smiling.
âRomance!â I said. âWhy would I want to read about romance?â My sister Rita was fifteen and there was enough romance floating around our house without me joining in.
âBecause Iâve fallen in love.â
âLet me get this straight,â I said. â Youâve fallen in love and Iâve got to stop reading Bunty ?â
âItâs time you grew up. Iâve grown up, and so should you.â
âBut I havenât fallen in love, Mary, and I donât want to, well not till Iâve read my new Bunty annual anyway.â
âOkay,â said Mary âYou can finish the book.â
âThanks,â I said, grinning.
Just then the bus came round the corner, Mary and I ran up the stairs and plonked ourselves down at the front.
âWho have you fallen in love with then?â I asked, stuffing the offending book into my satchel before Mary suggested that I throw it out of the window.
âElton Briggs,â she said. âWho else would I be in love with?â
âEltonâs not the only boy in the class, is he?â I said.
âBut heâs the best looking,â she said, âand the most popular.â
Up until that point, I had never known Mary to care much about looks or popularity, it was one of the things I really liked about her, but now she had fallen in love with Elton Briggs, who although popular, wasnât always a very nice boy.
I suppose Elton was quite good-looking and the other boys seemed to look up to him. He was taller than most of them and he was good at things like running and football. They used to hang around him, just like the girls hung round Mary.
I had always felt a bit sorry for Elton, because his dad died when he was only nine years old. He had been called out of the classroom and then he was off school for a while. There were a lot of rumours going round. People kept asking Ralph, but when they did, Ralph sloped off with his hands in his pockets and wouldnât say anything. After a couple of days our teacher told us what had happened and asked us to be kind to Elton when he came back but not to crowd him with questions. Louise Morgan, who always seemed to have something wrong with her, went hysterical and had to be taken to the sick room.
When Elton did come back, we all tried to be extra especially kind to him, except Dominic Roberts who didnât know the meaning of the word. But Elton acted as though nothing had happened. I for one wasnât convinced, and neither was Mary, because sometimes he just stared out of the window when he should have been writing or paying attention, and Mrs Roberts our teacher never told him off. Maybe it was that vulnerable side that Mary saw, too, and not the big act that he always put on.
âI really, really love him, Dottie,â said Mary that day on the bus. âOne day I am going to marry him and we are going to travel round the world and have a fabulous life together.â
I didnât really know much about love, but it kind of made sense to me that you would probably fall in love with someone because they were nice to you and shared their sweets with you and things like that, but Elton wasnât that nice to Mary. He wasnât that nice to me either, but I wasnât the one whoâd fallen in love with him so it didnât matter.
After Mary fell in love with Elton everything changed. We stopped playing exciting games and all we did was follow Elton and Ralph around the playground. Sometimes Elton paid attention to Mary and they would walk around holding hands or heâd chase her round the field; at those times Ralph Bennett and I were sort of thrown together, which was pretty embarrassing to begin with, but over time we got more comfortable with each other and we would sit on the school field talking. I learned that heâd known Elton all his life. They were born in the same hospital only days apart and the two mums had kept in
âRomance!â I said. âWhy would I want to read about romance?â My sister Rita was fifteen and there was enough romance floating around our house without me joining in.
âBecause Iâve fallen in love.â
âLet me get this straight,â I said. â Youâve fallen in love and Iâve got to stop reading Bunty ?â
âItâs time you grew up. Iâve grown up, and so should you.â
âBut I havenât fallen in love, Mary, and I donât want to, well not till Iâve read my new Bunty annual anyway.â
âOkay,â said Mary âYou can finish the book.â
âThanks,â I said, grinning.
Just then the bus came round the corner, Mary and I ran up the stairs and plonked ourselves down at the front.
âWho have you fallen in love with then?â I asked, stuffing the offending book into my satchel before Mary suggested that I throw it out of the window.
âElton Briggs,â she said. âWho else would I be in love with?â
âEltonâs not the only boy in the class, is he?â I said.
âBut heâs the best looking,â she said, âand the most popular.â
Up until that point, I had never known Mary to care much about looks or popularity, it was one of the things I really liked about her, but now she had fallen in love with Elton Briggs, who although popular, wasnât always a very nice boy.
I suppose Elton was quite good-looking and the other boys seemed to look up to him. He was taller than most of them and he was good at things like running and football. They used to hang around him, just like the girls hung round Mary.
I had always felt a bit sorry for Elton, because his dad died when he was only nine years old. He had been called out of the classroom and then he was off school for a while. There were a lot of rumours going round. People kept asking Ralph, but when they did, Ralph sloped off with his hands in his pockets and wouldnât say anything. After a couple of days our teacher told us what had happened and asked us to be kind to Elton when he came back but not to crowd him with questions. Louise Morgan, who always seemed to have something wrong with her, went hysterical and had to be taken to the sick room.
When Elton did come back, we all tried to be extra especially kind to him, except Dominic Roberts who didnât know the meaning of the word. But Elton acted as though nothing had happened. I for one wasnât convinced, and neither was Mary, because sometimes he just stared out of the window when he should have been writing or paying attention, and Mrs Roberts our teacher never told him off. Maybe it was that vulnerable side that Mary saw, too, and not the big act that he always put on.
âI really, really love him, Dottie,â said Mary that day on the bus. âOne day I am going to marry him and we are going to travel round the world and have a fabulous life together.â
I didnât really know much about love, but it kind of made sense to me that you would probably fall in love with someone because they were nice to you and shared their sweets with you and things like that, but Elton wasnât that nice to Mary. He wasnât that nice to me either, but I wasnât the one whoâd fallen in love with him so it didnât matter.
After Mary fell in love with Elton everything changed. We stopped playing exciting games and all we did was follow Elton and Ralph around the playground. Sometimes Elton paid attention to Mary and they would walk around holding hands or heâd chase her round the field; at those times Ralph Bennett and I were sort of thrown together, which was pretty embarrassing to begin with, but over time we got more comfortable with each other and we would sit on the school field talking. I learned that heâd known Elton all his life. They were born in the same hospital only days apart and the two mums had kept in
Similar Books
