Cassie's Crush (8 page)

Sam came over at break and said, “Hi, how you doing?”

“Fine, thanks,” I told him.

There was a small silence. But it wasn't one of those awful, toe-curling silences where you start to panic. It was just the two of us standing there, watching Stalking Paul lifting his shirt right up to show a bunch of year threes some sort of horrible rash on his stomach. They were laughing and making puking motions.

“Did you like the fire?” Sam said.

“It was great,” I replied. “It's funny, I've never actually done that, you know? Been to a fire on the beach, I mean. Even though I've lived here all my life.”

“Me neither,” Sam said. “It was Ollie's idea.” The mention of Ollie made me feel a bit hot, and then I spotted actual Ollie heading towards us, and suddenly I couldn't be normal any more like I was being with Sam. I rushed inside to the loo and when I came back out he and Sam were standing together, laughing about something. Ollie looked especially cute. My palpitations were too much to cope with so I couldn't go over and talk to them.

Anyway, even though Ollie didn't pay me the tiniest bit of attention today, that's OK because Marcia's party will change everything. That's if Ollie actually comes, and the Leech doesn't, and I somehow manage to buy a costume with zero money. I realize that's an awful lot of “if”s.

The only way I'll ever earn any cash is to persuade Mum to employ me properly, especially as I did such a brilliant job with Billy. I mean, I'm not just helping her now, by holding dogs and passing her the stuff she needs. I'm actually
doing Mum's job for her
. I just need to pick the right moment to discuss it. Also, Marcia hasn't told Ollie about her party yet. I'd tell him myself, but that might seem odd, as if I'm her party organizer person and she's far too important to spread the news herself. I'll just have to be patient (agggh) and think positive boob-growing thoughts to make the left one grow in time for the party.

In desperation, I've started exercising the left side of my body. As we don't have proper exercise equipment (e.g., weights, dumbbells etc.), I took a big can of tomato soup from the cupboard, snuck it up to my bedroom and lifted and lowered it until my arm ached. “D'you think it'll work?” I asked Evie when she called me while I was recovering.

“You don't need any special exercises,” she insisted, spluttering with laughter.

“I just want to balance myself out,” I growled.

“Well, don't, OK? You'll only get huge, bulgy arms like those weightlifter types with the poppy-out veins.” So I slunk back to the kitchen with the soup can, and stole some of Beth's body lotion from the bathroom to rub on my throbbing bicep.

I decided to plan my fancy dress costume instead. But when I went to ask for Ned's help, instead of finding him alone in his room, it was Ned and a girl with long, curly, wild red hair, snogging on his bed.

Ned leapt away from her. “Get out!” he yelled. “For God's sake, Cass! Get out!”

I ran out of his room and back into mine, where I slammed the door and collapsed on my bed, heart pounding. Ned had a girl in there. A real human
girl.
Ned, who's never, ever had a girlfriend, apart from Charlene Henley, who rubber-sucked his face on the beach, then dumped him half an hour later (he never said why).

I don't know why I was so shocked. After all, Ned's sixteen, with hair sprouting out of his arms and legs and other places, I'd imagine. All his mates have had girlfriends. And he's virtually man-sized. But somehow I can't think of him doing anything other than hitting me with his inflatable mallet or gripping the TV remote.

It's also pretty sickening that the whole world is madly in love except me (well, I am, but it's unrequited and doesn't count).

Just as I was consoling myself with the fact that Marcia and Evie don't have boyfriends either, Marcia phoned me, all excited. “Daniel Herring just texted me,” she exclaimed.

“What about?” I asked, still pretty shell-shocked from walking in on Ned and that girl.

“He asked me out! Said he'd wanted to at the bonfire but couldn't 'cause you were hanging about.”

“I wasn't
hanging about
,” I protested. “I was in the sea with Sam, I didn't stop him from asking you…”

“Yeah. Anyway,” she went on, “I'm off to meet him in a minute.”

“In a minute?” I repeated. “You mean you want to go out with Daniel?” I couldn't see the appeal myself, especially as Marcia's so picky. And Daniel's one of those boys who looks like he should get together with a bottle of shampoo and a comb a bit more often, to be honest.

“His text was quite sweet,” she added.

“What did he say? Apart from me hanging around, ruining things, I mean…” I was lying on my bed and could hear Ned and that girl chatting and giggling in his room. I couldn't believe he'd asked her over without ever mentioning her to me.

“Um, he said he's liked me for ages,” Marcia said.

“Oh,” I said glumly as Ned's girl burst out laughing (the walls in our house are as thin as toilet paper).

“Listen,” Marcia added briskly, “I thought I might as well go because Mum said if I can't find anything to do today, I'll have to help her clean out the cupboard under the sink.”

“Right,” I said with a snigger. “So where are you meeting?”

“Er … he suggested outside the dry-cleaner's in the high street.”

“Romantic!” I spluttered. “Well, tell me how it goes.” Oddly enough, I no longer felt gloomy about everyone else having dates and snogs apart from me. Marcia was only meeting Daniel to avoid scrubbing out that under-sink cupboard, which almost made me feel sorry for the boy.

