‘Do you think Maddy likes one of them?’
The question threw me. It was toe-curling enough thinking of them fancying her, but I hadn’t even thought about Maddy fancying one of them. We didn’t really talk about that sort of stuff with her – she could ask us any questions she liked, for instance she’d been quizzing Rob no end about him fancying Daniella, but we’d never probed her on the topic of the opposite sex. Well, I didn’t anyway.
‘I dunno …’ I muttered.
‘Maybe you should ask her.’
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Why not? I bet she’d like hearing that they called her fit,’ he grinned.
Standing there, just the two of us, in the safety of his back garden, I thought about telling him how I felt – confessing that I thought Maddy was more than fit, that I thought she was the most amazing girl ever to have graced the planet, but I didn’t. I’d been feeling that way for so long and our friendship, the one the three of us shared, stopped me from saying anything, like it had done in the past whenever the words were on the tip of my tongue. We were a tripod. We stuck together to help each other through whatever dramas life chucked our way, we weren’t meant to be creating them or making things complicated between each other. I’d always thought that if I were to tell Maddy how I really felt it would have caused things to change between the three of us. It could have ruined everything and driven a humungous wedge between us that we’d never be able to get rid of. I never wanted that to happen to us. I carried those fears with me and they kept my heart in check – stopping me from blurting out declarations of love that, for all I knew, I could have ended up regretting.
Anthony and John paying her attention had got my back up, perhaps because they had the freedom to say what they felt and more of a chance with her than I did – and I knew they’d use that chance to get as far with her as they could. They’d have no respect for the kind and wonderful girl I knew her to be. They were teenage boys with one thing in mind. Sex. I couldn’t stand it.
Our morning routine had been set on our first day at Peaswood High – Maddy walked round to mine, then we’d both continue round to pick up Robert before heading into school. It had originally started with our mums taking us in convoy, but within a month we’d managed to persuade them that we were fine to do the five-minute walk alone. So, on the Monday morning after speaking to Robert, as soon as I’d closed my front door and taken one of the pink peardrop sweets she was offering me, I decided to bring up the conversation.
‘Erm … I heard Anthony and John talking about you the other day,’ I said, popping the sweet into my mouth, my eyes instantly watering at the sweetness of it.
‘Those two idiots,’ she sighed, rolling her eyes. ‘What were they saying?’
‘They called you fit.’
‘Haaa!’ she shrieked, as she grabbed hold of my arm and stopped on the pavement. Shaking with laughter, she tilted her head back, covering her face with her hands to quieten the sound.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Anthony Burke and John Martin?’ she giggled.
I shrugged – not understanding her apparent aversion to them.
‘Pass me a bucket!’
She laughed the whole way into school.
I couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t about to start dating one of them if that was what she thought of them …
Or so I’d thought.
It’s possible that my little chat with Maddy had resulted in her mind being awoken to the possibility of fancying John – the dim-witted yet more pleasant of the two rogues. Such is the fickle nature of a teenager’s heart, what wasn’t there one minute had grown into a colossal flirtation the next. At least, that’s what it felt like for me – and the change came suddenly. That very same day, when we were in afternoon registration, John walked over and whispered something to Maddy. I have no idea what was said, but was surprised to witness her cheeks pinking as she pouted out her lips into a smile before tapping him gently on the arm. She was visibly flirting. And I knew that was the case because she couldn’t look at me for several minutes afterwards – no doubt she could sense my unbelieving eyes staring at her incredulously, questioning her behaviour.
It simmered along in that playful manner for a few weeks, suggestive gazes and whisperings going back and forth, until Julia Hicks’s birthday party. On that night of childish antics, not only did Rob go off to snog Daniella, but Maddy ended up tucked away in a dark corner of the room playing tonsil tennis with John.
The never-ending stream of cocktail sausages at the buffet table were my only comfort that night.