Love-shy by Lili Wilkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

today.’
    â€˜Okay then,’ I said, with one last desperate glance around the room. ‘Thanks.’
    I shut the classroom door behind me and stood in the empty corridor. Shaun Davies.

    I’d been checking PEZZ imist’s blog all day to see if he made any mention of talking to me. If he was Shaun Davies, surely he’d mention it. As soon as I got home, I opened my laptop. As I waited for it to start up, I pulled out my pink highlighter and crossed off the two boys – Jacob Printz and Tigger Paulson – I’d spoken to at the basketball game I’d crashed, and Jack Horwicz, who I’d run into at the train station. Jack had thought I was trying ask him to the school social, and told me he had his sights set on Anya Pederson, and then tried to read me a poem he’d written her. Luckily I had a red pen with me so I could make some helpful suggestions about it, and point him in the direction of resources where he could expand his woefully limited vocabulary and brush up on iambic pentameter.
    I frowned and flipped through the pages of the yearbook. Jack Horwicz had been my thirty-seventh interview. I only had one possible candidate for love-shyness so far, but then I was only halfway through the Year Ten boys. There were still heaps of opportunities to find PEZZ imist. It didn’t have to be Shaun Davies. I wondered absently why the idea of it being him bothered me so much. Was it because I knew that, if it was him and I had to save him there wasn’t much I could do? He was short and unfortunate-looking and had terrible posture and absolutely no charm or personality. I knew PEZZ imist had more in him than that. He was an ugly duckling, just waiting for me to help him transform into a swan.
    I opened Firefox and a new post from PEZZ imist appeared in front of me.
    15:18
Some mornings I wake up and I know that getting out of bed is just going to make it all worse. I’m so tired. This morning I told my mother that I wasn’t going to school. She wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t force me. I stayed in my room all day, because I knew she was in the house and I didn’t want to talk to her. I waited until she’d gone out before I went to the toilet. Then I watched TV before going back to bed. She’s back now. I can hear her in the kitchen. She makes me sick. Maybe if she’d ever done anything to help me meet a girl then I wouldn’t have to hide here at home, pretending that the girl is here with me, winding her hair around her finger and smiling, her eyes dancing. We could just lie here together, on my bed. Just touching a little bit, nothing crude. Just being together. Me and her. Safe from the world.
Instead I’ll just lie here all day, staring out the window at our back garden, which I hate. My mother had an astroturf lawn installed a few years ago, so she’d only have to look after the front garden – after all, that’ s the one other people can see. The backyard is just a big square of ugly green plastic, utterly devoid of life. A fake garden to go with our fake lives. One day I’m going to have the most beautiful living garden, full of secret green places.
    He hadn’t gone to school. He hadn’t been in his French class.
    PEZZ imist wasn’t Shaun Davies. Thank goodness .
    I read PEZZ imist’s post three more times. He obviously didn’t have a great relationship with his mother, but why not? Was she cruel and unloving? Or maybe it was him. Maybe he shut her out and she was hurt. And what about his father? Were his parents still together? Did he have any siblings?
    Maybe if she’ d ever done anything to help me meet a girl then I wouldn’t have to hide here at home.
    What kind of teenager actually wants their parents to intervene in their love-lives? Was he really so desperate that he wanted his mum to set him up with a girl? And he went to our school! Our school, which contained nearly five hundred totally