Super Awkward (12 page)

After practising for over half an hour, this is what I'd managed:

Hi Zac, I had a great time too. Hope your eye's

OK. OOPS. Family emergency meant I left

first thing. Sorry! Deffo stay in touch. Bx

I'd
removed a smiley face to appear more seventeen-y, but still panicked as soon as I'd pressed send. Did I sound like a loser? Did I sound too casual? Too formal? Too weird? Was the kiss too much?! Would he still like me enough to reply? Would he. . . And then my heart had stopped. Would he notice that I'd accidentally written POOPS in giant capital letters?!

I'd swallowed my last crumbs of pride, and decided not to try and explain in case I sent something even worse. He hasn't replied since.

Mumbles barked, dragging me out of Zac daydreaming and into real life. She only barks at people or balloons, and seeing as we were in a field, and not at a children's party, she must have heard voices. I called her back and clipped on her lead.

The voices got louder as a group of lads walked through the gap in the hedge twenty metres away from where I was standing. I was in a wide, open space, covered in shiny reflective material. Hiding was not an option. I pretended to pat Mumbles, using my peripheral perving skills to work out who they were, watching as they walked towards the centre of the football pitch. I didn't recognize any of them – any of them except one. MIAGTM/MIAGTM (UIMZA) – (Unless I Meet Zac Again). Great – the one day I
finally
stop thinking about someone and leave the house looking like a sporty scarecrow, they appear.

“Come on, kiddo, time to get outta this joint.” I pulled at Mumbles' lead. Yes, that's right, lads, I
do
talk to my dog like she's in a crime drama. Mumbles trotted at my heels, a stick in her mouth that was ten times wider than her body. Shouts drifted across from where the boys had started to warm up. Mumbles whipped her head around, almost taking me out with the stick. Were they shouting in our direction? No way I was going to check and look like an uber-keeno. Although, what if they're shouting ‘heads' and I'm about to get knocked out by a low-flying football? I tugged at Mumbles' lead and hissed, “Come on”, trying to get to the road before any drama occurred. But the shouting got louder, and as it did, in an act of total disloyalty, Mumbles rooted herself to the spot like she'd been turned into a doggie statue. TRAITOR.

She wouldn't budge. She was ruining my ‘pretend not to notice they're there' strategy. I had no option. I turned round.

Worst fear confirmed. They WERE all staring at me and/or my statue dog. Except one: MIAGTM. And he was walking right towards us. SHUDDERBALLS.

What if he was coming to verify that I was the
person
at the centre of the ‘no friends scandal'? Or was he about to yell at me for the time Mumbles ran into their end-of-season game and ate their football? Or had he noticed my stalking and was about to issue a restraining order? Whatever I do, I
mustn't
take any paperwork from him. I must also shut my jaw, which had fallen open as a result of my first full-on, full-frontal MIAGTM perv. How can someone get fitter when they're closer? Doesn't that defy all rules of seeing-ness?

He was wearing a grey hoodie with the hood up (and nothing reflective on it). For me, that's the girl equivalent of boys liking sexy underwear. And now he was only seconds away, pushing his brown hair back off his face as he approached. He smiled. I never knew he had braces, and they made him even cuter.
Please God/ God-Like Thing, whatever is about to happen, if you do one thing for me ever – other than making Zac fall in love with me and mending my entire life – please don't let my maniac dog spring back into life and dive head first into a stranger's crotch.

Now, I'm not saying this is conclusive proof that there isn't a God/God-Like Thing, but if there is one, he/she's clearly got more pressing things to attend to than my groin-sniffing woes. Mumbles burst towards
MIAGTM's
dangle region, dropping her stick and sniffing his jeans wildly, like a police dog who'd found an industrial stash of extra-strength drugs nestled in his pants. MIAGTM stopped still, his hoodied-gloriousness making me wish a sinkhole could appear, just big enough to swallow one person. After all the years of watching him from afar, I was not equipped to have an impromptu conversation from a-near, right here, right now.

His blue eyes looked at me like I was in some way responsible for my dog being a sex pest. I looked at him wondering if my sinkhole could be big enough for Mumbles as well. And also, wondering exactly what a sinkhole was.

“So
you're
the owner of the world's first football-eating dog?”