I was still mulling over Ned and the redhead and Marcia and Daniel when Sam arrived with a cute black mongrel called Pip. He kept bounding up and trying to lick my face. The dog, that is, not Sam. “Hope it was OK to come over,” Sam said as I trimmed the pup's nails with the clippers.

“Sure,” I said. “There's no one else booked in right now. Is Pip your dog too?”

“No, he's my aunt Maggie's,” Sam told me.

“You've got a very doggie family,” I said.

He grinned and said, “Yeah, I suppose I have.” We looked at each other. It felt nice. I wished Ollie had a Sam-type effect on me because with Sam I can be normal instead of nearly fainting with stress.

Then things got embarrassing. Dad came out to fix a broken windscreen wiper on the van and said, “Hi, son” to Sam.

“Hi, Mr Malone,” Sam said, maturely.

Pip was all finished. Sam had paid me and was leading him away when Dad said, “I'm going through town – need a lift home, lad?”

I wished Dad would stop calling Sam “son” and “lad”. But Sam didn't seem to mind. “That'd be great, Mr Malone,” he said.

“Oh, call me Colin,” Dad said as they climbed into the car. Pip sat in the back, panting at the window with his pink tongue hanging out.

Sam waved through the window as Dad pulled away. I waved back, remembering that the cheese-mobile stinks worse than ever – and almost sobbing with relief that it was only Sam that Dad was driving home and not Ollie.

As soon as they'd gone, Marcia was on the phone, back from her “date”, which seemed to have lasted all of thirty-five minutes.

“So where did you go?” I asked her.

“I told you, the dry-cleaner's.” She sounded a bit sheepish.

“Yes, but where did you go then?”

“Um, nowhere, Cass. We just sort of stood there.”

“What, and talked?” I asked.

“Well, yeah … but he's a bit quiet, really. In fact, he hardly said a word. It was a bit awkward, Cass…” Sounded like I'd had a better time going to the garden centre with my parents in the cheese-mobile.

“Did he kiss you?” I asked.

“God no!” she yelped. “Eugh! Daniel Herring? Are you
kidding
?”

“What d'you mean, ‘eugh'? You like him, right? Otherwise you wouldn't have gone.”

“I told you, Mum was nagging me to help with that cupboard…” So that really was the only reason she went. I'm not sure why, but it didn't seem completely right to me.

“Anyway,” I said, “never mind Daniel. D'you think you can find out Ollie's address so we can personally deliver an invitation?”

“I'm sure I can,” Marcia said, just as a gale of laughter burst through Ned's bedroom wall. “What was that noise?” she asked.

“My brother's got a girl in his bedroom,” I hissed.

“What,
Ned
? Are you sure?” We giggled over that, and Marcia sounded like her usual, confident self again – not someone who'd agreed to a date which she hadn't wanted to go on. We finished the call, and when the redhead finally left, Ned refused to discuss her. My big daft brother just sat there smirking at dinner as if lovely thoughts were whooshing around in his head.

Henry came round to see Beth and I heard him straining on the toilet. It was the grossest thing ever. It's hard to imagine Ollie doing anything icky, like a poo or something – like the queen, the way you can't picture
her
plonked on the loo with her knickers down, even though she must poo or she'd die.

The stink from the loo was so bad it infected the whole of upstairs, like something dead and rotting. Mum was snapping at Dad for being lazy, and Beth was accusing me of stealing her phone charger, hairbrush and even her stupid cuticle-pusher stick, the one she uses to prod at her nails, so I phoned Marcia and Evie and told them to meet me by the beach huts. It was drizzling by the time I got there, and to make things worse, they were late.

I waited and waited, figuring that we should get started on the party invitations as soon as possible. Then we can get Ollie's address (maybe I could ask Sam in a casual way?) and deliver one to make sure he gets it. I'm sure he'll come. He looks like a party person. He's always messing about and laughing as if he has no worries at all. Unlike me, who has about eighty thousand.

Evie turned up, finally, and then we spotted Marcia running along the damp sand towards us. “What d'you want to do?” Evie asked.

“I don't know,” I said, feeling a bit stupid now. The three of us perched on the steps in front of one of the beach houses and gazed at the wet remains of Ollie's bonfire (I was thinking of it as Ollie's fire. Sam, Daniel, the Leech and the others had melted away in my memory). Marcia was shivering, and Evie was grumbling that we should have brought our swimming stuff and gone to the pool, or found out what was on at the cinema. She always forgets that I have almost zero money to my name.

“Let's get a hot chocolate,” she said, so we went to the Marine Café. Marcia and Evie said they'd pay – they always have plenty of cash – so I asked for whipped cream, a Flake and mini marshmallows.

The marshmallows reminded me of the bonfire on the beach, and I started to feel all melty again.

“Cassie. Cassie!” Evie was hissing across the table.

“What?” I'd been lost in marshmallow dreamland for a moment.

