Heart of Glass (2 page)

“
Hey, Bella, daydreamer…
look over there, near the table.”

An elbow in the ribs from
Prue diverted my attention. She handed a mug of chocolate to Lucy.
“Isn’t that the yummiest thing you’ve ever seen?”

Prue’s eyes travelled
towards the huge spread but with a quick look, I realised it wasn’t
the sponge cake she was eyeing off. Leaning against the table,
talking to one of the teachers was the most beautiful boy. It
sounds silly, but my heart skipped a beat and everything began to
move in slow motion like a bad movie where the hero runs with his
arms outstretched towards the girl of his dreams. And worse still,
The Shirelles were the soundtrack music.

I gazed longingly. His hair
was long for a private school boy and he looked somewhat older. He
was tall, well over six feet, and had broad shoulders tapering to
narrow hips and long muscular legs. But his most noticeable asset
was his blonde hair. White-blonde to be exact and cut into a
shaggy, just got out of bed, sort of style. He looked like one of
the rock stars I watched on ‘Countdown’ every Sunday night. I could
imagine him in a white suit, strutting across the stage and handing
red roses to screaming hoards of girls. He was such a
spunk.

“
Who is he? I’ve never seen
him before.”

“
No idea but I’d really
like to find out,” Prue said smothering a giggle in her
scarf.

Lucy leant over. “What’re
you two whispering about?”

“
Over there,” Prue
gestured.

“
Mmm, spunky. Who’s
he?”

“
I could ask Tim, he knows
everyone.”

“
Well, don’t just stand
there, dummy, go and do it!” Lucy ordered. She looked more smitten
than usual and if that were the case, I’d never stand a chance. I
mean, why would you want Sindy when Barbie was on the shelf right
next to her?

With a salute Prue went in
search of her brother.

After a few minutes of
waiting, Lucy and Jen entered into a dissection of the previous
night’s episode of Dallas, their favourite show. Not being allowed
to watch ‘such trash’ I had nothing valuable to input so I went
back to staring across the room at the flaxen haired
boy.

He looked disinterested. His
eyes were scanning the floor, the ceiling, any place really but
where he was meant to be looking. He certainly wasn’t paying
attention to the teacher who seemed to be lecturing him about
something. Then suddenly, his eyes stopped roaming and came to rest
on mine. For what felt like an eternity that was probably only a
second, he continued to stare while I stared back, desperately
wanting to stop yet unable to turn away. Then he smiled. It was
like he’d hypnotized me and though a blush was creeping up my neck
I kept on staring. Mortified at my own behaviour, I watched as a
small crinkle of confusion formed between his eyebrows. Then, he
straightened, appearing to refocus and …Oh My God, he winked; he
truly winked. At me.

“
Soooo….” Prue had
returned, ready to impart her knowledge.

I turned back to the
group.

“
His name’s Ben James,”
Prue said. “He’s eighteen. And he’s a really good
footballer.”

Lucy nodded. “An older man,
they’re so much more mature than boys our age.”

“
Shut up and let me finish.
Anyway, Tim said he won’t be here next year. The VFL scouts’ll pick
him up, for sure. So I guess there’s not a great deal of point
trying to meet him.”

Lucy looked down her perfect
pixie nose. “I really don’t see that as an obstacle. It would still
be possible to have quite a lot of fun with him between now and
next year. That’s six months away, you know. And what if it turned
into a serious relationship? Imagine being married to a
professional footballer. The parties, the social life. God, it’d be
awesome.”

Jen shook her head, “Really
Lucy, sometimes you are so disgusting. All you think about is boys.
Did you ever stop to consider that he’s too old for you? He’s
eighteen and you’re only sixteen. Boys like that only want one
thing.”

“
So?”

“
Well, look at him, he’s
gorgeous!”

We all looked. There was no
denying the fact; the sex appeal was dripping from his
pores.