OH MY MIAGTM. We Were In Conversation. But he was distracted trying to bat away the football-eating-dog-head that was firmly lodged between his legs. His trousers must smell intense. Hope he doesn't have hygiene issues. As casual wafting wasn't doing the trick, he crouched down to Mumbles' eye level, cutting off her groin-access. He grabbed her collar, flicking out her tag that had got stuck, and ruffled her ears. This just got her even more excited, and I swear she tried
to
mount him. It was like she was acting out my inner thoughts.

I garbled, “Sorryabouthershe'sjustabitweird” and pulled so hard on her lead she glided backwards without any of her legs actually moving. Ignoring the sound of dog strangulation coming from around our knees, he carried on.

“Ah, I think she's pretty cool.” Swoon! He thinks Mumbles is cool! She's totally getting extra Marmite on her toast tonight. “Anyway, me and the lads have seen you walking her down to the football pitch a couple of times. . .”

He'd noticed my stalking! Result two! Of sorts.

“. . . and we noticed that today you're in your kit, and . . . we're a player down, so wondered if you wanted to help out with our team? We're always on the look out for a keeper.”

“A keeper?! As in a GOAL keeper? A keeper of goals?”

I couldn't disguise my surprise. What was he on about? I can't even catch a netball when it's deliberately thrown towards me by someone shouting, “Bella, catch!”

“Well, yeah. I know we've never seen you in action, but you've got all your football stuff on –” he nodded
towards
my giant, Zac-message-preventing woolly gloves – “so we figured it was worth an ask.”

Hold up. The big ‘L' and ‘R' on my gloves were adorbs, weren't they? Not sporty? I looked down. Jo's top shone back. And he DID know that the massive ‘Worcester Ladies XI' on my back was about my sister's running club. Surely? I mean do I
look
like someone who enjoys competitive sport?! The earnest look on his face suggested I might. Cringe cringe crange.

“We have some other girls that play with us sometimes, if that helps?”

Bella, DO NOT snigger that he just said ‘girls that play with us'. Think! He was waiting for an answer. I'd only managed to say eleven words so far, and now the rest were going to be confessing to him that I need gloves in the summer just to stop me sending messages to fit boys. First impression – goalkeeper. Second – loon.

“Er, yeah, I just sometimes, erm, help out at the, erm, with my mum's . . . with the . . . with the local, erm, youth team, Ladies X I, or erm. . .” I scrabbled in my head. It wasn't X and I, it was a number, wasn't it!? “. . . twelve, no eleven. YES! But I'm not that great, so should, probably, er, say no. You know. Goal keeping – goal-giving-away? That's me! But, thanks. I think?”

The
lie couldn't have been more obvious than if I'd had a giant perm fashioned into the words ‘I'm telling you a massive lie, right now'. Even Mumbles looked embarrassed and she sniffs bums for fun.

MIAGTM didn't seem phased.

“Sounds cool. What league do they play in? We might have them on our fixtures list?”

Why could he not just end this torture humanely?! Must say something he definitely won't have heard of.

“It's the, er, Church and, erm, Orchestra's League Of . . . Newbies?” It would have sounded more convincing if I hadn't said it like a question. He looked unconvinced. I needed to make it sound more of a thing. I thought back. “We call it . . . COLON.”

Oh goodness. Did I just shout ‘colon' at MIAGTM?! The fact his eyes were almost popping out suggested I did. I had to leave. Immediately.

“Anyway, what's the time, I better be heading off.” I pulled out my phone to fake check the time, but because of my big, goalkeeping-gloved fingers I instead proceeded to flash him a picture of me and my ex-friend Rachel that I'd just been about to delete. It was the one where we'd sellotaped up our faces to look like pig-people. I was on fire today.

“Weird. Someone must have just sent me that. I
have
no idea what it is. Other than a picture. Of some people. Who I do. Not. Know.” I stuffed my phone away. “So, I should probably go and find out who. Or practise goalkeeping, and kicking. And throwing. And all the other football things that I definitely do. That's football!” MIAGTM looked baffled. “So that's what I'm going to do. Now. As in now. So bye. C'MON, MUMBLES.”

