Heart of Glass by Lindy Dale Read Free Book Online Page B

lounge. “You must be kidding. No boy will
ever be putting his head between my legs. He didn’t make you do it,
did he?”
    “ Of course not. I couldn’t
do it, it’s gross.”
    Lucy stood up, towering over
us in her domineering way and shaking her head as if we were the
saddest, most pathetic cases in the world. “Well, it sounds as if
you had a very informative evening, Annabelle. Of course, I could
have told you all about those things if you had asked me. I thought
you were too immature. It appears I was correct.”
    “ I don’t believe you Lucy.
If you had known, you wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from
telling us. You know it as well as I do. You’re just jealous
because I went to a party you weren’t invited to. I don’t know why
you have to be mean all the time. You should be pleased for me, now
that I have a boyfriend.”
    “ You think Ben is your
boyfriend? You are such a loser. He’s only interested in you
because you’re a virgin? He wants to see how far he can get. Dan
told me.”
    “ That’s not true. He
wouldn’t talk about me to his mates. Why would he say I was
beautiful if he only wanted sex?”
    “ He’s doing it so you’ll
trust him and one night he’ll put the pressure on you and you won’t
be able to say no. He’s waiting till he has you trapped, you
idiot.”
    “ Well, you’d know, you’ve
been with more boys than the whole school put together.” I was
openly weeping now, the tears streaming down my face. Inside my
heart felt as if it had been ripped in two. It couldn’t be possible
that Ben was only using me. It couldn’t.
    “ Are you saying I’m a
slut?” Lucy asked.
    “ If the cap
fits….”
    “ Fair enough,” Lucy spat,
as she picked up her books and stood to leave.
    “ I still think you’re
lying. You don’t know Ben, he’s not like that.”
    “ That’s what you
think.  I’ve met boys like him before and believe me, they’re
all the same.”
    “ Ben’s not. He’s
different.”
    “ You watch, he’ll dump you
for someone who puts out before too long. Then you’ll be
sorry.”
    I watched her retreating
figure, her entourage of fawning ninnies already sympathising as
they scuttled down the hall behind her like little cockroaches. It
didn’t matter what I said now. The damage was done. I had dug the
grave and thrown the shovel in for good measure.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 6
    LONELY PEOPLE
    This is for all the lonely
people
    Thinkin’ that life has
passed them by…
    America
    I hated living so far away
from Ben and never having him near but our phone calls became a
regular occurrence that was the highlight of my week. They were
what sustained me when I was all alone. I looked forward to them, I
looked forward to the sound of his voice and the cute way he
flattered me. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside. It made our
parents extremely cross. The phone bills skyrocketed into the
stratosphere.
    The phone calls happened at
precisely 9.01pm every Thursday, after Ben got home from training.
The long distance rates were less then, but even when I offered to
pay my share of the bill, my mother’s reprisals never
ceased.
    I could always tell how Ben
was feeling by the way he spoke.  Even on the phone. He was
hopeless at hiding his feelings or I was good at reading them and
as soon as I answered the phone that night, I knew they something
was wrong. Ben’s voice sounded different, somehow
distant.
    “ Hi,” I said cheerily,
“what have you been up to?”
    “ Oh, you know, school,
footy, that sort of stuff.”
    “ I missed you on the
weekend. Didn’t you come down for State training?” Ben and Paul had
been in town every weekend for the past month.  Being selected
as part of the State Under 20 football squad had meant many extra
hours of training. It’d been odd that he hadn’t called on the
weekend. We had been spending every spare minute together when he
was in town.
    “ I was sick. I didn’t
go.”
    My lip curled. It wasn’t
like him