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  “Maybe I’ll just leave the chalk here.” I placed it down right in front of them, hoping they might ignore the timer and fill in the positive thoughts I needed.

  “On it like a car bonnet.” Rach whipped the chalk away. Of course she wouldn’t leave me hanging. “…Once we’ve done this next revision stint.”

  OR NOT.

  Tegan sensed my alarm and pushed a packet of Skips towards me. A prawn-based peace offering. “Turn your back on it, eat these, and it’ll be OK.” She grinned. “Promise.”

  As much as I hated everything about studying, I hated the thought of not spending the next two years with these two even more. And I wanted them to see how much I was trying. So I held off protesting and knuckled down.

  The next two hours flew by.

  If that flight was a turbulent, seat-belt-on-throughout, death-roller-coaster of boredom/fear for my future. I didn’t even know those two emotions could happen simultaneously. Still, I managed to work my way through all the twenty-five little revision cards I’d made. Maybe I could get a B in geography tomorrow? And being so focused meant I totally missed Rach and Tegan filling in their newly titled “Reasons Adam Might Sometimes Act Weird But Is Definitely 100% Not Going To Dump Bella” list. They really were the best.

  As we took our next break, I laughed as they read out their reasons. They ranged from the practical maybe his parents always wear matching outfits and he’s trying to stop anyone discovering this to the wildly optimistic sometimes he has to not see you as he gets too overwhelmed by his MAJOR LOVE FOR YOU. Ridiculous or not, each and every one made me feel better, and as a result I positively smashed the impromptu quick-fire geography quiz they threw at me (never has one person yelled “Limestone!” “Flume!” “Boggy marshland!” with such enthusiasm). We only stopped when Rach had to run off to answer the doorbell. As the door opened I heard some heavy breathing that I’d recognize anywhere. It got louder as a bundle of wagging tail and slobber tumbled into the room.

  “Mumbles!” Mum must have been walking her and decided to pop in. My ever-happy boxer dog was so pleased to see me she ran in tiny circles, panting like she’d only just discovered oxygen. Thank goodness humans didn’t do that, or I’d collapse with dizziness every time I even glimpsed Adam. Or a biscuit.

  I crouched down to give Mumbles a cuddle, which switched into her pushing me down and jumping all over me. Standard. Her breath was a heady mixture of decayed fish and the smell of the water in the bottom of the toothbrush pot.

  “Er, Bells?” Rach sounded weirded out. But I couldn’t open my eyes, as there was a tongue attempting to lick them.

  Mumbles slammed a paw down on to my chest, leaning in ever closer, now full-on breathing into my face, almost overcoming me with fumes

  “Raaachhh. Help meeee… She’s –” gasp “– squishing … my boooooob!”

  But I felt no help coming, so wailing like a manic squirrel, I used all the stomach muscles I had to push her off. Finally I was free to sit up and open my eyes.

  To see Adam. Fit Adam. Fadam.

  “WHAT THE WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Is something I probably should have thought quietly, rather than yelled in his face.

  Adam blinked, unfazed – he’d had twenty-eight weeks, three days and 1.5 hours to get used to my ways (he was a quicker learner than me, as I’d had over sixteen years, but still didn’t understand myself).

  “Nice to see you too, Bells.” Grinning, he put his hand out. Trying – and failing – not to gawp, I grabbed it, getting my usual tingle when our fingers touched. Was this normal?!

  But what was he doing here? I hadn’t seen him in weeks. I looked at Rach for some sort of psychic explanation but she just shrugged in a “Sorry, I have no idea what’s going on either” way.

  Adam sensed us all acting weird, and suddenly looked embarrassed, like he’d accidentally wandered into a girls’ changing room. “Sorry – she got out on to the playing field while I was having a kick about.” Classic Mumbles. Whenever she escaped, she always headed to somewhere that had the highest ratio of embarrassingly fit fitties. He looked at me. “So I walked her to yours… And when no one was in, I guessed you might be here?” He looked awkward. “But she’s safe now, so I’ll, erm, I’ll go.”

  Oh great, he felt like I didn’t want him here. Nice one me.

  My insides = couldn’t be happier to see him.

