Yes, I am aware that once I reach the bridge, I'm going to be out in the open, but I think that if there are other people there, I could just bash straight onward, ignore them, and pretend that I do this every day.

If he is alone, I could lure him into a more secluded area and hope nobody stumbles upon us there because being caught hiding would probably be worse.

There is also the possibility that I'm about to be the brunt of a cruel joke of some kind... hence the hockey stick. No, Ethan isn't usually downright cruel; he is just gross, inappropriate and highly annoying. He loves freaking me out. I think it might be his favourite hobby, right alongside surfing.

One day, I was happily sitting on my bed listening to music, cutting images of my favourite actors from a magazine - I was in ninth grade at the time and heavily into making montages for my wall – when I noticed movement in the upstairs window of the house next door.

Our house is a double-story building, with all the bedrooms on the second floor, mine being the only one with a window facing the Fletchers' house. Their house is a sprawling one-floor building with an attic space converted into a small bathroom and bedroom. Mr Fletcher's youngest sister used to live up there but finally got a job and moved to another town shortly before this incident, and without my knowledge, Ethan had moved up there that day.

Since then, his bedroom has had a window facing mine.

Apparently, moving into his aunt's old room suited both Ethan and his father since they required more and more space from each other. I was highly disappointed that Delia didn't move up there instead, but she has a lovely, large bedroom and when Ethan moved upstairs, their shared bathroom became all hers. She has no desire to swap with him.

The fact that he gave up his large bedroom in favour of the much smaller one upstairs speaks volumes about the deterioration of his relationship with his father.

Well, I reflexively looked out my window, and I'm not sure whether Ethan did it on purpose or not, but I was suddenly the sole audience of an amateur strip show... in reverse. Ethan was getting dressed after - as all the evidence pointed to – a shower. I screamed and dove for my window to close the curtains with enough force to promptly cause the railing bracket to snap, dropping the curtains on my head.

That was also how I found out that the brackets were garbage.

I yelled at Ethan to close his curtains, but he pretended not to hear or understand and just grinned at me and gave me more of a show. I couldn't close my curtains anymore, and I couldn't get the big sheet I'd taken from the linen closet to stay up, covering my window; no matter what I tried, it kept on falling down, so I did the most logical thing I could think of. I took four of the flat-topped bar stools from the kitchen downstairs and placed them on my bed, two at the foot and two at the head and draped the sheet over them.

While I sat seething in my makeshift tent (I had to move very carefully not to cause a collapse), I could hear the pest laughing in his room. Honestly, these two houses were built way too close to the wall separating them.

The things I've seen and heard...

It took my father months to remember to get me new hooks. I was too embarrassed to make a case for their urgency, and at that stage, I was the only one in my household aware of the room swap in the Fletcher household. My father is always a bit scatterbrained, and since I didn't usually bother with my curtains (not since that room became vacant), he didn't carve a note into a body part to remember to buy some.

Not that he ever does that...

Normally, the lack of curtains wouldn't matter as the only way to see into my window is from Ethan's bedroom or their roof; visibility is blocked by trees from all the other angles. Well, I enjoyed months of being a forced witness to Ethan-related chaos and perversions. I did my own dressing and undressing in the bathroom and always hung out in my room in a tent of some kind, and when I wanted to dance to my favourite music, I did it on the side of my room, the furthest away from the window, after dark with the light turned off, or when I was sure that he wasn't home.

My father just thought I was going through another phase, and I didn't want to tell him the truth; it was simply too embarrassing. Silly, I know.

All I'm trying to say is that Ethan is a gross pest, but he's never done anything to me or anybody else, as far as I know, that could be called cruel. He is always developing new skills, though; I can, therefore, never be too sure.

I can finally hear the murmur of the brook, and when I step out of the shelter of the trees, I see Ethan sitting on the low plank bridge, his legs dangling off its side, his feet having a soak in the cold water lazily flowing underneath, gathering in the small pool there for a bit, before carrying on down the hill. He is alone.

Well, here goes.

I step out of the woods, and he looks up in surprise. He'd been sitting with his arms crossed on the bridge railing, level with his chest while seated, and his chin resting on his arms.

