Love-Struck Read online

  “Just play it cool, boy,” I whispered with a wink. “Be yourself for now. I’ll find out her type today, and starting tomorrow we will make her yours!”

  Wes took a deep breath and nodded. “OK, let’s go!”

  We walked into form, heads held high. Mr Clumfield wasn’t at his desk yet, so we walked past it, saying hi to a few people as we went past, and sat in our usual corner. I turned to talk to Wes to clarify the plan one more time, but as I turned, Matt, Chris and James (the Lady-Killer Squad) surrounded us, looking at us intently.

  “So,” Matt said, eyebrows raised as he sat across from me. “We wanted to have a little chat with you.”

  “Yeah,” added James, sitting down on Wes’s right, nodding at him. “Yeah, just a small chat about a … a thing.”

  I shot Wes an ironic look. These boys think they’re so subtle, but blind monkeys could see what they’re talking about.

  Chris sat down next to Matt. “Yeah, a thing…” He looked at Matt and lowered his voice. “You do mean The Thing, yeah? The thing we were talking about a minute ago?”

  James rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that thing, Chris.” He paused. “Matt?”

  Matt took over. “So, the thing is, we are interested in something that has recently come into your possession.” He cocked an eyebrow again. God, I was starting to feel like I was in some kind of really bad Mafia movie. “Comprende?”

  Oh God, I was stuck in a bad Mafia movie. With a bunch of halfwits playing the Mafia. Any minute they’d be pulling out those porridge guns they use in Bugsy Malone and saying, “Well how you a-like-a me now, eh?!”

  “Do you want to know about Emily?” I sighed, exasperated.

  “Yeah!” Chris grinned, happy that I had caught on so quickly.

  “Tell us: what’s going on with her? What’s the story? Is she single, like, fair game?”

  “Or is she taken? If so, who’s the guy, how big is he and could we take him?”

  It was laughable. In fact, I did laugh. “All right, Hardy boys, take it easy! She’s not like the Nobel Prize, y’know!”

  They all looked at me, blankly.

  “What?” Chris asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Y’know … the Nobel Prize?”

  More blank looks.

  “The big prestigious award?”

  They looked so confused that I didn’t even know if their stupidity was funny any more. I tried a different tack.

  “She’s not a prize, y’know: a prize … something to be won…?”

  “Ohh!”

  “Right, yeah!”

  “I get it…”

  Finally!

  “If she was in a game,” Chris said, slowly, as if he was thinking hard. “She would definitely win.” He hitched a big smile on to his face. “Because she’s a PERFECT TEN!”

  He held up his hands and received high fives off the other two, and I felt like I was sinking in quicksand. I looked at Wes. He nodded and took the reins.

  “Hey, guys – football!” he started, and all of their heads snapped towards his, agog.

  Typical boys.

  “Here’s the thing. This chick is single –”

  “– all RIGHT!”

  “– but she’s pretty fly, right?”

  “Yeeah!”

  More high fives. Kill me.

  “Right, well, it’s like Man U and … and Cathen FC!” he said in a fit of inspiration. Wes doesn’t watch football. “This girl? She’s Man U! She’s fit. She’s athletic. She’s worth a lot of money and she’s got better legs than anyone else in the game, am I right?”

  “You said it, boy!”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “WOOP!”

  “However,” Wes paused, waiting for silence and clearly enjoying the attention. “You guys? You are a little bit more like the local Cathen…” He looked at the boys’ expectant faces. “You’re not quite up to scratch yet. You need a few more plays, some cash to buy some good players and your legs are in no way as good as hers. So if you ended up playing her? You would lose.”

  Wes leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Comprende?”

  Matt looked from side to side at each of his friends; they both nodded, then Matt turned to Wes.

  “We hear you, Wes, mate. You’re so wise! She is Man U –” The boys nodded. “– and we are Cathen FC –” More nodding. “– but the Cathen motto isn’t ‘We like a challenge’ for nothing, am I right?!”