“
He probably has heaps of
girlfriends his own age. Why would he want to hang around with
nerds like us?”

“
Humph. You may fall into
that category, Jennifer, but I am certainly not a nerd. I could
give him plenty of reasons to want a girl like me. What do you
think, Annabelle?”

It wasn’t hard for me to
imagine the reasons Lucy would put forward; I’d seen her in action
only last week at the school disco, swanning around the room like a
catwalk model.

“
I think it’d be hard for
any boy to resist your charms, they’re so…. out there!”

Lucy stuck her chest out in
pride.

“
Well,” Prue said,
interrupting our jokes, “Tim said they’re quite good mates, he’ll
introduce us. He’s just going to get him.”

“
I couldn’t do that!” cried
Jen, “Tim might get the wrong idea. No, you can count me out of
this one.”

“
Well, I’m in, Prudence. He
looks cute to me and I’ve nothing better on the horizon. What about
you, Annabelle?”

I swallowed. “Um, yeah. I
s’pose.  Why not.”

And before I knew it, the
game was on, with the glittering prize heading across the room with
Tim and straight towards us. I felt my heart begin to race. My
mouth went dry. I licked my lips and sucked in my tummy.

“
Does my hair look
alright?” Lucy asked. “God, he’s so cute, look at his
muscles.”

“
Will you shut up Lucy,
he’ll hear you! Seriously…”

Stopping at the edge of our
circle, Tim greeted us for the second time that afternoon. “Hey
girls, thanks for doing the stats again this week. I don’t know
what Coach would do without you.”

“
Find some other suckers
who don’t mind freezing to death every Saturday?” Prue
quipped.

 
Tim gave her a
look.

“
So this is my buddy, Ben.
Ben, I’d like you to meet the St Peter’s Cheer Squad: my sister
Prue, Lucy Roberts, Jennifer Riley and Annabelle Stone. No matter
what Prue says, they really love tagging along every week to help
out.”

“
Like a hole in the head,”
Prue replied, smiling at Ben.

“
Hey,” Ben said. “Nice to
meet you, Prue.”

Then he turned to me. His
hand reached to out shake mine. I looked up into his eyes and felt
myself being pushed aside as Lucy shouldered her way towards
him.

“
Hi Ben,” she breathed, all
Marilyn Monroe. “It’s really nice to meet you. We’ve been looking
forward to it.”

To prove the point she
thrust out her breasts and gave her lashes and extra flutter or
two. It was a forehand straight down the line that I’d never be
able to counter.  Then, she grabbed his hand in hers and,
squeezing like a python, she flashed her beauty queen smile. Even
Mother Imelda couldn’t resist that smile.

“
Um, yeah,” Ben said.
“Enjoy the game?”

“
Yes, thank you. You played
very well, I can see why so many people are after you.” Lucy’s eyes
roamed up and down his body. The look was not lost on Ben who
smiled back wolfishly. Beauty queen clearly trumped plain and
mousey every day of the week.

Deflated, I sunk to the back
of the group. Lucy was doing it again. Every time one of us showed
interest she had to make it into some sort of contest that we could
never hope to win. Five minutes previously, Ben had been winking at
me across the room and now I’d never have a chance. I watched her
giggling at him and batting her lids. As if she’d know how he
played. She hadn’t even realised he was there until we spotted him.
To make matters worse Ben was lapping it up. He was grinning at
everything Lucy said, his eyes firmly locked on her double D
cups.

He didn’t even know I
existed.

Chapter 2

CLOSE TO YOU

Why do birds suddenly
appear

Every time you are
near?

Just like me, they long to
be, close to you.

The Carptenters

After meeting Ben at the
football, we had gone back to Prue’s house for dinner. Excited by
the events of the day, Lucy came up with a novel idea. “Let’s write
Ben a note.”

I groaned. It was another in
a long line of Lucy’s harebrained schemes, designed to make us look
silly and get her the man.

