by Mary Hooper
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Also by Mary Hooper
Chapter One
Monday, 10th October
ASTRA
The first words I heard him say were: ‘Is this Mrs Konya’s class?’
Chelsea and I were sitting near the front of the room as usual, and we both looked up when the strange boy came in. I say strange, but I don’t mean he was weird, just that he was a stranger. He was wearing our uniform – which isn’t much of a uniform, just black jeans with a blue sweatshirt – and he was thin and dark and good-looking, with long, straight slicked-back hair and eyes which were slightly slanted.
He was speaking to me, but I blinked at him and didn’t reply. I’ve never really liked – really fancied– a boy before and I was just struck dumb.
Under cover of the desk, Chelsea nudged me and made a squealy noise in her throat. The noise meant that she thought he was a hunk. I knew this because I’d heard it before.
‘Yes, this is her tutor group,’ she said to the boy eagerly. ‘She’ll be in in a minute.’
He nodded and stared from one to the other of us, slowly, gravely.
Chelsea said, ‘Are you coming in here, then? You joining this class?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and I felt my stomach give this strange little leap of excitement.
He looked round the class as if looking for somewhere to sit. Most of the boys are lumped near the back – they think they’re not going to get noticed so much there – and they weren’t taking much notice of the new boy. The girls, though … well, more than a few of them were watching him. There was just something about him, you see. Something different. He wasn’t like the other boys. He looked (and I could never tell Chelsea this because she’d have hysterics) like one of those old-time poets: thin and a, bit tortured.
‘I’ll sit here, I reckon,’ he said, and he moved towards an empty chair just in front of us. He sat down, stretched out his legs and began to whistle softly under his breath. He was so cool.
Chelsea nudged me again and made gleeful faces in his direction to indicate that she fancied him. This was nothing new, either, Chelsea’s always finding boys that she fancies: boys in the street; boys when we go skating; boys in the Aussie Soaps. They – the Soap stars she’s mad on – are too brash and blond and loud for me, they fancy themselves too much.
If it comes to that, I don’t reckon that boys in real life are much better: they’re usually noisy and rude; always going on about sex and looking you up and down; then sniggering together. Chelsea and I don’t like that.
Chelsea and I agree on all those sorts of things, and we make each other laugh, too, but we’re different in other ways. She calls me a hippy because I’m interested in New Age stuff: star signs and crystals and omens; whereas she’s a bit of a trendo: she’s mad on clothes and whatever band’s in at the moment – and she’s completely potty on the Soaps, never misses a single one. I mean, I like them too, but she lives and breathes them. Once we had to spend a whole Saturday at the railway station because this Soap star guy was coming to open a supermarket.
A moment or two later Mrs Konya – Konnie – came into class and, because she was in a rush, sat down with the register and started calling it out without looking round the room.
I looked sideways at the new boy, wondering what colour his eyes were and dying to know what his name was, trying to think what he suited. Konnie didn’t call out any new names, though. She got right to the end of the register and was just about to dismiss us when Chelsea said, ‘Mrs Konya! There’s someone else here!’
Konnie sighed under her breath. We were only three weeks into a new term and already our tutor room had been changed twice and four boys had been brought in from another group.
She looked across, saw the boy and frowned. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
I held my breath. I wanted him to have a good name; I didn’t want him to be called something fancy or posh or stupid.
‘My name’s Ben Adams,’ he said, and I relaxed, pleased. Ben Adams, as a name, was near-perfect: straight, clean, uncomplicated. I printed Ben Adams on a new page in my rough book and wrote my own name underneath. I’d do a number check later to see if they matched.
I waited for Konnie to ask him his address and date of birth for the register. I wanted him to be an air sign, same as me – that would mean we went well together. Maybe, though, he’d be a fire sign. That would be OK too; it would mean we complemented each other: fire and air need each other to survive.
She didn’t ask him anything like that, though, she just looked impatient. ‘And where have you come from?’ she snapped.
‘Just moved to the area,’ he said. ‘I came to the nearest school.’
‘Are you enrolled here?’
He gave a shrug.
Konnie sighed again, more loudly. ‘Have your parents enrolled you?’ she said impatiently, and I wanted to tell her not to speak to him like that.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said.
She hesitated for a moment, then the bell went for our first class and she slapped the register shut. ‘You’d better go and see Miss Waters, the school secretary,’ she said. ‘Give her your details and get things organised.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Chelsea said to Ben eagerly, before I could speak. I thought to myself then that it was funny she didn’t say, we’ll take you, when we always did everything at school together.
‘You can go at break,’ Konnie said. ‘Just get off to your first lesson now.’ She rummaged on her desk. ‘I’ll find you a timetable.’
We all bundled out of the room and as Chelsea went by the new boy – Ben – she made pouting, kissing movements behind his back. I smiled, but I thought to myself that he, Ben Adams, was worth more than this and that she shouldn’t be messing around with him like she did with all the others.
