Don't Ask by Hilary Freeman Read Free Book Online

as me about Alex.
    ‘Ah, she sounds really nice. Are you going to write back? Are you going to ask her about Jack?’
    ‘Don’t be a zombie, Kay, I can’t just steam on in there and say, “Hi Alex, good to hear from you and, by the way, it’s not just an interest in football that
we’ve got in common.”’
    ‘I know that,’ said Katie, sounding hurt. ‘I was only wondering.’
    ‘Sure, hon. But I think I need to get to know her a bit before I ask any probing questions.’
    ‘So what are you going to say?’
    ‘I think I’ll tell her a little about myself – about Laura. I’ll ask her a few questions too, so she has to write back, and then take it from there. If I treat the whole
thing like I’ve just made a new friend, and I’m getting to know her, like I’d get to know any new friend, I reckon she won’t suspect a thing.’
    Making a new friend was, to all intents and purposes, exactly what I was doing – if you ignore the fact that the friendship was built on slightly dubious foundations (a nicer term for
lies), and that my motives weren’t exactly pure. I genuinely didn’t know much about Alex at all, save her name and the fact she’d once gone out with Jack, so it wasn’t as if
I was going to have to pretend to be ignorant about her. If I’d met her in different circumstances, she could have been someone I might choose to be friends with. Jack liked her, and Jack
liked me, so we must have some qualities in common.
    Was I using her? No more so than many people use their friends. Why do people make friends with each other anyway? They do it because they want to be in the cool clique, or because they’re
lonely, or because they want to show someone else how interesting and how much fun they are. Everybody uses each other to a certain extent, even if it’s just to have someone to go shopping
with.
    I wrote back to Alex later that evening. I said it was great that she remembered me from camp but, no, I wasn’t playing football any more. Was she? And wasn’t it a coincidence that
she was an Arsenal fan because, guess what, so was I! All I really knew about Arsenal was that they were a north London team, which made them my local team. But I knew I could get some more
information out of Jack about them, if I needed to. I asked her what A-levels she was doing and told her I was doing my AS-levels that summer – thereby making myself (or Laura) skip a whole
year like a total brainbox, when I hadn’t even chosen my options yet. She couldn’t know I was a full two years younger than her, or she might think I was some kid with a crush. I
didn’t think we’d still be in touch by the summer, when I had to take my dreaded GCSEs, so it didn’t really matter. I signed off my message with three kisses, even though
she’d only put two. But who’s counting?
    I read my message three times before I sent it, to make sure there weren’t any slip-ups, like accidentally writing my own name instead of Laura’s, or mentioning Jack. You know when
you’re not supposed to think about something, so you can’t stop thinking about it? It’s like being on a diet and craving chocolate all the time, when if you weren’t dieting
you’d only want it a couple of times a week. The whole time I was writing to Alex I couldn’t stop thinking about Jack, so much so that I initially wrote, ‘I jacked in playing
football,’ which isn’t even an expression I’d normally use. That was the guilt typing for me, I guess. It was probably also guilt that, a few minutes after I’d sent the
message, made me call Jack and tell him I was missing him, even though we’d spoken only an hour earlier.

 
Chapter 7

    Once we’d started writing to each other, Alex and I fell into a pattern of messaging or emailing at least a couple of times a week. She’d tell me what she’d
been doing and I’d tell her whatever I decided Laura had been up to that day, which was usually what I’d done, with a bit of