It's official; the weather is trying to kill us.

The sun is burning down, melting a couple of millimetres off my height with each step I take, as if I'm not short enough already! I miss the breezes of spring... and I miss my bed. I am so darn sleepy this morning.

"What's going on with you?" Dell asks, giving me a look when I use my hand to stifle yet another long yawn.

We're on our way to school, Delia chattering away about the afternoon she'll be spending with Simon today, first at the town library and then... not sure... I've only been half-listening because I'm struggling to keep my eyes open, and the sun is trying to destroy me.

"Nothing," I answer hastily, giving her a bright smile, but it doesn't go so well because I'm yawning again.

"Oh, my soul, Kiki! Did Ethan sneak into your room again last night?" Her eyes widen, and she gives a completely unjustified and unnecessary shocked gasp. "Did you...? Did he...? Did you and he...?" she is looking far too happy about whatever warped possibilities she is conjuring up in her twisted mind.

"Start doing our homework too late last night? Sleep in our own beds? Yes, to all of the above! Well, I cannot say for sure that Ethan did his homework..."

"Oh," she says, looking disappointed, which is really just nuts. I'm spared more strange questions by Simon joining us and cutting off her next words by planting his lips on hers. Good old, dependable Simon. Remind me to thank him later.

Yes, Ethan kept me awake, but not in the way Delia is thinking or pretending to hope or imagining. We talked on the phone until we fell asleep... I think... I'm not altogether sure since I just remember talking to him, and then I woke up this morning with my phone trapped between my ear and the bed as if I was listening to his breathing.

I wasn't. Well, I can't say for sure what I'd been listening to, but at some point, during the night, one or both of us hung up, or we lost connection because I was listening to nothing when I woke up.

Fortunately, the phone was plugged in, or the battery would run down, leaving me without an alarm clock. I'm sure there are many safety hazards involved in using a phone while it's plugged in and definitely using it as a pillow while sleeping, but what happened, happened, and I survived to tell the tale... or rather, to never mention it to anybody.

How on Earth did that happen?

Ethan and I never chat on the phone... and long enough for one or both of us to fall asleep?! Crazy! I hardly ever have anything to say to the guy except "shut up" and "you're annoying". The last thing I remember was arguing with him about stretching our rules to allow some more "fun things" (his words), like "randomly sucking face" (also his words). I did not find those words inspiring at all and told him so, which made him come up with more and more absurd naming conventions in an attempt to motivate me. At least, that's what he said he was trying to do.

The list included terms like tonsil-hockey, spit-swap and lip-lock, and those are only the ones that don't make me want to die from cringing too hard. I thought he was just trying to make me lose the lunch leftovers I had for supper.

"What are you grinning about?" Delia wants to know, and I immediately get my face to toe the line. Why on Earth is it grinning?! Traitor! And seriously, why does Delia have to be so sharp?

"Where's your school bag?" Simon asks the question I expected Dell to ask me the minute she saw me, but I guess she was too busy studying my sleepy eyes for clues to more mysteries to makeup, and she was also rather preoccupied with telling me all about her after-school plans with Simon.

"Ethan took it to school," I shrug, smiling. "We can't do the whole walk-each-other-to-school thing because he has early morning rugby practice most days, so he fetched it from my house earlier."

"Cool," Delia says, looking pleased with this piece of absolutely useless information. "So, I guess you made a list of things to do for each other, right?"

I narrow my eyes at her, but she doesn't seem to be teasing me; she just really knows me too well. If Dell ever became my enemy, she'd be able to annihilate me... and I her, actually.

"Yes, we have a spreadsheet," I admit and when Simon laughs and I glare at him, he quickly turns it into a cough, grinning at Delia when she smiles up at him. Oh, I am so glad that I can amuse them this early on a Monday morning.

"I'm sorry," Simon says, disarming me with his gentle smile. "I just cannot believe that Ethan is on board with being given a spreadsheet of dating tasks." When he says it like that, I kinda want to laugh now too. No, I cannot imagine Ethy being on board with that either... and yet...

"He helped me create it," I inform them and hearing those words, I realise that it is even more strange for Ethan to help with spreadsheets filled with rules and regulations to govern an imaginary relationship. He is not someone who does well with rules unless breaking them is included in ways to do well with rules.

"We have goals and ways to achieve them... and some rules..." Nothing I'm saying is helping to make more sense of this, so I think it's best just to change the subject when Simon's expression becomes more and more incredulous, and Delia's smile is about to eat her entire face. Seriously, these people!

"Anyway, he decided that he should carry my bag to and from school every day because, according to him, I'm as big as an eight-year-old and as strong as a toddler... Those were his precise words."

"Yup, the guy is a charmer," Simon chuckles.

"Well, at least he didn't say that you're built like an 8-year-old," Delia shrugs, and when I punch her arm, she giggles. "Oh! He couldn't say that because 8-year-olds don't have perky boobies like you."

"Ugh! Shush!" I groan, crossing my arms in front of my chest, but it causes the canvas bag I'm carrying to slide its strap off my shoulder, and I have to hike it up again to stop it from uncomfortably slapping my stomach.

"What do you have in there?" Delia wants to know.

"His lunch," I shrug. "He carries my bag, and I make him lunch."

"Awwwww," Delia coos. "That is so sweet!"

"Doesn't your mom pack him a big container of food every day?" Simon asks his girlfriend.

