claremont boy. Unlike Betty, whose messy dark brown hair barely reached past her shoulders, Daphne had flowing blonde locks that reached the small of her back. Her bright blue eyes seemed to complete the image of an ignorant blonde, but Betty knew her too well to be taken in by that impression: Daphne was one of the smartest people she knew and her intelligence wasn’t purely academic, either.

“Hey, Daph,” Betty greeted, sliding onto the rigid blue seat.

“Hey. Ready for the exam?”

“Oh, I’m pumped,” replied Betty sarcastically. “I think I spent a whole five hours studying last night. I’ll probably just fall asleep in the middle of the exam.”

“Like Oriel did last year,” giggled Daphne. “Mmmm … anyway, enough about school, did you watch the Buchanan Show last night?”

“Of course, you don’t expect me to let study get in the way of TV do you?”

Betty happily chatted with Daphne as the bus rumbled on through the packed streets of Floreat. Unlike most of her fellow students at Floreat Catholic College, Betty wasn’t particularly concerned about what grades she got at school: she had known since she was young that she wanted to be an actress, and there was no guidance counsellor in the world who could convince her otherwise. She didn’t care about chemistry or mathematics or politics – she wanted to be on the stage, or on the screen, she didn’t mind which.

Her mother was just as supportive of her, too. She had always made it clear to her sixteen-year-old daughter that it was important for her to do whatever she liked, not what other people expected her to do, and Betty had taken this advice to heart.

The 1102 bus rolled in to the Addison station. Betty looked up as half a dozen people clambered aboard and found their seats. Adrian closed the doors and the bus took off again.

“Where’s Pia?” Betty asked Daphne. Their friend, Pia, usually boarded at the Addison station, but she had not appeared this morning.

Daphne shrugged.

After fifteen minutes the bus reached their final destination – Floreat Catholic College. The doors opened and everyone filed out.

“Thanks for the ride, Adrian,” Betty said, slapping the driver on the back as she alighted.

He scowled and mumbled something in rapid Spanish.

“All right, here we are,” said Daphne, dismounting from the bus and approaching the front gate of the school. The school emblem, made out of iron, was affixed to the top of the gate; it depicted a blossoming rose.

“Let’s go then,” said Betty.

Had Betty known beforehand just how the day was going to unfold, if she had had even the slightest of inklings about what was going to happen, she would never have strolled so serenely in through those rose-topped gates. She would not have chased the bus so vehemently; no, she would have stayed home stubbornly.

For things were about to change.