The Girl with the Bicycle

It's a Sunday morning in Wellington, a girl wipes the morning dew off her bike seat. She rides through a tunnel and down a hill into town. The girl has a blue backpack and stops at the market to fill it with the last of the summer's peaches, a cucumber and a carrot. The girl knows that putting off the uphill ride home by stopping for a coffee won't make the trek any easier but she ducks into a cafe anyway. The man at the hissing coffee machine empties the old grinds with a thunk and clinks the cups as the girl sits down. The man with striped sweater at the next table gets up to leave. He leaves his newspaper on the round wooden seat. The girl with the bicycle and the backpack full of peaches picks it up and reads while she drinks her coffee. A page from the arts section is mixed in with the world news. The girl notices the bestseller lists. Three of the top five have very similar titles. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest, and The Girl who something else that she girl with the coffee has never heard of. Couldn't they think of a better title? she wonders.