  My face = complete shock.

  If only there was a Google translate for my facial muscles.

  “No, stay!” I scrambled towards the breakfast bar. “We have snacks and hot chocolate on tap, right, Rach?”

  But as I looked in her direction, I saw what was behind Adam. The entire, horrifying wall of my writing saying things like:

  The way he gets hiccups when he eats toast = STRANGELY ALLURING (with no less than five hearts).

  The mole above his eyebrow. DREAM/SWOON/DROON.

  My heart sped up to the “intense panic/potential fainting to save your dignity” zone. Whatever happened, ADAM MUST NOT SEE THIS. He’d realize he was going out with a list-making maniac who was clearly head over heels in love with him. (And by realize I mean read the bit that said, I, BELLA FISHER, AM A LIST-MAKING MANIAC WHO IS COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH ADAM DOUGLAS.)

  “In fact. No. You should go!” I headed towards the door. Adam looked confused. “Now!” I accidentally shouted it. Mumbles gave me an “Are you OK, hun?” look. Great – my oddness was so intense, it crossed the species divide. I needed to be less weird. “You’ve got places to be and, er, people to see, right?” Yup, I’d unleashed a Mum phrase. “Although…” I looked around for something, anything, to distract Adam from what was behind him. “Have you seen Rach’s garden recently?” I pointed out the window even though it was getting dark. Not a great time to remember I didn’t know anything about gardens other than buying a potato in Asda seemed a whole lot easier than spending six months growing one. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I flung my arm across the scene. “Such, er… bloom!!”

  Adam looked at me like I’d gone a bit mad and politely said something about a cherry tree. I needed urgent backup. So, I gestured with my hand behind my back to the others and finally, finally, they got what I was doing. Immediately, they leapt into action, Rach throwing herself in front of the wall and Tegan manoeuvring herself between Adam and the writing. Even Mumbles ran head first towards Adam’s trousers to sniff the area that must not be named (I’d like to think she was also helping with the diversion, but had to accept she just had terrible hobbies).

  “So, erm, thanks for bringing Mumbles round.” I tried to drag her head away whilst pretending it also wasn’t there. Tegan saw how well things were going (not at all) and shuffled round to keep the wall blocked.

  “No probs.” Adam pulled on his backpack. He looked worryingly like he might be about to turn right and see everything. NO!! In the words of Beyoncé, to the left, to the left! (Although doubt that was because she’d ever written The way Jay-Z casually throws sticks for dogs and they go impressively far in giant letters next to his face).

  I looked around for something else to keep Adam’s attention to where I was. “Have you seen Rachel’s mum’s new phone charger?” I sounded positively hysterical. “It has three USBs!”

  Wow. I was girlfriend GOLD. Once word got round about how much I loved gardening and chargers, I was going to be IN DEMAND. Adam smiled as enthusiastically as someone could when they thought their girlfriend fangirled over charging mechanisms.

  “That sounds … really useful?”

  I had nothing left, and mouthed “Help” at Tegan. With a firm nod to let me know she had this, she took matters into her own hands and sidestepped towards the kitchen door, nudging Adam round as she did. “Aaaanyway, thanks for reuniting the doggo with her rightful owner. But despite Bella being happy to chat about, er, USB chargers – great as they are – we better get back to the revision. Geography tomorrow and we still have Central Business Districts to get through.” And to my relief (/guilt), Adam bought i
t.

  So, with a quick bye, and a promise to arrange to meet soon, he stepped into the hall and out the front door. WE’D DONE IT.

  There was only one thing for it – a full-on splat of relief on to the sofa. Followed by the three of us scrubbing every chalk speck of evidence off the wall as we relived how horrifyingly close I’d come to the total disaster of Adam discovering what I was actually like as a human. But as the laughter died down, and the other two began to plan meeting up for tomorrow’s exam, I got stuck in my own thoughts.

  Because as I rubbed away He makes me feel like I can achieve anything, a realization stung.

  Even though I’d only written that an hour ago, right now I felt like I was only really achieving one thing: single-handedly screwing us up.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  “PENS DOWN!” Mrs Hitchman, our headmistress, yelled so loudly it was like she was alerting us to an approaching stampede of wildebeests. Nice to know that despite coming to the end of 1.5 hours of exam doom, she was her usual cheery self.

