Like I said earlier I'm going to be seventeen this year. I've been back in school for a month. Year twelve hasn't been too bad. They stopped calling me beach ball a while ago. I seemed to have lost weight. I still weigh much the same, a little less maybe. The stretch marks have faded to match the colour of my skin. I even fit into some of my pre puberty clothes. Mum says the weight has shifted, gone to all the right places. I'm not sure how the rest of the kids see me, but it doesn't change the way I feel about myself. The mirror I stare into every morning says I look just the same.

In that first week I felt my life was changing, had taken a new direction, a better direction. By week three I learnt what that new direction was and I knew instantly it wasn't for the better. It came in the shape of a new boy who started in one of my classes. The truth is he's less of a boy and more of a man. When he walked into English, our last lesson before lunch, every girl in the class must have inhaled at the same time because I heard an intake of breath. Like it had been recorded and the volume turned up. He's very tall, probably six foot two but I'm not very good at guessing heights and weights. Maths isn't my strong point. I'm five foot three. I figured my nose would probably touch the middle of his chest if I stood in front of him. So I gave him an extra foot and rounded it down by one inch. He has beautiful skin, smooth. The colour of milk coffee. Very dark hair just long enough so his fringe hangs in his eyes, which are blue...I think? I wasn't close enough to see them properly and he never looked my way. Katie, told me they were blue. In her words it was more.

"Fuck! Did you see his eyes?"

We were at lunch. I shook my head. Katie opened her mouth like a fish and said. "What the fuck...are you fucking blind...how the fuck could you not have noticed his fucking eyes!"

She's grown to love the word fuck, uses it more now than any other verb in the English language.

I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes at her. "Well are you going to tell me the colour or just keep looking at me like I'm an imbecile and swearing at me like a Bogan?"

She laughed and slapped me on the back. "They're blue!" I frowned at her and put on like I was in deep shock.

"Oh! My! God! They're blue...oh my fucking God!" I added the 'f' word for her benefit. I gasped and rolled my eyes at her again then took a bite of my sandwich. She jumped forward on the seat and twisted to face me.

"No I'm serious, Charlie. They're blue but not any blue...fuck...they're so fucking blue you'd think you were deep sea fishing."

I put on a serious face and nodded. "Oh...that kind of blue..." I paused for effect, watched her nod seriously back at me then added. "Katie when have you ever been deep sea fishing?" I couldn't control myself and burst out laughing.

She glared at me and wagged her finger, "You just wait you fucking bitch. You wait until you see them. Then you'll know what I'm fucking on about." She went back to eating her lunch. After a few minutes of pretend sulking she looked at me with a big grin on her face.

"What...?" I said rubbing my hand over my nose and mouth thinking I had some vegemite smeared there. She nodded her head with that stupid grin on her face.

"I'm going to fuck him. That's going to be my resolution for the year. Fuck the new guy!"

That's how she is. Straight to the point. I don't doubt she will. Katie makes her own choices, makes the first move. I wished I was like her sometimes.

She's always comfortable with herself. Katie never cares what anyone else thinks. Me on the other hand. Never comfortable. Almost seventeen and still a virgin. I haven't even kissed someone yet. Well. Not properly. Unless you count that thing I told you about in the beginning.

The bell rang. I had Chemistry. I'm pretty good at Chemistry and Biology so I think I might do nursing when I leave school if my marks are high enough and I get a good OP. Maths could let me down so vet nursing is plan 'B'.

I sat down the back in the middle row and was lucky to have a bench to myself. It was usual, once you had a seat that's where you stayed for the rest of the year. I was getting my books organised. The room was abuzz with whispered voices. Mr. Davis called the class to attention. I looked up. The new guy was standing beside him.

"We have a new student. Please make him feel welcome."

I froze in my seat. All I could think, was Katie would be pissed to know he was in my Chemistry class too.

Mr. Davis continued, "This is Keean Crone." He pointed in my direction and added. "Down the back, Mr. Crone. Charlie doesn't bite. Unlike some of the others."

The class laughed, because Mr. Davis looked straight at Victoria Carter. The most beautiful, most popular girl in school and, for those who thought like me, the biggest stuck up bitch into the bargain.

I stopped breathing and don't remember when I started again. Keean Crone looked straight at me. He walked towards my bench. His long legs claimed the space. Time seemed to slow down as I watched him. All I could think was 'shit'. The word came into my head and kept repeating itself over and over.

Keean Crone's eyes were blue all right but not just blue. Midnight blue full of stars. When the light hit them they changed from a darker hue to sparkle like indigo. They were surrounded by black rims and long dark lashes. Because some of his hair hung in them it gave him a sultry look. I think broody might be the word I'm looking for. I definitely understood Katie's stupid reaction.

'Shit, shit, shit,' my brain kept telling me. Just before he reached the bench he nodded acknowledgement at me. I grimaced and looked away, shuffled my books and pretended I didn't care the best looking boy I had ever seen was about to sit down next to me. I clenched my teeth together and reprimanded myself. I had grimaced at him. Christ couldn't I have just smiled like every other girl. Smiled and fluttered my eyes or some crap like that.

I closed my eyes, sucked in a breath and told myself what a loser I was.

He casually slipped onto the stool and put his books on the desk. I was suffocating. I needed to take a bigger breath of air but didn't want to draw any attention to myself. I breathed in and out as slow and shallow as I could. The lesson began. I tried to concentrate on what Mr. Davis was saying but the sensation of Keean Crone's presence so close to me was like having a subtle electric current running through me continually.

I managed to glimpse at him to see if he looked in anyway as tense as I felt. He was studying the diagrams of Atoms in his textbook. Flicking his pen from end to end on the page like he was bored. He put the pen down and leaned forward on the stool, rested his elbows on the bench and put his hands behind his head. I looked away and took the deep breath I desperately needed.

Keean Crone didn't know I was alive and was going to turn my last year of high school into a living hell.

Copyright © 2017 by Donna Fieldhouse. All rights reserved.

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