Love-shy (2 page)

4. You long for female companionship, and suffer without it.

5. The thought of approaching a woman in a casual, friendly way makes you extremely anxious.

6. You are heterosexual.

7. You are male.

If you answered YES to most of these points, you may be love-shy.

This was
so much better
than a library-book-smuggling racket. Was someone from this school
love-shy
? I clicked on the forum page and skimmed a few posts.

Shyguy72
I'm forty years old. The only physical contact I've ever had with a woman other than my mother was shaking hands at a job interview once. I didn't get the job.

Ruthv3n
I haven't left my house for two years. I couldn't handle it if I ran into a woman. The very thought makes me too anxious, it's better to stay here where I'm safe.

PEZZ
imist
There's a girl at my school who I like. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk to her. I'm so lonely.

VirginBlues
Why don't we have arranged marriages in this society? It's so unfair that if you're shy and can't approach a girl, that's it. Why can't they come and talk to us? Girls have it so easy.

‘Penny?'

I closed the browser window hurriedly. It was Mrs Green, a haze of cigarette smoke still clinging to her.

‘Penny, what are you doing in here? Shouldn't you be in class?'

I explained that I'd left my diary behind after my Debating meeting, and before she could ask what I was doing at the computer, I gathered my books and sprinted off to English.

Mr Gerakis raised his eyebrows when I slipped into the classroom a quarter of an hour late, but didn't say anything. It wasn't like being fifteen minutes behind everyone else in my class was going to put me at any kind of disadvantage. If anything, it might even the playing field slightly. The other students at my school were total Neanderthals.

Or so I had thought.

While I pretended to work on an essay about Malice and Intent in Shakespeare's
Othello
, my eyes darted around the room.

Was it one of these boys? Could one of them be posting on the love-shy website?

I considered each of them with my keenest journalistic eye.

Second row from the front was where all the smart kids sat (myself included). Perry Chau was quiet, but he'd come frighteningly close to kicking my arse in Year Eight Debating, so he clearly didn't have any fear of women. Max Wendt was going out with Arabella Sampson, so that ruled him out. Clayton Bell was gay, and Peter Lange had been spotted kissing a girl from St Aloysius at the last Maths Tournament.

In the middle of the classroom Andrew Rogers, Con Stingas and Luke Smith threw wads of paper at each other and giggled. Surely none of them were mature enough to even have girls on their radar.

James O'Keefe and Rory Singh were asleep up the back. Probably not them, as I'm sure if they were terrified of being around girls, they wouldn't be
able
to fall asleep if girls were in the same room. Next to them was Nick Rammage. He'd only arrived at our school at the beginning of the year, and he was deeply, deeply cool. The adorable black curls that spilled over his forehead had every girl at school planning to jump him at the upcoming social. I'd heard that he'd pashed Olivia Fischer in the girls' toilets his very first day here. Definitely wasn't him.

That left the front row, where all the dorks sat. Frankly, any of them could be love-shy. Youssef Saad and Florian Lehner were definite possibilities, but maybe they all were.

It couldn't have just been curiosity that led someone to that website. Surely whoever was in the library was a regular visitor. And what reason would you have to visit a love-shy forum unless you were love-shy yourself?

But who
was
it?

I puzzled it over all the way through English and Italian. I was tempted to pull out my phone in class and continue investigating
loveshyforum.com
then and there, but I didn't want to push my luck. I got along well with all the teachers at my school – they couldn't help but respect me, because I was by far the smartest person there. But mobile devices were strictly forbidden and I didn't want to risk having my iPhone confiscated.

So I continued my investigation on the train on the way home from school. I read page after page of forum posts. I was so engrossed in the lives of these weird people, I nearly missed my station. Hurrying through the train doors just as they closed, I realised that I was also missing my prime objective. I needed to figure out which poster was the one from my school. Surely he'd leave some kind of identifying clue. I was a
journalist
, after all. I just had to read between the lines.

I continued to read as I entered our apartment building and pushed the button for the lift. An Asian girl of about my age stepped into the lift with me.

‘Hi,' she said.

I nodded at her and went on reading. The lift pinged and the doors opened. I wandered out, vaguely aware that the girl was following. I frowned as I pulled out my keys.

‘Can I help you with something?' I said, turning to her. She was tiny, with long, glossy black hair, but who knew what muggers disguised themselves as nowadays? She could totally have a knife concealed in that Hello Kitty backpack.

The girl shook her head and smiled, shrugging off her pink backpack and opening the front pocket. I saw the glint of metal. She
did
have a knife! I wondered if I could open my front door and get it shut before she came at me. No sudden movements, though. I didn't want to startle her into action. She came right up to me, her hand still digging inside the pocket . . .

And kept going.

The blood pounded in my ears as the girl continued down the corridor. With a tug and a jingle, she pulled out a keyring adorned with pink plastic characters.

‘See you,' she said, as she unlocked the apartment door next to mine.

‘Yeah,' I said, weakly. ‘See you.'

