Love-shy (7 page)

I eyed the three boys, and made a mental note to cross them off my list, due to the fact that they were engaged in various stages of foreplay with their respective girlfriends. The way this was going, I was going to need a new pink highlighter.

‘So what are you doing this weekend?' Rin asked me.

I shrugged and said something about homework. My mind was in another place altogether, thinking about Shaun Davies and
PEZZ
imist and wondering if he was here, right now, in this room. Perhaps I should comment on his blog, instead of trapping him in French? But I didn't want him to think I was stalking him. Our meeting had to seem more casual than that.

The bell rang for fifth period, and the canteen erupted into a storm of pushed-back chairs and groans and more rubbish. I stood up, feeling a little tingly. This was it. I was about to meet
PEZZ
imist.

‘See you in the lift,' said Rin, smiling.

‘Yeah,' I said, not really listening. ‘See you.'

I let myself into Ms Leroy's French class about five minutes after the bell. I was supposed to be in Maths, but I could just lie and say that SRC had gone overtime.

‘It's Penny, right?' Ms Leroy gazed at me from the whiteboard. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘
Bonjour, madame
,' I said, using my entire French vocabulary all at once, and glanced at the class.

Shaun Davies was there
. Front row.

My heart sank.
PEZZ
imist was Shaun Davies.

‘Penny?'

‘Um,' I turned back to Ms Leroy. ‘I was wondering if I could do a quick survey of your class, for the
Gazett
e.' Maybe there was another potential love-shy in the class. I looked around. There was Youssef Saad. And Bradley Wu. And Zach Hausen.

‘What kind of survey?' asked Ms Leroy.

‘Er,' I said. ‘About . . . ' I scanned the walls for inspiration and saw a poster of the Eiffel Tower. Such a ridiculously phallic piece of architecture. ‘Condoms,' I said. ‘Condom vending machines in the school toilets.'

Ms Leroy frowned. ‘I'm sorry, Penny,' she said. ‘But this is French class, not Human Biology.'

‘What if they gave their answers in French?'

‘I'm afraid not,' she said, shaking her head. ‘We have important vocab to learn today.'

‘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 eligible girls.
Finding
girls clearly wasn't his problem.
Talking
to them was. And I couldn't see how having your
mother
hovering over your shoulder would help with that particular situation. It was all starting to feel very Norman-Bates-in-
Psycho
, so I shut down my laptop and went into the living room.

Dad and Josh were sitting at the dining table, drinking gin and tonic and bending over a large jigsaw puzzle. The picture on the box was a science-fictiony sort of thing: a bronzed man wearing a
very
short toga and sandals, face to face with a unicorn, with the Death Star in the background, all surrounded by pink hazy clouds. It was seriously the ugliest image in existence.

‘Is everything okay?' I asked, frowning at the picture over Dad's shoulder.

Dad looked up and gave me a hug. ‘Isn't it fabulous?' he said, gazing back at the puzzle as if it were a work of art.

‘It is many things,' I replied. ‘But fabulous is definitely not one of them. It's hideous.'

‘That's the point,' explained Josh. ‘We've decided to try and find the ugliest jigsaw in the world. It's going to be like a quest.'

I raised my eyebrows. Perhaps Josh
was
a bad influence on Dad. ‘I think the quest is over. Also . . . why?'

‘Something to do on a Friday night.'

‘We're inventing a scoring system,' said Dad. ‘Puppies, kittens or any sort of baby animal scores five points. If the baby animal is in a bucket or flowerpot, or wearing a hat – that's an extra ten points. Windmills and bicycles are worth fifteen points, and little girls with oversized heads get twenty. A unicorn is the holy grail of ugly-puzzledom, worth a full thirty points.'

I shook my head. ‘I still don't get it. You're doing a jigsaw. On a Friday night. For
fun
.'

Dad and I used to play Scrabble on Friday nights. But Josh can't spell, so we stopped.

‘Do you want to help?'

‘Isn't there some kind of
nightclub
or something you can go to?' I asked. ‘Don't you want to engage in any kind of morally dysfunctional, risk-taking behaviour?'

‘Not really,' said Dad. ‘Why, is this setting a bad example for you?'

I looked back at the jigsaw. The man's toga really was
very
short.

‘We ordered pizza,' said Dad, leaning away from the jigsaw to give me another squeeze around the shoulders.

‘The really spicy Mexican one?'

‘With extra jalapenos.'

I poured myself an orange juice and clicked a few pieces of pink cloud into place before I realised what I was doing.

‘Do you have any plans for the weekend?' Dad asked.

‘Any hot dates?' added Josh with a grin.

I put down the piece of Death Star that was in my hand. Josh was nice, but I didn't like it when he joked around as if he were part of the family.

‘No.'

‘It's a tragic thing,' said Josh, ‘to see such a pretty girl stay home on a Friday night.'

I scowled at him. ‘Says the man doing a jigsaw puzzle.'

‘Touché.' Josh sipped his gin and tonic. ‘But seriously, Penny. The boys must be falling over themselves to ask you out.'

I picked up another puzzle piece, half pink cloud, half unicorn tail. The truth was, no one had ever asked me out. Not that I
wanted
to date any of the boys at my school – especially not after having spent the week
talking
to them. Going on a date with a boy was absolutely the most boring thing I could imagine. If they weren't crying about how their girlfriend had dumped them, or trying to smell my hair, they'd be talking about cars or football, or making fart-noises under their arms.

And the whole idea of
dating
was so antiquated anyway. Who went on
dates
anymore? As far as I could tell, teenagers nowadays just got drunk at parties and hooked up with whoever was closest. And I certainly wasn't doing
that
, not with the current epidemic of infectious mononucleosis sweeping our school. Ew.

Still. It would be nice to be asked occasionally.

‘There's no rush, is there, sweetheart?' said Dad. ‘You've got all the time in the world.'

The doorbell rang and he fished his wallet out of his pocket.

Dad was right. I did have all the time in the world. And there were much more important things to focus on now, such as my love-shyness story. And pizza.

By Wednesday evening, I'd been searching for
PEZZ
imist for a week and a half. My yearbook was covered in pink highlighter, with the occasional hopeful splodge of green crossed out later.

I'd been to Maths Club, Chess Group, the Beekeeping Society, the Biodiversity League, the Code-breaking Circle, Art Club, Drama Club, the School Choir, Madrigal and Barbershop Quartet; the Swing Band, Orchestra, the Christian Circle, Economics Society, Fencing Ring, Foreign Film Society, History Club, Jewish Union, Medical Ethics Society, Philosophy Alliance, the Gay–Straight Alliance, Photography Club, Stage Crew, Swim Team, Table Tennis League and the Ultimate Frisbee Society.

I was exhausted.

And I had no suspects. There were two or three green highlighters, but they were total long shots. And not a speck of yellow.

I'd even gone back to Ms Leroy's French class – or at least I'd tried to. Ms Leroy had frowned at me and shut the door in my face. I'd had a glance around, though, and couldn't see anyone I hadn't already crossed off my yearbook list. Maybe
PEZZ
imist didn't take French at all. Maybe whoever I'd spooked in the library had just been curious. Maybe he (or she!) had a friend who was love-shy. Or a sibling?