  James put both arms up in the air and did a sort of wolf howl, and the other two started chanting, “Cath FC, Cath FC, CATH FC! OI OI!” just as Emily stepped into the room. She caught my eye, waved, and headed over. She was wearing a little white, floaty skirt and a pink top, which I think I had as a kid for my Barbie. I waved back, and the boys turned around to see her coming over, and all suddenly reached for their hair. Matt flicked his fingers into a gun and winked, shooting an imaginary bullet at Wes.

  “Hearing you loud and clear, my man,” he said.

  He jumped up and offered his seat to Emily, and the other boys leapt up too.

  “Oh, thanks!” Emily said as she sat down, smiling.

  They stood there like Charlie’s Angels for a second, and then Matt nodded to Wes.

  “Catch you later, Wes.”

  Then he looked from me to Emily, and murmured in what he obviously thought was a sexy way:

  “Lay-deez…”

  He would have tipped his hat at us if he was wearing one.

  Throughout the day, I kept on trying to catch Emily unawares; in English we had to work in pairs, so I asked her to go with me before anyone else could. We were working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, and she was a little bit fascinated.

  “So what, like, exactly happens in it? It looks a bit complicated.”

  “It is!” I pouted and she laughed. She really did have a cute laugh. Some people get all the luck. “So, OK. There are four regular Athenians: Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius; The Duke of Athens and the Queen of the Amazons, who are about to get married; Hermia’s angry dad; a group of actors; and a bunch of fairies with their king and queen.” Emily nodded. “Here’s the dealio: in four days, the Duke is getting married. The actors are getting ready to perform at the wedding, but they are terrible and they provide most of the comedy in the play. The story that goes alongside that is of the four Athenians: Hermia’s dad says that she has to marry Demetrius because he’s handsome and rich –”

  “– sounds like my kind of guy!” Emily exclaimed, grinning.

  RESULT!

  I carried on.

  “– and he’d been promised Hermia. But she loves Lysander, and so they run off into the forest outside of Athens to get married, and they tell Helena of their cunning plan. Big mistake, because Helena is in love with Demetrius because they’ve already slept together – ‘Ooer!’, I know – and so Helena tells Demetrius and he runs after Lysander and Hermia into the forest, so Helena runs after Demetrius. Both lots of people, the actors and the Athenians, all end up in the forest where the fairies are at play, and they mess everything up for everyone, but manage to put it all right again by the time the play ends!”

  Emily nodded again. “You were right when you said it’s complicated!” She looked back at her book and studied it intently.

  “So what’s your type, then?” I asked slyly. “Rich, gorgeous…? Anything else?”

  She looked up from her book and grinned at me. “Erm … I guess … I guess he’d have to be tall! Tall and with dark hair?” I nodded encouragingly. This was exactly what we needed!

  “Anything else?” I implored. “I like funny guys, guys that make me laugh?”

  I was improvising, but she seemed to lap it up.

  “Yeah, yeah, ditto! I like to laugh. But I don’t know … what gets me every
time is a bad boy.”

  Oh no. The one thing I was hoping she wouldn’t say was ‘bad boy’. Wes isn’t really the bad boy type, is he?

  “Hmm, yeah. I get you.” I trailed off, enthusiasm lost.

  “Like, that guy,” Emily continued, gesturing out of the window next to us.

  I followed where she was pointing to a guy walking up the front path, a guy wearing dark jeans and a light T-shirt—

  “Jonah?!” My voice came out a little higher than I would have liked. I cleared my throat. Stay calm, Holly, take deep breaths. “Ahem, sorry; you mean Jonah?”

  Emily looked back and nodded. “Yeah, he’s so amped! I dropped a textbook yesterday and he picked it up for me. I said thanks for the help and he gave me this little smile – he has a lip ring, it’s so hot! – and he said that he’d help me anytime.”