Dad worked late on Tuesdays, so I had the apartment to myself. It was a cool apartment, all cream leather and soft carpet and stainless-steel appliances. We moved here three years ago, after Dad came out and Mum left. We used to live in a big house in the suburbs. I liked it here, although I did miss having a garden. Still, we had a great view over the city from the twenty-seventh floor. I could see the silver glint of the bay from my bedroom window, curving around all the tightly packed buildings.

Plus, being in the city we had access to all the best takeaway food, which was just as well, as neither Dad nor I were particularly big on cooking. Dad's boyfriend Josh said that we were both disgusting and would die of malnutrition. But it wasn't as though I didn't order plenty of veggies and salads. And anyway, by ordering all our food, I was creating jobs not only for the people who cooked the food, but also the people who delivered it. And I was giving myself more time to spend on the important things.

Like thinking about love-shyness.

I ordered duck penang and coconut rice from the organic Thai place around the corner, and settled down on the sofa with my laptop and a glass of iced tea.

I'd found the perfect story. It had human interest, mystery, science, medicine. It was about the way our society operated, and who it was failing. My feature would have heart and guts and plenty of facts and research.

But I needed to find him. I needed to find the love-shy boy.

I needed to find him, observe him, study him. I needed to figure out what made him love-shy. I needed to know what he wanted. What were his dreams? What was stopping him from achieving them? I needed to learn about his childhood, his parents. I needed to know if he had any pets. I needed to know if he was bullied in primary school. I needed to know it all, so I could fix him. I was no cheap tabloid paparazzi phone-tapper. I knew that the best journalism made the world a better place. I could really
help
this guy.

This would be the best story ever. Forget the
East Glendale
Secondary College Gazette
. With an article like this, I could be published in a
real
newspaper. And not just the local
Leader
, either. Maybe the Sunday magazine of a national paper. Or in one of those journals like the
Monthly
. It'd be the story that would catapult me into my career. I'd make a real name for myself.

My favourite journalist, Nellie Bly, started out the same way. Because she was a woman, she was only ever assigned to write gossip and weddings and fashion. But she knew journalism could be a force for good, and she wanted to change the world. So in 1887 she pretended to be crazy and was admitted to a mental asylum, so she could investigate reports of cruelty and neglect. She wrote a book about the horrendous conditions, which prompted a grand jury investigation that totally overhauled the US mental health system. After that she was so famous that she got to do really interesting assignments, such as try to beat the record of going around the world in eighty days (not that it was really a record, as Jules Verne's
Around the World in Eighty
Days
is a novel and never actually happened). She did it in seventy-two days, alone, with only one dress and some toiletries.
And
she bought a monkey in Singapore.

This love-shy boy could make me famous.

But I had to find him first.

I needed a plan.

2

M
Y ALARM WOKE ME AT SIX
, and I headed downstairs to the pool.

Sometimes I thought I preferred swimming laps alone to competing in the actual races. It was good exercise and it cleared my head and I didn't have to talk to anyone. I didn't particularly like team sports. I wasn't very good at them, and I didn't like anything I wasn't good at. Also, I didn't like having to rely on other people in order to win. Debating was bad enough, but at least I knew that as third speaker, no matter how utterly rubbish my teammates were, I could always bring it home in my closing speech. I especially liked being able to pull us up from whatever quagmire the others had sunk us into, and save the day. It was much more satisfying to win from behind than to just win because we were all good. I wanted us to win because
I
was good. And team sports don't really work that way.

But with swimming, I was on my own. Just me, the water, lane ropes on either side, and the ends of the pool receding and approaching behind and before me. When my head was underwater, all the screaming and splashing and tinny music piped over the PA system became muffled and distant. And I felt completely alone. It was very calming.

I did freestyle for ten minutes, then backstroke, then breaststroke and finished with four laps of butterfly, which was my favourite because it requires total perfection in order to enable synchronous over-water recovery – and I enjoyed perfecting things.

When I arrived back upstairs at the apartment, my eyes stinging from chlorine, Dad was chopping fruit. On weekends we went out for breakfast, but on weekdays we actually got out knives and bowls and did it ourselves. I spooned yoghurt onto my muesli and then scooped strawberries, banana and blueberries from Dad's fruit salad.

‘How was work last night?' I asked.

‘Meh,' said Dad. ‘First Tuesday of the month is always party time over at the office.'

‘Tax stuff?' I asked.

He nodded and poured us each a steaming mug of freshly brewed coffee. Dad used to be a plumber, but now he owned a plumbing business and had a whole bunch of staff to get their hands dirty for him. He spent all of his time in his office, doing paperwork. It was weird, because Dad didn't look at all like a plumber. He looked like the kind of man who had a skincare regime and wore Calvin Klein underwear. He
was
that kind of man. He went to the gym regularly. He did Pilates. He was interested in interior design. And he happened to be a plumber. Who earned
a
lot
of money.

‘Dad,' I said, watching him shake open the newspaper.