Two of the themes in this novel are conformity and individuality. Keeping in mind what is the significance of the following passage?

Then in one day after school I followed her. I kept at a safe distance. Since she was known not to take the bus, I expected the walk to be short. It wasn't. We trekked all over Mica, past hundreds of grass less stone-and- cactus front yards, through the Tudorized shopping center, skirting the electrons business park around which the city had been invented a mere fifteen years before."