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

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."