We had Science next, a double period, but Ben didn’t turn up for it so I don’t know where he went. Although there are about twenty-five of us in Konnie’s tutor group, we don’t always have lessons together, and in a big school like ours Ben could have gone into another room or wandered off outside.
At breaktime, though, he was in the yard. He was talking to Rich and Josh, two boys in class who’ve got a bit more going for them than some. When he saw us he waved, then broke away from them and came over.
My tummy scrunched up when Ben waved at me, and when he grinned at me it scrunched again. I put my hand in my pocket and held on to my crystal. It was supposed to bring me inner peace and luck in love, but until then I hadn’t had much call for it – or not the love bit, at any rate.
‘I was looking for you two,’ he said to us. ‘I’ve got to go to the secretary’s office, haven’t I? I’ve got to be enrolled and registered and date-stamped.’
You two, I thought. In class Chelsea had said she’d take him to the secretary, but he’d said he’d been looking for both of us. So that meant he must like me. Did he like me better than Chelsea, though? Suddenly it became massively important that he did.
Chelsea gave him one of her smiles. One of the mocking, flirty smiles she always gives to boys she fancies.
‘Just follow me,’ she said, and she was speaking all funny too: deeper and huskier.
We went into the school building and towards the secretary’s office. The corridor was just wide enough to
take the three of us together, with Ben in the middle.
‘Ole Waters is a right misery guts,’ Chelsea said.
‘We call her Stormy,’ I put in, and when Ben looked at me quizzically, added, ‘Stormy Waters.’
He grinned, and was still smiling down at me when Chelsea put her hand on his arm and said something funny – and rude – to distract him and make him look at her.
When we got to Stormy’s office, Chelsea and I said we’d wait for him so we could all go to the next lesson together, then Ben knocked and went in while we hung about in the corridor. Once he was inside, I pressed my ear to the door to try and hear what was being said, still hoping to hear what his birth sign was.
Chelsea took the mick out of me a bit then, about how I was acting with Ben, and when I said that I fancied him, she said that she fancied him as well. At the time, this didn’t worry me: she gets crushes on boys all the time, and that she should fancy Ben was only natural, seeing as he was the most fantastic-looking guy. What was important to me was knowing that she didn’t fancy him the way that I fancied him. I fancied him for real.
After about five minutes of waiting, I began to get a bit twitchy about getting to class, because I had some writing-up to do from last week’s lesson.
I looked at my watch. ‘I’ll be in trouble with Besty if I don’t finish my assignment,’ I said to Chelsea.
She shrugged. ‘Go if you want,’ she said. She bent right over so that her head was upside down and her hair was touching the floor: she does this to give it body, make it fluff out. When she straightened up it was all round her head in a big wispy cloud. ‘Ben will probably be ages.’
I shuffled about for another few minutes. I didn’t want to leave Chelsea there waiting for him on her own – but on the other hand I was already in trouble with Miss Best. In the end I had to go, although when I got to class I couldn’t concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.
Chelsea seemed to be ages and ages coming in. When she did she was on her own – no Ben – and she just breezed in, humming under her breath.
I called her over but she said she had to concentrate on something and needed to be on her own, and she stayed over the other side of class for the whole lesson.
It was funny, I thought, because in all the time we’d been best friends, it was the first time we’d worked away from each other. Something had already changed between us.
Chapter Two
Monday, 10th October
CHELSEA
I saw him first. He came into Konnie’s class and his eyes looked all round the room and then they rested on me. I thought to myself wow!
We stared directly at each other, just for a moment, and I knew immediately that he liked me. I know that sounds big-headed but it’s not, I’m just being truthful. I haven’t got masses of experience with boys, but I just knew. I also knew that I liked him, too. Fancied him like mad, actually, because he reminded me of a guy who’d just come into one of the Aussie Soaps. Only Ben was dark instead of blond, of course.
He came right in and asked me (me, out of everyone in there!) if this was Mrs Konya’s class. I knew then that he was new to the school because everyone, everywhere, always calls her Konnie. I said it was, and then he came and sat right in front of me.
Well, in front of us – me and Astra – if I’m strictly truthful – but just slightly more over my side.
I nudged Astra and made a face in his direction, and then I wrote inside my rough book: Gorgeous or what?!, in a big heart with an arrow through it.
Astra gave a little tut under her breath, as much to say I was at it again, but she’s a bit like that, a bit of a non-starter where boys are concerned. That’s why you could have knocked me over with a feather when it turned out that she was after him, too.
I suppose that isn’t so surprising if you look at Ben. For a start he’s really good-looking in a thin and hungry kind of way, like someone who’s had one too many late nights, and he’s got longish hair, dark and shiny, whereas most of the boys in our class have got practically zero. He’s not that tall, but he looks as if he could stand up for himself in an argument. Best of all, he looks an individual, different from the other boys, and as if he doesn’t care two jots what anyone thinks of him. I got the impression that no matter whether I fancied him, or if Astra fancied him, or if every girl in our class fancied him, it wouldn’t make any difference, it wouldn’t make him big-headed. And if everyone hated him, then he could deal with that as well.
