Free View from Saturday (9781439132012) by E. L. Konigsburg

suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To
them,
the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get rid of it. Dirt is the working layer of earth, and dealing with dirt is as much a part of farm life as dealing with manure: Neither is user-friendly but both are necessary.
    When the bus picked up the last passengers from the last stop in The Farm, I lifted my leg off my backpack. My foot had fallen asleep, and it felt heavy as I lowered it. I rested it on the floor and allowed the pinpricks of blood to tease their way back up my leg. I shook my leg a little—not wanting to draw attention to myself—and turned my back to the aisle and gazed out the window. I am very good at gazing. I am also very good at listening. Gazing and listening are all right for church, but they sure kill a lot of conversations.
    Instead of making its way back to the state road that parallels the lake, the bus took a left turn and started down Gramercy Road, the road that borders The Farm and the last within the two-mile radius that allows free bus transportation. Was I the only one who noticed that the bus was making an unscheduled stop? The only house there is the Sillington place. No one lives there. The house, which was given to the college along with the farm, was in a state of disrepair, and the college wanted to tear it down, but since it was the oldest farmhouse in Clarion County, it was saved by that same group that saved the schoolhouse. It is a huge old farmhouse that has had so many add-ons it looks like a cluster of second thoughts. About a hundred years ago, someone added a wraparound porch with enough ginger-breadtrim to look like a lace collar. The main feature of the first floor is the dining room, which stretches from the front of the house to the back because in the days when the Sillington place was a working farm, Mrs. Sillington used to feed all the itinerant farmhands breakfast and supper. They ate at long trestle tables that stretched the length of the room. There is a picture in the museum. When the Sillingtons first settled in Clarion County, before there was a state road parallel to the lake, they owned all the land down to the water’s edge. The house itself is perched atop a knoll, and from the upstairs windows you get a good view of the lake.
    I continued to stare out the window as the bus rolled down Gramercy Road. The Sillington house came into view. Standing at the edge of the drive was a man and a kid. The man was wearing a long navy blue apron and a white turban. A turban. A white turban. Like an illustration from
The Arabian Nights.
Equally strange: The kid was wearing shorts and knee socks. No one in Epiphany wears shorts on the first day of school. Even if it is ninety-five degrees in the shade—and sometimes it is—no one wears shorts on the first day of school. And no one—ever—wears knee socks with shorts. No one. Ever.
    The kid was holding a leather book bag. Ever since backpacks were invented, no one—ever—in the entire school system, grades K through twelve, carries a book bag, especially a leather one.
    The kid boarded the bus, the dark man wearing the long apron waved, and the kid stopped at the top of the steps and waved back. Even first graders on the first day of school don’t do that.
    The kid started making his way to the back of the bus.Before I could resume my seat-occupied sprawl, the kid was standing in the aisle next to my seat.
    â€œIs this seat occupied?” he asked.
    No one ever asks. They just stand in the aisle until you move and make room for them. Even if he had asked if the seat was
taken
instead of asking if it was
occupied,
I could have told that he had a British accent. He didn’t look British. His skin was the color of strong coffee with skim milk—not cream—added; the undertones were decidedly gray. His lips were the color of a