“
But we don’t know where he
lives, there’d be hundreds of James’ in the phone book.”
Prue

said, looking up from her
lasagne.

“
We’ll post it to his
school.”

“
It’s two hundred
kilometres away, Luc’. Don’t you think we’re going a bit
overboard?”

“
I don’t think it’s good
idea, either,” Jen added. “What if it falls into the wrong
hands?”

Lucy laughed. “Oh, Jennifer.
We’re not talking about a mafia hit list. It’s just a bit of
fun.”

“
Well, I’ll do it, but I
would much rather sit on the couch with Tim. He’s watching a replay
of the football.”

The statement was met with a
resounding cry, as we threw a barrage of napkins at her
head.

“
It’d be so much easier if
you two would get it on, Jen. Your constant pining is becoming very
annoying.”

Jen blushed and looked to
the floor. Lucy, of course, remained oblivious to the hurt her
words could cause.

To change the subject, Prue
produced a whole box of scented notepaper and a purple inked
fountain pen, which she had gotten for a previous birthday. I was
designated scribe.

“
Your ideas’ll catch his
attention,” Lucy said, as I began to write in my girlish
flowery

script.

‘
Dear Ben,

You won’t remember us
but…’

How long would it take her
to take the attention once I had grabbed it? I wondered. It
happened all the time.

***

The letter posted and
forgotten, I was blown away when the phone rang a few weeks
later.

“
Hello? Annabelle Stone
speaking.”

“
Hi, Annabelle. This is Ben
James. Listen, I got your note and I’m going to be in town this
weekend for a training camp with the State Team. Would you like to
go out on Saturday night?”

I nearly choked into the
mouthpiece. Was the Pope a Catholic? Of course I would.

“
Um, yeah. Sure Ben, I’d
love to, but I’ll have to ask my parents. They’re pretty strict.
They might not let me. Give me a sec’.” Running to the lounge,
where Mum and Dad were watching Four Corners, my imagination began
to run riot. How could I pose the question? God, what if they said
no? And worse, if they said ‘yes’, what would I wear? Why was Ben
calling me, anyway? He hadn’t shown the slightest interest when
we’d met, except for that wink. If anything, I’d been sure he’d
liked Lucy.

Five minutes and a few
strange looks from Dad later, I was giving Ben the directions to my
house - that was where the date would be. Leaving the house without
meeting the boy and getting to know his life history and future
prospects was out of the question according to Mum. I had been
foolish to even consider the possibility. But if I knew her at all,
she’d have all the information she needed by the end of the
evening, right down to his inner leg measurement and at what age
he’d lost his first tooth.

“
I hope you don’t mind,” I
said. “Mum and Dad would rather do the meet and greet thing, you
know how it is.”

I heard him chuckle. “Not at
all, we’ll see you on Saturday night.”

I hung up the phone. We were
into the second set and I had taken a commanding lead. Lucy was
going to spew.

***

The next day, I dragged Prue
into a corner of the common room away from the sonic hearing of the
other Year 10 girls. Even a sniff of any social activity not
involving Lucy was potential riot material and I knew Prue’s
reaction would be dramatic. It always was.

“
Will you come to my house
on Saturday night? Please? Ben James is coming over and he’s
bringing his friend.”

Prue’s mouth opened so far I
could have yanked it off the floor. “When did
thishappen?”

“
Last night. He rang
me.”

“
But how did he get…? It
was the letter, wasn’t it? He got the letter!” Positively animated,
she let out a scream and began to do funny little skipping jumps on
the spot, like a cartoon rabbit in heat. “Oh my God, Bella, this is
awesome!” Then she stilled. “Lucy’s gonna go mental when she finds
out.”

“
Shh. I know, but will you
come? It’ll be so embarrassing if we have to sit in the lounge all
night with Dad snoring and Mum checking him out for suitability. If
you come over, we can go to the family room and listen to records
and stuff.”