“Look!” she hissed again, eyes stretched wide. She was pointing through the window. It was steamed up, so everything was blurred, and at first I couldn't see what she meant. Then I realized it was Ollie, crossing the road towards us.

A marshmallow squidged itself in my throat. He was outside the café now, peering at the menu on the wall next to the door. “He's gonna come in,” Evie announced, and I tried to transmit hot chocolate cravings to his brain as I gulped the marshmallow down. Even through the blurry window, he still looked cute with his biscuit-coloured skin and his light brown hair slightly messed up in that I-don't-really-bother-with-it way. Some of the boys at school have that blown-forward hair that you know they've spent ages poking and gelling in the morning. Not Ollie, though. He doesn't need to do anything to look gorgeous.

To calm myself, I spooned a blob of cream into my mouth, and when I looked back, he'd gone. “Let's follow him!” I blurted out.

“What?” Marcia exclaimed.

“It was your idea,” I insisted. “The whole Operation SOOP thing. Come on, we'd better be quick…” She gulped her hot chocolate down.

We slammed our money on the table (well, Marcia and Evie did) and hurtled out of the café. In the distance, Ollie was striding along the drizzly seafront with his hands thrust into his pockets. My heart was pounding as we followed him, and we hung back so he wouldn't spot us.

“Subject stopping to check his phone,” I whispered. “Subject now putting phone back in pocket and walking at a leisurely pace…”

“Subject going to kiosk to buy something,” Marcia chipped in.

“Subject buying a Coke,” added Evie.

“No, Pepsi,” I corrected her. We lurked about, pretending to look at prizes in the amusement arcade window, until he set off again.

“Er, why are we doing this again?” giggled Evie.

“To gather information,” I reminded her. “The more you can find out about someone, the easier it is to get to know them.”

“And we're
not
stalking,” she added with a smirk.

“Of course not,” I retorted.

We crept onwards as Ollie swerved away from the seafront and headed towards the middle of town, which was all dismal and damp. Then he started hiking up the hill towards the posh houses.

“Subject walking too fast,” Marcia puffed. I was fine, though. I was filled with an intense kind of energy that was making me feel as if I could
sprint
up that hill. We stayed well back, darting from car to car as Ollie marched ahead. “Hey, Ollie!” someone yelled from across the road.

“Oh God,” Marcia hissed. “It's Daniel!” Grabbing our sleeves, Marcia pulled me and Evie behind a parked truck. We peered round it as Ollie crossed the road and started jostling with Daniel. They were laughing and shoving each other (the boys-shoving thing is really weird. It would never occur to me to shove Evie or Marcia). Then the two of them headed further up the hill. “I'll
die
if Daniel sees me,” Marcia kept muttering. I couldn't work out if that was a) because it'd be embarrassing, being spotted creeping after another boy or b) she was having a shyness attack because their dry-cleaner date had actually been far too thrilling to cope with.

When I'm Ollie's girlfriend, I'll behave
far
more maturely than she does.

The road had widened out and there were hardly any parked cars to dart behind (the posh houses in this part of town all have their own driveways) so we didn't know what to do next. As there were only a few skinny trees for cover, we fell further behind and kept in a small, tight huddle. “Subject's friend turning left,” I murmured. “Subject going up the hill on his own and …” My heart lurched with excitement. “…heading in through a gate and along a path and … my God!”

“What?” hissed Marcia.

“He's going into that house!”

“Well, he probably lives there,” Evie said with a shrug. We all stopped and watched. There was no place to hide now. Ollie could have turned around and seen us but I was too excited to care. I'd just pretend I lived on Lilac Hill instead of on our scruffy street with Mum's pink dog van outside. We saw him take a key from his pocket and let himself in. As soon as the door had closed, we wandered past to get a casual look at where he lives.

It wasn't what I expected. Most of the houses on Lilac Hill are huge and posh, but this one was the absolute poshest. There were big, grand curtains tied back with fancy bows, and we could see a sparkly chandelier thing through the living-room window. It was sort of
old-fashioned
posh. The front door was shiny and red, with a big brass knocker, and there were miniature bushes on each side of it, cut into perfect cone shapes.

“His parents must be loaded,” Marcia exclaimed, and I felt a wave of hopelessness: would someone this rich ever be interested in the daughter of a dog groomer and a jam factory man?

“What shall we do now?” Evie asked.

“We could knock,” Marcia suggested.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “What would we say?”

“Well,” Marcia shrugged, “I could just ask him to come to my party…”

I was about to agree and muster the courage to march up the path when a shrill voice came from across the street: “Cassie! What're you doing around here?” It was Mum's friend Suzie, the one Mum discusses all my private business with.

“Just out for a walk,” I babbled, as if she'd believe
that
.

Suzie did one of her low, smoky laughs. “Nice to see young people being healthy instead of lying about in front of the TV all day.”

I nodded and forced a smile, and Marcia and Evie nearly collapsed with laughter as the three of us hurried back down the hill.