A/N- The original version of this tale apparently wasn't very original at all! Well, I didn't change much, but I like this version a bit better. R&R Please!!! P.S., I don't own'iPod', 'Simple Plan', or 'Green Day'... just so y'all don't sue me...

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What Girl?

They were sitting next to each other at a bus stop, along with an elderly man down the bench. They were total strangers. They had never seen each other before in their lives.

She was about thirteen years old, with wiry brown hair pushed back in a yellow band, olive skin, and big green eyes.

He was in his mid-thirties, with black side-parted hair, pale skin, and blue eyes that were constantly worried.

He had a briefcase.

She had an iPod.

The old man was entertaining a young child with the story of a wise young lady who was supposedly hit by a train about a mile from there, and she was supposed to still visit the area, only now she came as an angel. The child left to rejoin his mother, but the businessman still rolled his eyes at the story. Young ones would believe anything.

His cell phone rang, and the girl didn’t notice as she bobbed her head back and forth to pop-rock sounds from Simple Plan and Green Day. He spoke agitatedly into his phone for a moment, clicked it closed, and turned to her in a fit of frustration.

“You kids, you have it so easy! No deadlines, no corporate meltdowns, and no layoffs!” he cried, fidgeting on the plastic bus-terminal bench. Looking at the girl in her white pants, bright high-tops and white shirt with a pair of wings embroidered onto the back of it, he felt a sense of elderliness, perhaps even plain old envy.

She took the small white ear-buds out of her ears and looked at the tense businessman in his dark grey cotton suit and shiny black shoes. “With all due respect, sir, I just think that adults spend so much time on the big, bad things that they forget about the good, small things.”

He threw her a look of skepticism. “Like what?” He seriously doubted that this kid could teach him anything.

“You know, like how the air smells spicy and fresh when you are coming up to a pepper tree and people have stepped on the berries that fell on the sidewalk; like how you see teenagers out with their parents and they are laughing and talking instead of fighting; how when people drive past someone they know they honk and wave and make a scene just so that person feels special.” The girl gestured around, a look of lecture spreading over her face. “Do you ever notice how the park looks and smells different after it rains? When was the last time you threw a snowball?” she demanded of him.

“I- I… guess I don’t really know,” he said, scratching his head sheepishly.

“See? I think grown-ups need to take a time-out once in a while to see what is good in life instead of totally focusing on what is wrong.” She nodded emphatically and continued on, “I would start out slow for you. A game of office catch with a rumpled-up ball of paper should start you off well.” She grinned and looked away.

He smiled, pulling a memo from his briefcase and crumpling it up. He tossed it gently and it hit the back of her head. She turned around, startled, and picked it up to toss it back.

“That’s the spirit,” she said, smiling and setting it on his briefcase.

The bus came rumbling up, not spewing exhaust and coughing like an old man like the regular buses. This one was quiet and nicely painted. It stopped, slowing to a smooth halt in front of the girl. The doors opened quietly, and the bus driver, and older man with a beard, beckoned her quietly.

“Well, that’s my route. G’bye, mister, and I hope you remember to see the little things, just like I said.” She called as she walked up the steps.

“I will!” he said as the bus slid away and disappeared up the street. He looked at the elderly man two seats over, and asked him excitedly, “Do you know that girl?”

“What girl? As far as I could see, son, you were jus’ talkin’ to thin air.”

The man started at this, and smoothed out the crumpled memo she had laid on his briefcase. On the white paper, where corporate jargon had once been, was a scrawled drawing of an iPod, along with the words, ‘The Little Things’.

He smiled, and stepped on the next bus home.

The End