  But who cared?! As I closed the paper for the last time, geography was officially over. BUH BYE, worst subject ever. Despite having that horrible panicked-hand-shake towards the end as I tried to write faster and faster, I’d answered everything – and hadn’t even resorted to fake extra-bad handwriting to disguise the fact I was making some of the longer words up. Who knows how to spell impearmeable impermable waterproof anyway?

  I POL-ed (phewed out loud) with such force I was treated to a Mrs Hitchman withering glare all to myself. I was already in her bad books from last week, when I’d got confused with the food rule about exams. I didn’t realize when they said you were allowed snacks for “medical” reasons, that didn’t include “being pretty sure my brain doesn’t function without regular chocolate”. So when ten minutes into English literature I began to crunch my way through some Smarties, Mrs Hitchman stormed over like she suspected I’d written the major plot points of Julius Caesar on them (although, retrospectively, I wish I had).

  I gave Mrs Hitchman my best “don’t hate me – at least I didn’t bring Chipsticks this time” look – but all I got back was a cold, hard stare that made me feel like I was shrinking. In better news, my peripheral vision spotted two sets of thumbs up – one on my left, one on my right. That’s the thing with having best mates with surnames beginning with A and W. Between us we covered a whole exam room – my F-ness being plonk in the middle.

  Tegan grinned – good, it must have gone well for her too. She could fill me in when we got to the library. We still had a few more days of having to come into school every other day for “supervised revision”. Then it was goodbye, school except for exams. And today Mr Lutas was supervising, so it would basically be a debrief and chill. As soon as we got the all-clear to file out, I gathered up my lucky pens and pencils into my clear plastic pencil case (aka a sandwich bag) and headed for the corridor. But I slapped straight into the one person who was worse than any exam. The evilest of exes. Luke.

  “Heard your sigh of relief, Fishy Balls. Don’t tell me you actually passed something?”

  I raised an eyebrow defiantly. “The only thing I want to get past is you.” Years of practice had helped me finally be able to stand up to him. “Please.”

  Well, almost.

  I tried to push round him, but he was surrounded by his loser mates.

  “Ahh, poor you. In such a hurry to see your fwiends. Is it because you don’t think you’re doing well enough to get to go to college with them?” His eyes were wide with fake concern. Don’t feed the troll, Bella.

  “As IF, Luke.” Rach pushed her way between us. One of her superpowers was being able dodge through crowds five times quicker than anyone else. “So if you could get out of our way, that’d be juuust great.”

  She grabbed my arm and swished her hair as if she was in an American sitcom. The crowd parted like it was a biblical sea and Rach was a beardy bloke. She had no idea this wasn’t normal (and only happened to the extremely beautiful). Walking away, she flopped her head on to my shoulder (quite hard when I was at least five inches shorter).

  “How awesome is it going to be when we don’t have to see that idiot on a daily basis?”

  I thought about it.

  “Imagine if your full-time job was Chief Puppy Cuddler at Battersea Dogs Home, with a part-time position being a Ben & Jerry’s taster… Well, more awesome than that.”

  Rachel laughed but stopped the instant we walked into the library and hit the brick wall of Mr Lutas’s “I’m watching you” stare.

  Muttering “Sorry”, we headed to where Tegan had bagsied a table just as Mikey rocked up, his right arm still in a cast. He’d been skateboarding down the pavement and flipped his board on a rogue apple core. One small arm break later and he’d bagged a scribe for his exams – a Year Twelve with way neater writing and better spelling than him. He had all the luck.

  “Soooo…” Mikey whispered. “How’d it go?” I noticed his good arm prod Tegan’s leg under the table as he asked. And her give him a total look of love back. All in 0.0001 seconds. Their version of affection was blink-and-you’d-miss-it, but somehow always there. Total goals.

  “Kind of OK?” I looked at the other two. “Amirite?”

  Tegan nodded. “I think the phrase is ‘pleasantly surprised’.”

