Do You Remember the First Time?

the fuck are you talking about?’
    Fallon turned to face me. Her face had that heart-shaped prettiness that does well at school then often grows up rather odd, like Anthea Turner, with the grim set of a jaw not afraid of confrontation.
    She laughed, evilly. ‘I almost forgot. Ethan asked me to tell you to stop sending him poetry. He thinks it’s hilarious, and read it out to all his friends, but he wants you to stop bugging him.’
    ‘Poems!’ said one of Fallon’s equally expensively dressed but not quite so pretty henchgirls. They all started squealing with laughter, and I felt my ears beginning to burn.
    I had no idea what I’d been up to in this version of events. I knew I hadn’t just sent any poetry, but, once, long ago, I had. To a tall, skinny gothman who liked to read Sartre at parties. I had long since repressed what the poems had said, but I could take a bit of a stab in the dark.
    ‘In fact, I have one here.’
    Oh no. No no no no.
    ‘I told him I’d get rid of it for him.’
    This woman was going to end up Prime Minister.
    A couple of other girls, whom I recognised dimly from my registration class, wandered over.
    ‘Hayley! Paris! Come over and listen to this.’
    You know, if I’d been standing there naked, this would have perfectly corresponded with my worst nightmare of all time.
    The girls gathered round and, as they did, other people followed them. Schoolkids. Unbelievable. Sheep, every last one of them.
    ‘Baaa!’ I said under my breath.
    ‘What was that?’ said Fallon, homing in. ‘You want me to read out your poem?’
    A shocked hush went through the crowd. They knew they were on to something good.
    ‘OK then!’ She turned and cleared her throat. ‘“Be of Me, My Love” by Flora Scurrison.’
    Somebody tittered. My fight-or-flight responses were up to full mast. Inside, I felt like I had heavy menstrual cramps.
    ‘My nights are heavy, like the days
    That settle on your glorious ways.’
    Oh, fucking hell. This was going to be even worse than I’d imagined. Next time I saw Tashy I could tell her I was going back to being thirty-two alright if I got half a chance to influence anything, for sure. Wrinkles, crow’s-feet, missed opportunities – bring ’em on! Anything was better than this.
    Fallon, of course, was using her most dramatic tone, but speaking slowly, so that nobody missed a word. In her head she was probably auditioning for Lady Macbeth with Heath Ledger.
    ‘Your walk, unbidden, golden goes,
From all the beauty yet unknown.’
    Oh God, teenagers write terrible poetry. Mute with horror, Stanzi was trembling.
    I closed my eyes and muttered, ‘I wish I was … um, twenty-six,’ but, nothing.
    ‘And I, so alone, so different stay
And yearn, alone, for one fine day.’
    Stab me in the heart already. The cruel laughter from the other girls had stopped being merely complimentary to Fallon and was becoming genuine, twisted embarrassment. No doubt they probably all had something similar under the bed at home. And, let’s face it, if it had been somebody else, I’d probably have been laughing too.
    I suddenly realised why Stanzi was pinching me so hard. Approaching were two boys. One, with that face as strange and familiar as walking past a restaurant and getting a sudden smell of your mother’s cooking, was Justin. Next to him was a tall boy with blond hair, very pretty in a Greek god-ish kind of a way. They were wandering over.
    ‘When we can come, together all …’
    ‘Ooh, they’re going to come together!’ shouted one wag. ‘Didn’t know he was that good in bed.’
    ‘Neither does she!’ shouted somebody else.
    ‘When we both so in love do fall.’
    My worst suspicions were realised when somebody called out his name.
    ‘Ethan!’
    ‘Girls, girls,’ he said, coming over. ‘What’s this, a fan convention?’
    ‘I just thought a certain poem deserved a public reading,’ said Fallon, lowering her head and lifting her eyes in the patented technique of bitches through the ages.
    ‘Oh God, yeah. Did you hear about this?’ he asked Justin.
    Justin looked at me and, from my burning face, instantlyrealised what was going on. ‘Come on. Don’t fart about with this shit,’ he said to Ethan.
    ‘No, no, I want to hear.’
    I lifted my head – I’d reverted to staring at the ground – in amazement.
    Ethan was handsome, alright, there was no doubt about that, with his blond hair, a long forehead and a lovely patrician nose.
    ‘Oh, Ethan, you’re