I fled, not risking waiting for a response, or worse, me saying anything, ever again. His last impression was just going to have to be the sight of me sliding Mumbles along the whole length of the playing field, her legs like rigid lolly sticks, while she stared longingly back at his crotch. I made it to the safety of the road then ducked down behind the hedge so the lads couldn't see me any more.

Thank goodness I'd met Zac. Because now, in under two minutes, I'd guaranteed MIAGTM was now more likely Man Who Would Never Ever Marry Me Not Even If The Human Race Depended On It. MWWNEMMNEITHRDOI.

Why was I so bad at life?! But as I crouch-walked along the never-ending hedge, it hit me. I didn't
have
to be this way. I HAD to start turning my life around. Messaging Zac wasn't enough. He was the one ticket I
had
to proving to the world I was normal. He was the one thing that could shut Luke up, and at the same time, prove to Tegan and Rachel that my life was just fine without them. I had to step my game up and get him here. And I had to do it by prom.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Hiding behind the hedge would have been a lot more successful if a car hadn't sped round the corner, its lights turning me and my reflective top into a human-outdoor-disco-ball. It swerved behind me, and Jo lent across to shout out of the passenger window.

“Want a life? Sorry, lift?”

She was clocking up more miles than Lewis Hamilton since she passed her test. First time, of course. I swear she only did it to make me feel worse about being stuck at home and a million years from having a car of my own.

“I have a
life
thank you very much.” Complete lie.

“Oh yeah – sorry to interrupt your lovely walk for one bent double behind a hawthorn.” She revved the
engine,
challenging me to put stubbornness before laziness. “Nice top, BTdubs.”

I pretended she hadn't just said that.

“Fine. I'll have a lift then.” She took her foot off the accelerator.

“What's the magic word?”

Jo was so annoying.

“Please?”

“No, it's put-that-smelly-dog-in-the-back.” I rolled my eyes and got Mumbles to jump on the back seat. She loved looking out of the window as we drove – like she was some sort of royalty-dog looking at lesser animals that had to degrade themselves by using their actual legs as a mode of transport.

I jumped in the passenger seat, slamming the door loudly so that the lads could hear me. See, I
might
have a complete absence of conversational skills, but I
do
know someone with a car. Although I guess so does everyone, if you include parents. Oh no, I hope they didn't think my mum had come to pick me up. Why did I slam the door?!

“Not on boy-spotting duties tonight then?”

“As if.”

“No, of course, that's why you only ever offer to walk the dog when it's not raining, it's not too dark, and you've spent hours staring in the mirror first?”

“
Whatever.” I
should
have stared in the mirror after putting this ridic top on.

“You only hate me cos you know I nailed it.”

“The only thing you nail is being the most annoying person ever invented.”

But Jo didn't have time to reply as out of nowhere she had to slam on the breaks. My body jolted forward against my seatbelt. A car had screeched out of a driveway in front of us, not bothering to check that we weren't right in its path. Jo swore under her breath and flashed her lights, before quickly composing herself again, letting the other car hurry away.

“Sorry about that. You can tell Mum he didn't even look.”

If there was one thing my sister was, it wasn't careless. I was both careless and carless.

“Don't worry, I saw – what an idiot. Wonder why he was in such a rush?”

“You spotted who it was, right?”

I hadn't. Although I did know the house – everyone did. It belonged to my headmistress, Mrs Hitchman.

“It was Mr Lutas, the art teacher – well, he was mine anyway.”

Sadly, he was still mine too. But what reason did he
have
to be at Mrs Hitchman's house – and to be leaving it in such a hurry? Was she an underground chalk smuggler? Did she have the most exceptional bowls of fruit to paint?

“You
sure
it was him?”

“I'd recognize that grey caveman-vibe hair anywhere. And he's still got the same car he had back in the day. He didn't notice us, though.”

Phew. I'm already in his bad books without him knowing we'd caught him on some dodgy late visit. “He's such a weirdo.”

“You don't need to tell
me
that. I was in the year where he went on that legendary school trip – to the arrrrrrrt gallery. This old guy who ran it ended up showing us this massive drawer full of work Mr Lutas had done. Honestly, it was
packed
with all these naked self portraits. Him stepping up on to a chair, him crouching at an oven, oh God, even him doing a press up. Naked. It still gives me nightmares now.”