LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      I’ll never forget the day I first saw Alex. I was walking down Hawthorn Road with my best friend Katie. Best friend in the whole world! Friends for ever, through thick and thin. Though that was the summer we almost parted company…and all because of Alex.

      It was a Friday, I remember; the second half of the summer term. Katie was coming back to my place for a sleepover, which was something we quite often did. Either her place or mine; we used to take it in turns. That day it was my turn, so there we were, happily wandering down the road together in the sunshine, carting our school bags full of the usual massive amounts of homework, when WHAM! Bam! It hit me.

      A few doors away from my place, they were turning one of the big houses into flats. The other morning I’d seen an older man, who seemed to be in charge; but he wasn’t there that Friday. Or maybe he was, but he was indoors. Outside, in the front garden, there was a red-haired boy churning stuff about in a cement mixer. As we walked past, he turned to look in our direction and winked. He did! He winked. I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed, but it still made me get all red and flustered. Pathetic, I know, but you can’t always control these things. It’s an instinctive reaction. Very embarrassing.

      I strode on, really fast, with my cheeks sizzling. A second boy was coming round the side of the house with a wheelbarrow. I caught his eye, absolutely without meaning to, and he smiled. Straight at me. At me! At me! OMIGOD. That was it. That was when it happened. The wham and the bam, and my heart going into convulsions. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning.

      Katie came scurrying after me. “Really,” she grumbled, “that was so not politically correct.”

      I mumbled, “What?” My cheeks were still sizzling.

      Katie said, “What d’you mean, what?”

      “What was not politically correct?”

      “What he did! Winking. He winked at us! Don’t tell me you didn’t see?”

      I muttered that I had tried not to take any notice.

      “Oh, well, yes, me too,” agreed Katie.

      “Otherwise they think you’re encouraging them.” And then she giggled and said, “What about the other one?” She nudged at me with her elbow. “Know who he looks like?”

      I shook my head. I tried to say “Who?” but I couldn’t seem to get any sound out.

      “He looks exactly like Jimmy Doohan.”

      It was true! No wonder my heart was walloping. Jimmy Doohan is this boy at our school. He’s Year 12, now. He was Year 11 then, and half the school were crazy about him, including me and Katie. Not that he would ever have looked twice at us, even apart from the fact that we were only Year 8s. Me and Katie aren’t the sort of girls that boys ever look twice at. Not that we’re specially unattractive, or anything; just that we tend to stay in the background. I guess if you want to be taken notice of, you have to make a bit of an effort. Unless, of course, you are so stunningly drop-dead gorgeous that all eyes just automatically turn in your direction…

      Jimmy Doohan was drop-dead gorgeous. Thick black hair, and coal-dark eyes and a face that was square and sort of…chiselled.

      Katie was right. The boy who had smiled—at me, at me! He’d smiled at me—could almost have been Jimmy’s brother. (I used to think of him as Jimmy, although I’d never said so much as a single word to him

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