Authors: Jo Cotterill
Strictly Friends?
Chapter 2: It's About Attitude
Chapter 3: Have You Got a Boyfriend Yet?
Chapter 5: Want to See My Scars?
Chapter 6: You're Going Out With Him?
Chapter 8: We're Desperate for Gossip!
Chapter 9: I Think You're Really Cool
Chapter 10: How Do You Know You Fancy Him?
Chapter 11: You Look Cute When You Laugh
Chapter 12: Why Can't You Just Stop Interfering?
Chapter 13: You Don't Care About Me
Chapter 14: You Can't Let Him do This to You!
Chapter 15: We're Strictly Friends
Chapter 17: I Think I Made a Bit of a Mistake
The boy stared at her . . . Megan gulped. He was quite possibly the most good-looking boy she had ever seen.
Megan has had to move two hundred miles away from her home, her dancing and her best friend and ballroom partner, Jake. She's fed up with having to fit in with what everyone else wants.
Then she meets Danny. He's exciting and rebellious and he likes her too.
But could there be more to Danny than meets the eye?
For Ruth Knowles, 100% sweetheart
new home!
from:
[email protected]
sent: 7 September
subject: new home
!
Welcome to your new house! Is this the first email you've got since you arrived? How long has it taken you to get connected? Has Owen eaten the wiring?
Has everything arrived in one piece?
Can you tell how bored I am??
Missing you already!
from: Megan
to: Jake
sent: 8 September
subject: re: new home!
Helloooo! You are so hilarious, how can you be missing me already? We only said goodbye two days ago! (Actually, I am kind of missing you a bit. All right, a lot. But shhhh. I'm supposed to be all happy happy happy in our lovely new house.)
Sorry I couldn't reply before, I had to go to SCHOOL today, can you believe it? The day after we move in and I have to start at a new school! How unfair! But Mum said it's better to start properly on the first day of term. Huh. She wasn't the one who had to walk into a class where EVERYONE else knew each other, wearing a shiny new uniform that just screams NEWBIE.
Actually, I wasn't the only new person. There's another girl called Suki who's just moved here too. She and I sort of clung to each other during the day. Neither of us understood a word anyone said and we got lost twice â once on the way to art and once trying to find the canteen. By the time we got there, they'd run out of chips! Unbelievable. How can a school with a thousand pupils run out of chips?!
Anyway, I suppose it was OK for a first day. Everyone was very nice, and Suki does ballet so we had something to talk about. She told me about pointe shoes and I told her about fleckles and other ballroom
steps. Lucky that the other new girl also likes dancing! She's going to this posh ballet school at the weekends. I haven't got a clue where I'm going to go for ballroom lessons, but hopefully there'll be something nearby. Moving seems to have happened so quickly I haven't got my head around it yet â it's almost like I thought it wouldn't really happen. And now we're here!
Anyway. So school was OK but (and don't tell ANYONE I told you this) I kept thinking about Milton Park and everyone there â especially you of course â and although I tried to look really confident, I was shaking inside. I really miss my old school. (I never thought I'd say that about Milton Park, LOL!)
How did your first day back go? Have they re-painted the first-floor classrooms like they said? What are the new people in my old house like? Actually, don't tell me. I'm not sure I can bear it.
I miss you so much! And Milton, and my old house, and the scary snicket where we once met that huge dog, and the post office, and Mrs Connelly at the Spar.
Ahem. The new house is really nice. My bedroom is about twice as big as my old one, and we have a living
room AND a dining room!! Mum is already talking about having dinner parties, I can't think why. It's not like we know anyone here yet!
Gotta go, got a gazillion things to unpack. No idea if everything has made it here in one piece. Dad says there are six boxes missing but I don't know how he knows that.
Will write more soon, promise.
Megan xxx
from: Jake
to: Megan
sent: 8 September
subject: re: new home!
I rang you but it went to voicemail. Have you got your phone switched off? Or were you talking to (gulp)
someone else
? How dare you be talking to someone else when I'm trying to ring!
You'll have to tell me more than that. New school, new house, yawn, yawn. Suki does ballet? That's kind of cool. But come on, I want more details! Was Owen
sick on the 200-mile journey from Yorkshire to your soft southern county? How many times did your dad swear at other drivers? Is the new garden as big as it looked in the photos?