  I watched Jonah walk over the car park and frowned. Why was he being so helpful to Little Miss Perfect when he asked me out this morning?! As I watched him disappear around the corner, I decided he must have just been being really helpful because she was new, and he might have seen her around with me. I mean, he said he couldn’t stop thinking about me! Him offering his helpful services didn’t mean anything apart from the fact that he was just a nice guy. He was sensitive – this morning proved that.

  “Yeah, he’s a nice guy like that.” A thought hit me. “Yeah, actually, he’s a really nice guy. Not so much of the bad boy, no – if you want a bad boy, you look to Wes.”

  Emily turned to me, frowning. “Wes?” she asked, looking over to where Wes was in deep conversation with Mr Canty and Mary Adams. Not the time to be looking a bit swotty, Wes dear! “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. Think fast THINK FAST! “Yeah, he lives up Millionaire’s Row, y’know? And his dad had this old-school Mercedes, but one night Wes decided he was bored, so took it out for a spin.”

  “No way, shut up!” Emily exclaimed. “What happened?”

  “He went speeding around the town, but then came home later because he had to meet his skater crew to go to some rave; he’s always out at some rave or gig… Anyways, he put it away in the garage but then a few weeks later his dad got this hefty fine because the car had been caught on a couple of speed cameras, and Wes got grounded for months, but he just snuck out whenever he wanted, because he could.”

  Where on earth was this coming from?! I had no idea. OK, well, I did have an idea. The story was based on truth! His dad did have an old Merc, and one night in his rebellious stage, Wes was bored and did try to take it out for a spin, but he took off the hand brake and rolled to the bottom of the drive, not knowing what he was doing, and so crashed into a pillar. And he was grounded for months because the car was pretty damaged.

  But that story makes him look even more of a wuss than normal, and besides, I was enjoying this story and Emily was lapping it up.

  The Barbie was now looking at Wes with a kind of awe, like she was seeing him properly for the first time.

  “Wow, I don’t believe it! Wes a bad boy? I wouldn’t have guessed it!” she exclaimed, and went back to her book.

  “Yeah, who would?” I nodded, and went back to my book too. I needed to warn Wes about his shady past. Fast!

  I filled Wes in, and we spent the next few days playing up his “bad self”, as he liked to call it. We dressed him in darker colours, he wore skater shoes, I made his hair a little bit messier – I even tried to get him to wear contacts, but he just flat-out refused, drew the line at that. He hates putting his fingers in his eyes.

  “Oh, don’t be such a wuss! Look, I’ll even do it for you…”

  I practically straddled him with contacts in one hand and solution in the other whilst he cried out, “No! No, no, NO! I’d sooner let you … pierce my ear than stick your fingers in my eye!”

  I paused as he struggled underneath me and thought about Jonah’s lip ring (hmm, lip ring). Jonah’s a bad boy. It wasn’t a bad idea.

  So that was how ten minutes later, Wes was sat with a bag of frozen peas stuck to the side of his head (we couldn’t find any ice), and me sat on the bed next to him with an apple, sterilizing a needle with a match and some TCP.

  “Done!” I murmured, wiping the needle once more with TCP and then setting it down on the sterilized tissue on his bedspread.

  Wes looked at me with a disgruntled expression, peas still on his ear.

  “I have a headache,” he explained, taking the peas away. “Why do I let you talk me into these things…?”

  I grinned. “Because you know that I’m always right. And because this time, if I’m right, you’re going to look really, really hot!”

  He looked like he was going to be sick.

  “OK. So are you going to give me something for the pain, Nurse Hockers?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I pulled up my school bag.

  “Errm, I could give you some paracetamol?” I said, rummaging around. “Ooh! You could bite on this, too!”

  I gave him my pencil.

  “I think I’d rather have the drugs…” he said, reaching for them and taking two.

  I took a deep breath.

  “OK, let’s do this! Lie down.”

  “And you’re sure you know how to do this?” he asked me as he leaned backwards on to his pillow.

  “Yeah, sure!”

  I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d never actually seen it done in real life, or done it myself, but instead was basing all of my piercing knowledge on The Parent Trap where Lindsay Lohan pierces her twin’s ears, even though it wasn’t her twin because she doesn’t have one, it was just Lindsay again. I have no idea how it was made, so that film blows my mind every time!

