Down London Road

with him at a party last weekend. She’s really pretty.’
    ‘Well, considering you’re beautiful, I think you have one over on her.’ Hannah made a noise of disbelief and I patted her knee. ‘One day you’re going to look in the mirror and see what I see.’
    ‘A geek who needs an attitude readjustment?’
    I made a face. ‘What?’
    ‘I got in trouble this week. Mum and Dad aren’t happy.’
    My painfully shy Hannah had got in trouble? ‘What?’ I repeated in disbelief.
    ‘My PE teacher had a go at me because I refused to get into an all-girls team against an all-boys team at basketball. I told him that it’s scientifically proven that boys are stronger and faster than girls and that to put all girls against all boys was setting the girls’ team up for failure. He said that I was being unfair to my own sex. I said I was being realistic and that I thought he was deliberately favouring the boys over the girls. He reported me and, while our head teacher told him that all basketball teams during classes should be mixed from now on, the head teacher also called Mum and told her I needed an attitude readjustment.’
    Choking down my amusement as I caught the twinkle of bedevilment in her eyes, I shook my head at her. ‘What happened to the crippling shyness?’
    She somehow managed to shrug lying down. ‘I just feel like being shy is getting in my way.’
    ‘Is this because of Marco?’
    ‘No, not just that. Although I’m getting the impression I’m not really “cool” enough for him –’
    ‘Then he’s an idiot.’
    ‘– It’s more that I missed out on joining the debating team because I was too shy to speak up. And I know I’d be really good at debating.’
    ‘I think we all know that.’
    She threw a cushion at me and continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘And I missed out on the Christmas dance this year because my friends and I felt too self-conscious going alone together. And I wrote this poem that really means a lot to me and I wanted to enter it into this regional competition but I didn’t because –’
    ‘You were too shy.’ I patted her knee again. ‘So you what? Just woke up one day and decided not to be?’
    Hannah sat up, her eyes filled with wisdom beyond her years. ‘No. I kissed a boy I really like and he rejected me. If I can handle that, I’m pretty sure I can handle opening my mouth in front of people I’ve gone to school with for years and saying what I want to say.’
    I nodded slowly and then gave her a reassuring smile. ‘For what it’s worth, you are the coolest person I know.’
    ‘Even cooler than Cam?’
    Cam was that smart, geek-like, hot guy who marched to the beat of his own drum. Yeah. He was so cool I could die from his coolness, but I wasn’t going to admit to that like a besotted teenager. I snorted, getting up off the bed. ‘Oh, please, he only thinks he’s cool.’
    ‘He’s really cool, isn’t he?’ Hannah grinned at me over her shoulder as she opened her bedroom door.
    I followed her out, all fake superiority gone. ‘Yeah. Just don’t tell him I said so.’
    ‘Tell who?’ Ellie was suddenly in my face as if she’dappeared out of nowhere. Within seconds, Hannah and I had been herded back into her bedroom by Ellie and Joss.
    Joss gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘I tried to stop her.’
    I sucked in a breath, waiting.
    And then Ellie began peppering me with her rapid-fire questions.
    Lunch actually couldn’t have gone any better. Cam was well-mannered, gracious, intelligent, interesting – all the things I knew he was and could be, but I was glad to see that the Nicholses and Joss and Braden could see that too. I also loved that they noticed how close he was to Cole already. They sat together at the table and whenever conversation wasn’t directed at either one of them, they had their heads together, talking quietly about the book Cole was listening to. Apparently Cam had recommended it.
    Since Cam shared Braden and Adam’s dry sense of humour, I had no worries that the three guys wouldn’t get on. Braden kept shooting me these teasing smiles that somehow translated into ‘I’m happy for you.’ That was nice. It really was. However, it just amplified the little ghost of anxiety floating around me, groaning at me about what would happen if this ‘thing’ with Cam fell apart.
    I’d never received that awful pity and sympathy other people did when they broke up with someone, because no one had ever really taken my feelings for