Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy by Lucy-Anne Holmes

the Kings of Leon song I love?’
    ‘“Use Somebody”,’ I say, without thinking.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘I really like that one too.’
    ‘Wow.’ He nods. ‘Nice T-shirt by the way.’
    ‘Yes, I have very good taste.’
    I smile. And then he smiles. And… his smile is… what’s his smile like? It’s like sunshine. It’s not toothpaste ad but more the slightly lopsided, unbridled smile of a child. I think it might be the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
    We stare at each other
again
. I’m still kneeling on the floor, which is just as well, because that is a smile to make knees weaken and women collapse. I try to get up without showing him my pants. I manage it. But then once I’m up I remember that I am holding upper lip hair removal cream and have been since we started chatting. I can’t lose the cream now, unless I just drop everything and flee. This isn’t fair. There should be an EU rule about attractive young men being allowed to work in chemists.
    ‘Um, just these, please,’ I say, holding out the cream and lipglosses. He takes them from me. His slightly calloused fingers touch my hand and I feel a churning in my tummy. Actually the sensation isn’t just in my tummy, it’s in an area lower than my tummy too. Oh. My. God. Joe King is making my bits twitch.
    I pay and flee. When I’m halfway down the street I stop and look at my hand. It’s trembling. There’s only one thing for it. I’ll have to start going to the Boots pharmacy.

Chapter 10
    I met Philippa at school. Meeting Philippa is probably the best thing that has ever happened in my life. She started there two weeks into the fourth year. She stood next to me in assembly on that first day. I didn’t say hello to her. I disliked school and school really disliked me. I particularly disliked assembly because it was when I’d get my nickname for the day. Michelle Cullet (who is now Michelle Wilmot, because she married a bloke called Steve Wilmot, who was also in our year and broke my heart) would be at the other end of the row and would start it off. It would get whispered along the row of students until it reached me.
    Philippa turned to me that morning in assembly. Her pretty face was scrunched up and her top lip was raised.
    ‘I think I have to say “minge” to you,’ she whispered.
    I nodded resignedly and we turned our attention back to the headmaster who was standing on the stage in front of us. Only, after a few moments, she turned back to me again, still wearing a baffled expression.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It’s my nickname for the day.’
    Again she nodded and again we turned back to face the headmaster.
    ‘Why?’ she asked again.
    ‘My name is Jenny Taylor,’ I told her wearily. ‘It sounds like genitalia. Every day I get a new nickname.’
    We turned back round and I could tell that Philippa was thinking about what I’d said.
    ‘But that’s not even funny,’ she said.
    ‘It’s about as funny as…’ and I really wanted to quote something that Blackadder said to Baldrick about something being as funny as being poked in the eye with a pointy thing but I couldn’t remember what it was exactly so I just said, ‘It’s about as funny as walking across hot coals to get to a Robbie Williams concert only to find it’s been cancelled.’
    And she said, and this is when I fell in love with Philippa, ‘Why was it cancelled?’
    ‘Because Robbie had been to a barbecue and eaten a partially cooked chicken drumstick.’
    For some reason at that moment we looked straight into each other’s eyes and burst out laughing. The headmaster gave us both an after-school detention. But, quite literally, since that exchange we’ve been inseparable.
    Philippa works for the twice-weekly local paper the
Tiddlesbury Times
, writing news stories. She wants to be a writer. Or should I say Philippa will be a writer. She has already written one novel which, and I am not being biased, is brilliant. It’s a story for teenagers about a girl who is