  Mikey nudged me. “Seeee, I told you things would pick up.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at him. We’d had loads of chats about my exam stress. Mikey was in the same boat, but somehow kept his boat quietly chugging away, not like mine, which was called HMS AARGHHH and was sending out distress signals every two minutes.

  “Total praise be to the Gods of Question Setters that there wasn’t anything about coastline management.” I stuck my hands in the air. “My midnight seagull sacrifice to them must have worked.”

  Rach and Tegan laughed. But then stopped and stared at me as if they thought I was going to say something else. Which I wasn’t. Especially not now they were staring at me.

  Tegan spoke first. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Noooo, I really did lure a flock into my room and sacrifice them while Mum watched Long Lost Family downstairs.” But no one laughed.

  Now, I’m used to that with most of my jokes, but this felt different.

  Mikey caught my eye, as confused as me. “Have I missed something?”

  I shrugged. If these exams had proved anything, it was that “knowing the answer” was not my forte.

  “Bells…” Tegan looked concerned. “There was a question on coastlines…”

  “Ha very ha, Teeg.” I waited for her grin to crack through.

  But all that came was pure concern. “…The final page? The essay worth fifteen marks?”

  If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny.

  I looked at Rach – she could never keep a prank up for long. But she looked like she’d seen a ghost, and not the one of my bum on her kitchen wall.

  My heart plummeted. “You’re … not … joking, are you?”

  They both shook their heads.

  The exam flashed through my brain. The world felt like it was wobbling. I grabbed the table to steady myself.

  “Tell me this isn’t happening?!”

  “Shhhhhh!” Mr Lutas hissed. C’mon!? I know talking’s not allowed in the library, but surely acknowledging that you’ve just messed your whole life up is an exception?!

  I HAD flipped the last page … hadn’t I? Had I?

  I hadn’t. Had I?

  As my last remaining glimmer of hope packed its bags and went on a gap year, I banged my head forward on to the table.

  “I SAID QUIET PLEASE, MS FISHERRRR?!” But I was too miserable to lift my head, so mumbled my reply into the table.

  “Soz, I’ll try and keep the volume down on my total breakdown.”

  Rach rubbed my back.

  “I’m sure it’s OK,” she whispered, sounding not sure at all. Well, this was a disaster. How had I not checked the whole
paper? That was Exam 101.

  I raised my head for a split second to take a discreet photo of my misery face, posting it into my stories along with the hashtag #IfYouDontReadAllTheQuestions DoYouEvenDeserveToPassAnExam along with two vote options: “No” and “No way”.

  Tegan was doing her best to say comforting things, but unless one of them was “I’ve discovered how to turn back time”, no one could convince me it was going to be OK. Especially as I totally saw Mikey vote “No way”.

  “Ah, Fishy, bad news, is it?” Oh man. Could life not cut me a break?! Luke was back, like a magnet to my worst moments.

  “Get lost,” Tegan said, not missing a beat. I remained totally still. He was like a painful chin spot. Sometimes if you ignored him long enough, he just went away.

  “Fit Rach? Will you pass on a message to your weirdo mate when she stops pretending she can’t hear me?”

  Little did he know I was actually pretending he was a zit. 1–0 to me.

  “Tell her I’m really sorry she’s messing up her exams which also means her entire life and we’ll definitely, DEFINITELY all miss her when we’re celebrating at RebelRocks. Such a shame she’s going to miss out.”

  I mouthed “douchebag” into the table. Luke knew we didn’t have tickets. I’d seen him all smug happy when he’d caught Rach and me moaning about it. And this morning it had officially sold out. Luke had probably bought the last hundred tickets just so we couldn’t possibly go.

  But it was Mikey who replied.

  “No need to pass it on – she’ll be there. We all will.” I sat up to look at him. He was lying so well even I almost believed him. Did he know something we didn’t? He wiggled his eyebrows mysteriously. Luckily Luke missed it, too busy sneering at me.

  “Oh – she lives…” he said. I rolled my eyes and huffed – but I did it harder than I meant, and made what sounded like a tiny moo. “Did I disturb you, snorter?”

  “It was more of a moo, actually.” Yup, classic burn there, Bella.