Free Love Bomb by Jenny McLachlan

Yoda with the chicken leg. ‘Do you want to go to Brighton with this Toby?’
    ‘Exciting it will be.’
    ‘I will be walking among you in Brighton on Saturday,’ snarls Batman, ‘watching Bea and Ollie jive at the Churchill Shopping Centre … and fighting evil.’
    ‘What?’ I say, abandoning Yoda.
    ‘Check your phone,’ says Bill. ‘You’re invited too.’
    ‘That is so weird,’ I say, pulling out my phone. Sure enough, there’s Bea’s text saying we should all go to Brighton together. ‘What are you doing hanging out with my friends?’ I say. ‘I guess Bea’s trying to get us together so that me and Kat can make up.’
    ‘There’s no wind forecast for Saturday so I said I’d go.’ He shrugs, not seeing what the big deal is. He’s met up with my friends before, but I’ve always been there. ‘Obviously, I thought you’d be coming too.’
    ‘I’ve already said I’ll go to Brighton with Toby. Maybe we can all meet up?’ I try to imagine it in my head.
    ‘OK,’ says Bill.
    I help him pack up because I don’t really want to leave the warmth of the garage and go home. What ifPoo is sitting on my sofa with a cup of tea on her stomach? ‘How’s your love thingy going?’ I ask Bill as we lift his board back on to the rack.
    ‘Not so well,’ he says.
    ‘You know it’ll be fine. You get perfect marks in everything.’
    ‘Not everything,’ he says. He opens the garage door and a gust of wind swooshes through the gap, bringing in a pile of dead leaves.
    ‘Give me a line of poetry for the road,’ I say. ‘I liked the starry skies one.’
    He looks at me and thinks for a moment. ‘Here’s one from a play,’ he says. ‘ Love is like a child that longs for every thing that he can come by .’
    I duck down under the half-open door and repeat it a couple of times in my head. ‘So, who said it, and what does it mean?’
    ‘William, or, as I prefer to call him, Bill Shakespeare said it, and it means that if you’re in love, you’re happywith any tiny bit of attention you get from the person you love … just like children think everything is amazing.’ I must look confused because he adds, ‘Remember Eric when I gave him that cardboard box? It was just an old box, but he turned it into a prison for his Moshi Monsters and played with it for hours.’
    ‘I think I get it,’ I say, remembering the times I hovered outside Toby’s classroom waiting for him to come out and maybe, just maybe, say a few words to me. Then I grin. ‘I don’t want to scare you or anything, Bill, but I think Kat might be longing for a bit of you.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Seriously. She said you were cutesome .’
    Bill rolls his eyes. ‘She did not,’ he says. Then, for the second time today, a boy shuts me out of his garage.

    I think about love all the way home. More specifically, I think about whether I’m in love with Toby Gray all the way home.
    As soon as I get in, I head upstairs because I’ve got a plan. I’m going to analyse the evidence and work out exactly what’s going on with me and Toby. I open up my Dennis the Menace book and find a blank page. Dennis is going to become my Big Book of Love. First I write down Bill’s quote – Love is like a child that longs for every thing that he can come by – then I draw a love grid.

Yes, I am definitely in love with Toby.
No, I’m in something with Toby, but it might not be love.
His touch makes me feel funny in my tummy … and my arms, legs, fingers, hair follicles, eyeballs and generally everywhere.
The funny feeling in my tummy isn’t entirely good. Sometimes it’s a bit like the time that big dog barked in my face in the park (e.g. scary).
I know where he is the second he walks into a room, like he’s the North Pole and I’m a big magnet.
Sometimes, he makes me stop being Bettyish. For example, this morning, I wanted to wear my Hello Kitty crocheted hat, which essentially gives me a kitten’s head, but I didn’t because last time I wore it he