Anyhow, it was arranged that I would take him to Stormy, the school secretary’s office, at break. After Konnie had finished with us we filed out and I looked round for him, just to chat him up a bit, but he’d disappeared. This is quite easy to do in our school as there are 1,500 kids and the teachers are always changing their tutor programmes or getting in supply teachers, so it’s difficult for anyone to keep track. At break, Ben was in the yard, though, talking to some of the boys. When he saw me he left them and came over.
God, Astra was such a wimp. She just looked at him all soppy, kind of hanging on his every word and all that, and it was then that I realised that she fancied him too. Well, fancied him isn’t the word – I was surprised she didn’t drop a lace hanky on the floor and wait for him to pick it up. Straight out of Sweet Valley High she was, fawning and giggling and being fluffy.
Anyway, we took Ben to Stormy’s office, warning him first that she was a bit of a nightmare. When the door closed behind him, Astra stuck her ear on it and tried to hear what was going on.
‘Where d’you think he lives?’ she said. ‘I wonder when his birthday is? I bet he’s an air sign, what d’you think?’
‘You’re the expert,’ I said.
She looked at me all starry-eyed. ‘He’s really nice, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, he’s a bit tasty,’ I said. ‘I quite fancy him myself.’
‘I think he’s gorgeous.’
‘No!’ I said in mock surprise. ‘You don’t!’
She went a bit red. ‘Is it that obvious, then?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it would be more obvious if you had a tattoo across your forehead saying Astra loves Ben, but only just.’
She bit her lip. ‘I didn’t realise …’
‘It’s just that nowadays girls don’t usually go into a dead faint if a boy speaks to them.’
‘No, I know,’ she said. ‘And I don’t normally, do I? It’s just he’s so nice and …’ she looked at me hopefully. ‘Do you think he likes me?’
‘I don’t know!’ I said. ‘D’you think he likes me?’
‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘Boys always like you.’ And then she went quiet and looked at the floor.
We waited a bit longer and she started looking at her watch. ‘I’ve got to get to Maths early,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something to write up.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait. I’ll look after him.’
She hung around a bit longer, obviously torn between getting into trouble with Besty and leaving Ben in my clutches. Besty won, because in the end she said she had to go and she’d see me in a minute.
I was prepared to wait for him until half-way through next week if I had to, but it was only a couple of minutes after that that he came out.
‘OK?’ I asked. ‘Did you survive?’
‘Got on all right with her, didn’t I?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I don’t know what’s happened, then. She must be weakening.’
‘Perhaps someone’s poured some oil on her,’ he said, and when I looked a bit blank, added, ‘Geddit? Oil on troubled Waters?’
I laughed.
He looked up and down the corridor. ‘So where’s your other half gone?’
‘Astra? She had to do some writing up before class.’
‘Yeah?’
‘She’s like that,’ I added. ‘Bit of a nerd at school. Gets panic attacks if she doesn’t get her homework in on time.’
We started walking along the corridor, me searching my mind for some
thing to say. I wanted to find out more about him, but I didn’t want to be too obvious about it. ‘While you were in with Stormy,’ I said after a moment, ‘Astra was trying to listen to what was going on – she’s just dying to know what star sign you are.’
‘Is that important, then?’
‘It is to her. Mad on stuff like that, she is.’
‘Aren’t all girls?’ he said.
‘Some …’ I said cautiously. If he was even remotely interested in that sort of thing, then so was I. And if he wasn’t – well, I didn’t know my Libra from my Leo, did I?
‘What sign is she, then?’ he said half-jokingly. ‘Not that I actually believe all that stuff.’
‘Gemini,’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? As if anyone could predict what one twelth of the population would be doing on a certain day.’
‘Crazy!’ I agreed. ‘Just a load of tosh.’
He suddenly stopped dead. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Maths. Isn’t that what you’ve got on your timetable?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I don’t much fancy it.’
‘So what do you fancy?’ I said, and I gave him a long, cool look.
He smiled at me and I realised that his eyes were a fantastic greeny hazel. He was just going to reply when Stormy suddenly came round the corner. And not from the direction of her office!
My jaw dropped: he couldn’t have been in to see her. He must have gone in there and just been sitting quietly on his own. No wonder Astra hadn’t heard anything through the door …
Stormy gave me a brief nod and went by.
Ben looked at me quizzically, head on one side so that his hair flopped over his eye. ‘What’s up with you?’
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. If I said anything I’d practically be calling him a liar; putting him on the spot could cause all sorts of awkwardness between us.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t fancy Maths, so I’m just going to go outside and kick a ball about.’
