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Authors: R. M. Corbet

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BOOK: Fifteen Love
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WILL

Thank you for calling
Girlfriend
magazine. Please press 1) if
you wish to subscribe. Press 2) if you wish to know what girls talk
about. Press 3) if you only want to know what ‘a certain girl'
talks about. Press 4) if you really just want to meet ‘a certain
girl', but have no idea how to go about it.

Should I subscribe to
Girlfriend
magazine? Or should I buy a sample copy first? I could buy it from the supermarket. I could slip it in between the Nutri-Grain and the muesli flakes, so that no one would even see it.

‘It's for my sister,' I could say, if anyone asked.

Except that I don't have a sister.

If I subscribed, the magazine would be posted once a month, hopefully in a plain brown envelope, clearly addressed to me, so that no one else would open it.

Because I do have a brother, and I don't want him getting the wrong idea.

I have heard that parts of
Girlfriend
magazine can be quite intimate. I have heard that the sealed sections are extremely intimate! I have glanced at the letters where girls reveal their innermost secrets. I want to know how girls think, but my real reason for buying
Girlfriend
magazine is less sleazy than that. I need
Girlfriend
magazine for research purposes. I need to know what girls talk about. If I'm going to talk to Mia Foley one day, I need to be prepared.

Mia Foley is an up-to-date kind of girl. She dresses like the girls in
Girlfriend
magazine. She is easily beautiful enough to be on the cover of
Girlfriend
magazine. But that doesn't mean Mia actually
reads
it. And besides,
Girlfriend
is a magazine for girls. It's all about what girls say to other girls. It's probably about boys. And if I ever meet Mia Foley, that is one subject we are definitely
not
going to talk about.

The trouble is, when boys talk, we talk about
things
. We exchange information. We are interested in the facts. Girls may not want to know about carburettors or shock-absorbers, but they are impressed by boys who know stuff. Any stuff – magnetic fields, microbiology, hydraulic engineering – it doesn't really matter what. Girls like guys who know stuff. It makes them feel comfortable. They feel like the guy has other interests, that he's not in danger of getting hopelessly obsessed about them. Stalkers, I'll bet, have very little interest in the facts.

If, hopefully when, I do meet Mia, we should have one of those magical conversations that just click.
What a lovely
day
, she might say.

Yes
, I would reply.
The forecast top temperature is twenty-seven
degrees, I believe.

Don't you wish it could always be this nice
, she might say.

Then I would explain how the earth tilts on its axis as it moves around the sun, so that the chance of it being twenty-seven degrees and sunny every day was pretty unlikely.
And
anyway
, we would both agree,
life would be pretty boring
without a change of season.

Then Mia might say,
I read in
Girlfriend
magazine how the
weather affects what we feel.

Girlfriend
magazine?
I would say.
Isn't that mainly for
girls?

MIA

‘You did WHAT?' I say.

‘You did WHAT?' says Renata.

Renata and I are shocked and stunned. Vanessa has truly outdone herself this time.

‘I sucked his toe,' she says.

‘His
big
toe?' says Renata.

‘Naturally,' says Vanessa.

‘You took off his shoe?' I say.

‘And his sock,' says Vanessa.

‘Was it clean?' I ask. ‘His toe, I mean. Not his sock.'

‘Pretty clean,' says Vanessa.

‘And what did
he
do, while you were sucking his toe?' says Renata.

‘He went a bit crazy,' says Vanessa. ‘He told me he loved me!'

‘He DIDN'T!' I say.

‘But he's not even your boyfriend!' says Renata.

Vanessa hides her face in her hands. ‘He is now,' she says, softly.

I shake my head in disbelief. Renata can't stop laughing. She laughs until she has tears running down her cheeks and cramps in her stomach. There is something not quite right about the way she is laughing.

Vanessa and Renata are my two best friends, but even best friends can be weird sometimes. Sucking boys' toes isn't something I want to leap straight into, I must admit. It might sound old-fashioned, but toe-sucking isn't something I want to rush right into. It's not something I would ever do on a first date. It's not my idea of romance. If you ask me, toe-sucking is something that should happen much later. It's something a girl should only do with someone she really loves, only if she really wants to, and only after he's had a long, soapy bath.

WILL

It all started in the woodwork room. The teacher wasn't there yet and my workbench was the only one with an empty seat. I was minding my own business – crushing my pencil in my vice – when in walked The Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole Wide World. There are beautiful girls in movies and in magazines, but this girl was something else. She was real! And she was coming straight at me!

The Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole Wide World sat down beside me at my workbench, as my pencil cracked loudly up the middle. She looked at me, then at my pencil. I was stumped. I didn't know what to say.

On the back of her hand she had written
Don't forget V!
in red biro.

Don't forget V!
?? I have never seen anything so mysterious and exotic in all my life. But before I had any time to think about what
V
was, before I could think of anything to say, Mia had put on her glasses and realised where she was.

‘Woops!' she said. ‘Wrong room!' Then she stood up and walked out.

That was it. Forget about
V
. The Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole Wide World was gone.
V
for Vanished. When I looked at her seat, I wanted to reach across and touch it, to run my fingers across the smooth, polished wood. It was all I had left.

V
for Vacant . . . ? Vacuum . . . ? Vapour . . . ?

It ruined my whole day. Actually, it was longer than that. Woodwork classes were tragic for at least another month. I made a pencil-box and filled it full of broken pencils. The empty seat stayed empty, but I couldn't give up hoping that Mia might make the same mistake again. I imagined she might come in and sit down on her seat again, just for old times' sake. So I guarded it, just in case.

‘Is that seat taken, mate?'

‘Yeah. She'll be back soon.'

Who was I kidding? Mia was never coming back.

V
for Venus . . . Velvet . . . Visitor . . .

I started checking the timetable after that, to see where Mia's classes were. Without really meaning to, I started wandering past her classrooms just to sneak a glance at her. It sounds like something a psychopath would do, I know, but I couldn't help it. And every time I saw Mia, she looked even more beautiful than I remembered. Her hair was more shiny, her face was more perfect. Until, one day, Mia looked up and saw me staring at her. I tried to smile, but she acted like she didn't even know me.

That's because she didn't even know me.

V
for Victim . . .
V
for Vegetable . . .

After that, I gave up spying on Mia in class, but lunchtimes weren't so easy. I tried to act normal and just do the things you normally do, but out of the corner of my eye I was always looking out for her. If I ever did see her, or even someone
who might have been
her, my body felt like a robot being operated by remote control. My limbs would move in unexpected ways. My eyelids would twitch and my neck muscles would go into spasm. I have to admit it – I had a slight problem with Mia Foley.

WHO CAN YOU TURN TO?

The school counselling service is

available for students who:

are having difficulty making friends

are experiencing disruptions in their personal lives

are having trouble studying

BOOK: Fifteen Love
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ads

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