Boys Beware (10 page)

“We’ve hardly had a chance to speak to him properly yet.”

Kim did this exaggerated rolling thing with her eyes. She said, “How long do you need?”

Rather sourly, cos I did resent her tone, I said, “I s’ppose you’d have eloped with him by now?”

Kim giggled and said, “Something like that!” It put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. That girl can be so positively
annoying
at times. Tash agrees with me. We talked about it on the way home.

“Considering she doesn’t have a boyfriend at all,” said Tash.

“Not unless you count that weedy thing she brought with her.”

“That wasn’t a boyfriend,” said Tash, “that was an
exchange student.”

I said, “Yeah, right. She’s got some nerve!”

All the same, we think perhaps she has a point; you can’t just sit around waiting for things to happen. There comes a time when you have to take action. We are now going to take it! As from tomorrow we are going to make a
concerted effort.
That is, both of us together. We are not sure yet what we are going to do, but we are certainly going to do something!

Tuesday

Day one of our concerted effort. It has not
quite
gone according to plan, but through absolutely no fault of ours.

Tash said that we had to find some way of drawing attention to ourselves. “But not
obviously.
You know? Like just by chance. Accidentally.”

So I put my brain to work and I came up with this cunning notion, a scheme, I suppose you would call it, of how to get ourselves invited in to the O’Shaugnessy abode. It was totally my idea! I was the one that thought of it. Tash merely put the finishing touches. She was the one responsible for the ice cream:
I
had been going to use butter.

I took her through it, step by step. “We get the butter – right? Then we drop it out the window – splat! It lands on the balcony.
Their
balcony. Yeah? So we have to get it back, right? So—”

Tash said, “Hang about, hang about! What are we chucking butter out the window for?”

Patiently – though to be honest I thought she was being a bit slow on the uptake –I explained. “The butter has
fallen
out of the window. Yeah? Accidentally. By mistake. The butter – has fallen—”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” said Tash. “I got that bit. What I don’t understand is what the butter is
doing
falling out of the window?”

“The butter,” I said, “is on the window ledge.”

“Doing what?”

I said, “I don’t know! Does it matter?”

Tash said yes, it did. She said she had never heard of butter being on a window ledge. “Sounds a bit phoney, if you ask me.”

I was getting just a tidge irritated by now, but to keep her happy I went and looked in the freezer, and found a tub of ice cream, and she said that that would do OK. She seemed to think that ice cream on a window ledge was a bit more believable than butter – “We’re melting it, yeah? For supper.” So I agreed that we could drop ice cream if that was what she preferred, it really didn’t matter
what
we dropped so long as we dropped
something – and so long as it landed on the balcony. I still say it was basically a good idea. Simple, like all good ideas. Practically fool proof. What could go wrong?

I let Tash do the dropping, being as she is a bit of a sports nut and more likely to hit the target. The tub of ice cream landed with a satisfying
thonk!
right in the middle of the balcony. We waited a couple of minutes, then went tearing downstairs – according to plan – to knock at the door. I should say that I did actually
volunteer
to go by myself, but Tash wouldn’t have it. She said, “No, we’re in this together.” I guess she was scared of me getting to talk to Gus before she did. I personally thought it looked a bit sinister, the pair of us beaming away on the doorstep, but as it happened it really didn’t matter. Nobody was there!

So much for foolproof.

“Now what do we do?” moaned Tash.

I said that we would try again later. “Someone’s bound to be there soon!”

But they weren’t. Not at five thirty, or six thirty, or seven thirty. Tash said it had been a totally rubbish idea from the start and I’d just better not complain about lack of pudding tomorrow night. She seemed to imply that it
was
my
fault the ice cream was lying outside on the balcony, melting.

A few minutes ago (it is now half-past eight) Ali came in. She was carrying the ice-cream tub …
empty.
Tash yelled, “Where did you get that from?”

Ali said, “Gus gave it to me. Is it ours?”

I rushed across to peer out of the window. Sure enough, the tub had gone. In its place was a puddle of strawberry-coloured slush. Tomorrow night’s pudding!

“Did he invite you in?”
said Tash.

