The back of the bus
I had never been so alive as I was over that winter. I had friends who understood me, who grasped my hidden European soul which was ready to leap from its cage and run around the basketball court. We were a core group of four girls but not exclusively-- we loved everybody in Miss Brown's home room. We were all a big family of mostly darkhaired dark eyed immigrants who had landed together in this experiment- that's what they called us. We were the "Latin-Science" class who were meant to emerge as hybrids with a dead language and new formulae fighting for dominance in our future. We also sang -- our class choir which was 85% girls won the school competition that year and went on to be best in the city. Nothing could stop us. Plus we had the Stones, backed up by the Beatles, playing in our heads, fuelling excited conversation by our lockers between classes where teen magazines were shar ed and pored over for the latest scandals over in Britain involving our heroes B