"Have you met my brother?" she shrugs. "He eats the stuff my mom packs long before the lunch break." Delia narrows her eyes at my bag, looking suspicious again. Seriously, the girl has the god of sweetness walking beside her; can't she just gaze into his eyes and leave me alone already? "That's not just his lunch, is it?"

"No," I sigh, looking up at the clear blue sky and the scattering of white cloud clusters drifting lazily in the warm wind. They need to hurry up and multiply and give me some shade, or I'm going to be a puddle of melted muck soon. "I left my bag downstairs in the study, but I did my homework in my room and forgot to pack the books in my bag. I wasn't awake when he came for the bag."

"So," Delia says, and I can hear the laughter building up in her throat. "Let me clarify. Ethan took your bag to school, and you're bringing most of your books in a canvas bag."

"Something like that," I admit, clenching my teeth to stop the giggle brewing inside me from bubbling over when both Dell and Simon burst into laughter.

"You sure have some cool plans, Kira," Simon says. "Deli, maybe we should make a spreadsheet too."

"Oh, Babe, we can just copy theirs; they seem to have perfected the art of creating relationship mind maps... they seem to be extremely effective."

"Ha-ha! You guys are hilarious!" I try to glare at them, but who am I kidding? This is the most ridiculous situation ever! While I'm laughing on the inside, pretending to take offence at their teasing on the outside, I'm suddenly overwhelmed by memories of Ethan sitting at our kitchen table, taking care of the shell and solemnly making suggestions and agreeing to mine as I organized everything into a comprehensible spreadsheet.

"He really did that," I remark, sobering up now. "He spent about an hour on a Saturday working on a relationship spreadsheet with me just because I needed one. I can't believe I made him do that. That's insane!"

Delia takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Ethe doesn't do things that he doesn't want to do, Kiki," she reminds me, and it does help me feel a bit better, but now I'm confused.

"Wow," Simon smiles, not teasing me anymore. "He must really-"

"Want that car!" I finish his sentence, my confusion dissolving. I wonder how many other things I could get him to do... I could be evil and use his desperation to my advantage. I've never been evil before; I should ask Dell for some tips.

"Huh?!" They chorus, causing me to frown at them. Have they completely forgotten why Ethan and I are doing this? Dell told me that she'd explained the whole situation to Simon too. Why are they acting as if I'm saying strange things?

"Please don't tell him about the books," I implore them as we enter the school gate. I don't want Ethan to know that his kind gesture was a waste because I forgot that he was going to do it.

"Hey! Hey!" I spin around, hearing that all too familiar husky voice near us, grateful when Delia slides the strap of my bag off my shoulder and Simon stealthily steals it. Before I can think too much about whether or not Ethan heard what I'd said, I'm being picked off the ground in a bear hug tight enough to crack my ribs.

What on Earth is he doing now?!

I've been stressing about my first day at school as Ethan's girlfriend. News about our relationship would definitely have travelled after his PDA Saturday at the rugby match. Nothing he does ever goes unnoticed.

I would really like to just sneak into school, keep my head down and pretend that I did not enter into a life-changing arrangement with Mr Popular, but here I am being held in his strong arms, and his lips, soft and warm, are capturing mine in a kiss that could never be mistaken for friendly or platonic.

I gasp when he tears his lips from mine to look at me. He is not taking his arms from around me and not putting me down, either. What is the guy trying to do? We have an entire sub-section in our spreadsheet on public displays of affection, and he is very successfully doing everything in the "don't do these things" part of that sub-section.

My heart is beating so fast my brain is getting too much oxygen, making me light-headed.

"What are you doing?" I breathe into his neck when he buries his face in my hair. The part of my mind that is still functioning, at least partially, is all too aware of the looks and whispers of passers-by and of Delia and Simon watching us, looking way too happy about this development. Simon is at least looking a little bit uncomfortable.

Last night I asked Ethan why he was suddenly obsessed with randomly kissing me when he was happy with the whole three-second hello and goodbye and good luck thing before.

"I like it," he said, and I could hear the shrug in his tone. "Do you hate it?"

I didn't know what to say to that because "yes" definitely does not apply at all, and if I hated it, I wouldn't feel so muddled each time it happened. I found the whole situation way too confusing, and I told him so.

"Well, when some of the algebra rules confused me, you told me just to practice examples of each one over and over again, and now I'm not confused anymore. If you practised kissing me over and over, you won't be confused about kissing anymore either."

That was the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I wanted to tell him so, but instead, I heard myself ask if I was so bad at kissing that I needed to practice it over and over again. He laughed and gave me yet another puzzling answer that made no sense to me.

"If only you were, Kicks, if only you were..." and before I could ask him what he meant with that cryptic statement, he just carried on with his long list of obscene names for the activity most of us normal garden variety people call kissing.

"Saying hello to my girlfriend," Ethan explains, kissing me again before lowering me to my feet. "Relax," he sighs, running a hand over my head. "This is the fastest way to get the word out and get the whole Q&A thing over and done with."

Yup, he's right. It's working. Some guys are making mildly disturbing congratulatory remarks and expressing their sympathy with me... which is not daunting at all. Most of the passers-by are just smiling, but there are a few girls glaring daggers at me. Oh, joy! The word is definitely out now. How nice!

So much for sneaking into school and keeping my head down.

♂♀