Ali seemed surprised. She said no, she had been on her way upstairs when Gus had appeared on the landing, holding the empty tub. “He didn’t know whether it was something that belonged to us or whether it had fallen out of an aeroplane.” She then said that he had been going to
come up here and ask us.
In other words, if it hadn’t been for Ali arriving at just the wrong moment, my plan would have worked! I knew it was foolproof. Well, almost. We would at least have got to speak to him. We could have invited
him
to come in. Trust Ali!

I have told Tash, however, that all is not lost as we can still go downstairs tomorrow night, as planned.

“We can go and apologise!” I said.

Fretfully, Tash said, “But he won’t ask us in.”

I said, “He might.”

“Why should he?” wailed Tash. “There won’t be any reason! Not unless you’re planning on dropping more ice cream.”

I was about to say that we don’t have any more to drop, but decided against it. Tash is being quite negative enough already. Somewhat huffily I said, “Next time
you
can think of something.” I don’t see why it should always be me.

Wednesday

Day two of concerted effort. Went downstairs to apologise. As planned. By me.
So
frustrating! Door opened by Mr O’Shaugnessy. He is quite a nice man, but obviously has no imagination whatsoever, cos when we started on our double act – which as I have said before is just something that happens, it’s not like we do it on purpose – he simply
draped
there, blocking the
doorway, ruining any chance we might have had of seeing Gus. Or of him seeing us, for that matter.

Tash explained that we had come to apologise. “For last night.”

“For the butter.”

“For the
ice
cream.”

“The ice cream! On the balcony.”

“The balcony!”

“It dropped there –”

“Off the window ledge!”

“It was
so
kind of Gus to give it back.”

“We just wanted to say thank you –”

“To say sorry.”

“To say thank you
and
sorry. For all the mess –”

“The mess –”

“Such a terrible mess!”

“We do
so
hope it didn’t ruin his clothes!”

Well! You would have thought by now he would have been starting to get the message. But no! He just went on standing there. He did open the door a bit wider, but he didn’t invite us in. He said, “Ah … the ice cream! We wondered how it had got there.”

Earnestly, I explained that we had been melting it. “For supper.” Tash, on a note of true inspiration, then suggested that perhaps we could go in and scrub the balcony. I cried, “Yes! Scrub the balcony.”

I mean, really, we couldn’t have made ourselves
much plainer. But Mr O’Shaugnessy seems a very vague sort of man. He was wearing his woolly cardigan again, and these horrible crumpled old chinos. He needs a woman in his life! I was just about to say that we really did
yearn
to go and scrub his balcony, like we were really
desperate
to scrub his balcony, when suddenly we caught sight of Gus in the background. Immediately we both shrieked, “Hi, Gus!” and danced up and down and waved madly through the gap in the door. Gus turned, and said, “Oh, hi there,” and waved back – and promptly disappeared.

His dad said that it was good of us to call, and he was glad that the mystery was solved. He said, “Mind you don’t go wasting any more ice cream!” and to my horror I saw the door start to close.

Tash cried, “But the balcony!” It came out in a kind of pathetic bleat.

Gus’s dad said not to worry about the balcony; the balcony was fine.

“It rained in the night, if you remember.”

He then told us to be sure and come down if there was ever anything we needed, and that was that. End of effort no. 2. And we went to so much trouble making ourselves presentable! I even washed my hair. Tash even put on
make-up,
which I personally think is a mistake as she is quite attractive enough without it, but she says she needs it to boost her confidence, so who am I to argue?

We are now feeling THWARTED. But we do not intend to give up! True love, as Tash says, will always find a way. Not that either of us is actually suffering the pangs of love – as
yet.
But speaking for myself I do feel that it may only be a matter of time …

Thursday

Day three of concerted effort. Avril Mackie told us this morning that the week after we come back from half term it’s her birthday, and on the Saturday she is going to have a big birthday bash at a pizza restaurant and would we like to come?

“And bring the yummy boy!”

Everyone is now referring to Gus as “the yummy boy”. Needless to say, we have assured Avril that we
would
love
to go to her party and that
of course
we will bring the yummy boy.

“If we can get him to come,” said Tash, as we made our way home after school.
“If
we can ever get to talk to him.” I suggested that maybe we should put a note under his door, and so this is what we have done. We typed it on the computer, all sweetly decorated with little pretty party icons, balloons and streamers and those things that you blow and they shoot out. Oh, and we have put RSVP at the bottom and the numbers of
both
our mobiles. As Tash says, “It will be pure chance which of us he rings.”