  So I sliced a bit of apple off, shoved it behind his ear, and got my needle ready.

  “Got the needle, got the earring, everything is sterilized, we’re good to go!”

  I leaned forward. Now was not the time to start feeling a bit sick. I put the needle to the dot we had drawn on his ear.

  “OK, do you trust me?”

  “What?!” he cried incredulously. “What are you doing to me? Of course I trust you, I don’t trust anyone else! Just do it before I change my mind!”

  I nodded and cleared my throat.

  “On second thought,” he muttered. “Could I have the pencil, please?”

  I gave him the pencil with shaking hands.

  “Wait a second – are your hands shaking?”

  “Nope. On the count of three. One, two—”

  “AHHH! YOU SAID ‘THE COUNT OF THREE’ YOU—”

  The needle was through and I thought I was going to be sick. Never, ever again.

  I backed off.

  “Holly, what are you doing?” he yelped. “You’ve still got to put the earring in!”

  I took a deep breath and went back to his side. He had bitten through the pencil. Yikes!

  “Are you sure you want me to do this? I mean, I could just take the needle and bandage it right up if you wanted!”

  He shook his head and scrunched his eyes. “Just do it. Now.”

  So I did, and after a second go I pierced his ear. Then I pretty much collapsed by his side as he admired the ear in the mirror.

  “It’s good,” he whispered, smiling shakily. “It looks pretty good!”

  He sat back down on the bed and pulled me on to his knee, giving me a big bear-hug squeeze.

  “Thanks, H’y baby.” He grinned happily, looking into the mirror in front of us. The earring glinted back. He looked at me in the mirror and laughed. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  I watched him laugh off the tension of the previous few minutes, and then looked at my own reflection. I was white as a sheet.

  “Yeah,” I replied humourlessly. “No worries…!”

  I felt like I was going to faint.

  It got to Frida
y. Friday night was gig night.

  I’d been flying around at home after I’d got back from school – I had no idea what I had been thinking! I’d been so busy trying to sort out Wes that I’d forgotten about planning for tonight.

  The past couple of days had gone quite well. Wes was actually suited to the darker side of life, and his charming wit was in the zone. But I had caught him holding the door open for Emily the day before, to which I’d shaken my head profusely. In horror, he just let go of the door, but it swung back and hit her in the face, leaving a small bruise. Not what I was going for, but she saw the funny side (crazy, always-happy American girl). Apart from that small glitch, Wes’s makeover had become a success. He’d even managed to get her number, and they had been texting a bit—

  “But don’t text her too much,” I had warned him. “Because half the attraction in bad boys is that they are aloof.”

  “A-what?”

  “Aloof. Y’know, like, mysterious.”

  “Ooh, right.”

  I hadn’t seen his texts, but I hoped to God they weren’t over-the-top vague or “aloof”, or else she might just have thought that he was an astonishingly dim person and backed off like he had the plague.

  So on Friday night after school I’d got home, chucked on a face pack and The Faeries’ first album (Ill Met By Moonlight), ran myself a bath and opened my wardrobe – and felt like Mother Hubbard. Seriously, talk about bare cupboards?

  “Mum!” I shouted, biting my nails. “Mum, could I go through your wardrobe?”

  She popped her head around my door.

  “Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you were upstairs—”

  “Holly Marie Hockers!” she exclaimed. “Your room is—”

  “Mum!”

  I rolled my eyes. She was looking around my total box of a room, and it was completely covered in clothes. Not kidding, I’m talking all of my clothes – everywhere. You couldn’t see my carpet, you couldn’t see my tiny single bed, you couldn’t see my bedside table; the only thing you could see was the walls, but really you couldn’t even see them because they were covered in pictures of The Faeries. OK, my room was a bit of a tip. So what?! Didn’t she know this was possibly the most important night of my life, and so this was so blatantly not the time!