He frowns, looking from me - wrestling my way into the clearing, picking leaves and twigs from my hair - to the well-walked-upon footpath.

"So, that's why you took six million years to get here! Why didn't you take the footpath? You would've been here ages ago," he complains in that low, slightly rough voice I've heard some completely senseless people describe as sexy. "I was about to leave, you know?"

"You say that as if I'd care." Five seconds ago, he didn't look remotely close to leaving. I should probably feel some sense of achievement knowing that I'd kept him waiting, which probably irritated him since he is not a patient guy, but all I feel is a bit tired and somewhat overheated and really thirsty. I might be the only one who is irritated.

"Are you going to come here and sit down, or are we going to shout at each other like this the whole time?"

"Yes," I say, feeling strangely tongue-tied and uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"Come on then."

"I meant yes, I'll shout from here."

He is getting to his feet. No, no, those feet need to stay in the cold water, not walk around, bringing him towards me.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he snorts, stopping with his hands on his hips. Good, he's not walking towards me anymore.

He has an interesting new spin on the school uniform going on. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, but that is not unusual; it is summer, and everybody is rolling up their sleeves. For some reason, the school doesn't have a short-sleeved version of the school uniform for the boys. The first two buttons of his shirt are unbuttoned, and his tie is only loosely tied, and parts of his shirt have become untucked, which is also usual for him. The interesting part is being barefoot with his pant legs rolled up to his knees. One has started to slide down his calf. I feel a smile pulling at my lips.

"You look like a drunk best man at a wedding," I tell him.

"Yeah, yeah," he shrugs, grinning, "are you coming or what?"

"I'm not getting on that bridge with you," I finally spell it out for him.

"Why not? It's pretty sturdy," he bounces up and down on it to prove his point.

"You'll throw me in."

"Why would I do that?" I cannot believe that he actually seems to be baffled by my statement.

"I don't know! Same reason you threw me in all the other times you threw me in." I'm finding it hard to remember even one occasion when I'd crossed the bridge with Ethan forming part of the group, where he didn't pick me up and toss me into the water.

The water is just deep enough for a soft landing but cold enough to be unpleasant at first, even on a hot day like today. We do usually end up all swimming in the bigger pool at the waterfall, a little higher upstream anyway, but that doesn't justify Ethan throwing me in when we're still on our way there.

"We're not here for a swim; I don't need to help you get in."

Now that I've given it some thought, I realise that he's never done it in winter or when we weren't planning on swimming. Then again, I'm only ever here with him when I'm going to have a swim with Delia.

"Help me get in? That's what we're calling it now?"

"Why, what do you call it?"

"Assault."

Ethan blinks at me, and then he's laughing, leaning against the railing in a pool of light flowing through a break in the trees to paint golden highlights in his dark blond hair. Even Nature seems to think that the guy requires a spotlight.

"Come on, Kicks! You know you need help getting in, or you'll be sitting on the side complaining of the heat but too scared of the first few seconds of cold to actually get in. I'm just being helpful."

He actually has a point.

"Helpful would be waiting for me to strip down to my bathers first."

"Sure, next time, I'll strip you first," he says solemnly, and when I frown at his weird choice of words, he laughs again. "Fine," he says, picking up his schoolbag and his shoes. "Wanna sit on that rock?"

He is pointing at one of the most comfortable seats in the house. It's a large boulder with a weather-smoothed, almost flat top. It is high enough to grant the user a nice view of the surroundings but still low enough to get on and off easily.

"Or we can go into the trees," I suggest, and when he makes bug eyes at me, I add that I don't want to be seen with him. He presses his lips together in a tight line, a shadow fleetingly appearing in his stormy blue eyes, but then he's grinning again.

"Seriously, exactly what is it you think I'm going to do?"

"Be irritating."

"You even brought a weapon?!"

I swear I didn't realise that I was holding it with both hands, almost horizontally, like a barrier.

"Well, you know me, I like to be prepared," I shrug, feeling a little stupid now.

"Well, you know me, so I guess you know that I can just do this," and now he is the one holding the hockey stick, and I had no idea that he was even about to take it.

"No," I squeak, "I didn't know that."

♂♀