Come on, come on! Anyone would think you'd got a lot to do or something!
from: Megan
to: Jake
sent: 10 September
subject: answers at last
What are you like! LOL. I really am sorry, there's just been no time to do anything. Mum and Dad keep sending me from one corner of the house to the other with boxes or random âstuff'. But they've crashed out in front of the telly now, and Owen is in bed (finally â he's not liking this whole new house thing AT ALL) so I should be able to write a bit more. I rang you back, by the way, but this time YOUR phone went to voicemail. Did you get my message?
So, to answer your questions:
1. No, yours wasn't the first email I received.
I got one from DanceWear International, offering me 10% off Capezio shoes. Hah.
2. It took us nearly 24 hours to get connected, but that was only because Mum had put the modem in her bedside drawer, thinking it was something to do with her hair straighteners.
3. I still don't know if everything has arrived in one piece. There are twenty-nine boxes left to unpack. I counted them this evening.
4. Yes, Owen was sick on the journey â twice! How did you guess? It was totally disgusting.
5. Dad swore at the other drivers forty-one times. (I made that up. I didn't really count. And some of the time I was asleep.)
6. Yes, the new garden is easily as big as it looked in the photos â in fact, there's a bit that goes round the side of the house too and you can play tennis against the garage wall. Not that I have any idea where my tennis racquet is (is that the right spelling? It looks weird).
The house is lovely, and as I said before, my room is really big. Mum says I can decorate it how I like. I know what you're thinking â multicoloured walls like the last room! But no, I think I might go for turquoise. Or lilac.
I haven't decided yet. Owen wants a huge jungle over his walls, but I think he'd change his mind if he really had one. He's scared of
The Lion King
, remember! He threw this massive tantrum when we arrived â it seems Teddy got lost on the way somehow. We looked everywhere, but he's completely gone. Owen went ballistic. It took Mum two hours to get him to sleep that first night â you know he's never gone to sleep without Teddy before. And in a new house too! Poor Owen, he was really upset. But Mum took him into town the next morning and let him choose something, so he cheered up. He's got this huge snow leopard thing, it's practically bigger than he is! He's called it Snowy. How original â not!
Dad is loving his new job at the architecture firm. Mum says it was worth moving all this way to see the smile on his face. Well, it might be for him, but it wasn't for me. There is nothing to DO here. I don't know anyone and I hate not knowing where anything is either â like the nearest supermarket or cinema or â well, anything. Every time I step outside the door, Mum is paranoid I'm going to be kidnapped or something. She keeps going on about Parchester being such a big town and how I mustn't go anywhere on my own. It's like I'm suddenly six again! And she's constantly on at me
about taking my mobile everywhere âjust in case'. Just in case of WHAT? Nothing can possibly happen to me while she's superglued to my side!!
I have been dropping subtle hints though about how I
need
a new mobile phone. She hasn't noticed yet.
School is still OK, I guess, but I can't get used to the number of people around. I always thought Milton Park was a big school, but this one feels like a whole village on its own. I asked this girl in my class called Kate if there were other people who did ballroom dancing in our year. She said she had no idea, she didn't even know most of them! Can you imagine not knowing everyone in your year?! But there are six forms in one year â six! While Milton Park only has three . . . must stop thinking about it though or I'll get upset.
Speaking of which! Dancing!! I have been asking around, but it's like no one's ever heard of ballroom dancing. Or if they have, they just think of
Strictly Come Dancing
. Someone said to me, âOh, I didn't realize you could actually learn it.' Well, duh! So I don't know if there'll be anything nearby I can go to. School doesn't have ANY dance classes, but they're obsessed with sport. Hockey, tennis, football . . . but no dancing!
I SO miss it! How can I get by without the rumba, the samba, the foxtrot . . . and the waltz, of course;-) Our best dance!
Oh no, now I'm feeling homesick. Classes with Laney start again next week, don't they? Tell her hi from me. And don't you dare find a better partner than ME! I can't believe you're going to go back to classes and I won't be there. How long have we been dancing together? Is it eight years? Do you remember how we used to climb over the fence between our gardens so we could practise when the sun was out? And how our mums never knew which house we'd be in?