Free Heart of Glass by Lindy Dale

‘us’ he was
into?
    “ Don’t look at me like
that. You know its true.” He grinned down at me and held out his
hand. It was a supreme effort, but he had managed, once again, to
do the gentlemanly thing. And I had managed to drive him
crazy.
    “ So what exactly did you
have in mind?”
    “ You’ll see Bel’. You’ll
see.”
    ***
    As we sat on the curb
waiting for Dad, the hall doors opened and groups of teenagers came
spilling out into the night.
    “ I think I’ll go now,
you’ll be quite safe until your dad arrives,” he said.
    I looked up into his eyes as
he stood to leave. “Will you call me? Or are you going to forget
about me like last time?”
    Ben sat back down, cradling
me. Inclining his head over my shoulder, so that no one else could
hear, he murmured, “I’ll never forget you. I dream about you every
night and I think about you all day. When we’re apart, I ache,
wondering about the next time we’ll see each other. I feel lost
without you.”
    “ Does that mean I’m your
girlfriend, like exclusive then?”
    “ I guess it
does.”
     
     
     
     

Chapter 8
    I GOT YOU
    I don’t know why sometimes
I get frightened
    You can see my eyes, you
can tell that I’m not lying
    Spilt Enz
     
    “ Happy Birthday, Bella.
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, eh?” Dad joked, as I came into
the kitchen on the morning of my 16 th birthday. He leant over the
breakfast bar, and pushing a pile of gifts, wrapped in pink shiny
paper towards me, kissed me on the cheek.
    “ There you go sweetheart,
now you’ve been kissed by the best looking guy on the planet. Your
Mum will be out of the shower in a minute but she said to start
opening your presents. I hope you like them. Those Barbie dolls
sure are expensive these days.”
    I walked over to the pantry,
smirking at his feeble attempts, and poured myself a large bowl of
cereal. Parents were so lame sometimes. “Ha, ha, ha, Dad. Your
jokes aren’t improving with age you know.”
    Carrying my bowl in one hand
and a mug of coffee in the other, I made a beeline to the other
side of the counter where, perching on the edge I began to divest
my gifts of their wrappings, tossing the paper aside. By this time,
Mum had joined the celebration. As usual, she was wearing a print
dress and white sandals. Her uniform never changed either. In fact,
I couldn’t remember Mum changing her hair since I’d been born. It
was always the same, dyed chestnut brown and combed into a neat
chignon at the back of her head. She looked as if she had been
swept straight from the set of ‘I Love Lucy’ and into our
home.
    The presents were fairly
much as I had expected; books, a record voucher and clothes -
including a red sundress, a mocha coloured string bikini and
strappy leather sandals. For once, I wished my parents would break
free from the mould and buy me some frivolous, expensive gift like
the sparkly sandals I had seen in the mall. Oh, how I wished my
parents were loaded and extravagant, not middle class and
sensible.
    At around 10am, there was a
knock at the front door. As I fumbled with the lock, I wondered who
could be on the other side at that hour of the morning. I pulled
the door slightly ajar, peeking through the gap. A short balding
man, wearing a green delivery uniform and a jaunty cap, was
standing on the doorstep holding the largest bunch of red roses I
had ever seen in my life.
    “ Delivery for Annabelle
Stone, can you sign for it?”
    He shoved a pen through the
crack of the door. “Sign.”
    “ Oh sorry, of course.” I
opened the door a little wider, swinging my arm around and trying
to relieve him of his clipboard without being seen in my nightwear.
“Thank you, so much.”
    Within five minutes, all
hell had broken loose. The roses, long stemmed and blood red with
the darkest of green leaves, had been from Ben. There were sixteen
in total, one for each year of my life. In the centre of the
bouquet stood a single white rose to which a card