Free This Is All by Aidan Chambers

hand and he dodged round me and ran away, me after him, determined now not to lose. He tried to double back round a tree but I guessed he’d do that and tagged him as he came round the other side, and I hared off back down the path, side-stepping this way and that to keep him guessing. I didn’t think he’d be as nifty as me in his hunky boots. We got back to the bench and played tick and tock either side of that. He got me once on the arm, then I double bluffed and threw myself at him across the bench and tagged his knee, and he said, Right, that’s it! and I knew he’d grab me properly next time if he got the chance so I chased offalong the path again, him a breath behind me, and I thought, I’m up against the school’s middle-distance champ, not a hope except to shake him off somehow. So jagged into the chest-high tangled undergrowth, thinking that would slow him down. But we weren’t far into it before suddenly his arms were round me and all his weight came plummeting onto me, he must have done a flying tackle, and down I came, him on top of me, onto a bed of crushed bracken that smelt of almonds and that pong of damp autumn leaves which is like a crotch on heat. I tried to struggle free, but Will flipped me over onto my back and held me down by the shoulders and one of his legs pinned over mine.
    I was panting from excitement as much as from the chase. He was hardly breathing faster than normal. I was shaking with spasms of hiccuppy giggles. He lay on me very still and only just smiling. I was hot and basted with sweat. He was glowing and nicely glazed. I could smell him, his lovely sweat-sour smell that I’m sure would sell a million as an aphrodisiac if I could bottle it but I want to keep it all for myself. My eyes and nose were runny. I thought, He won’t like me now, like this, he can’t like a girl with a snotty nose and watery eyes. Which put a damper on me and I gave up and went slack and let go of him and looked at his close-up face staring down at me and wanted him so much so very much right then, his head in the tops of the trees and the blue sky shining through the gaps in the blazing autumn foliage. For a second I thought, He’s going to kiss me, and thought, Go on, go on, DO IT! I’m sure he wanted to, was going to. But instead he rolled over onto his back and we lay side-by-side saying nothing for minutes, and me thinking, Damn, damn, damn! Why didn’t I take his head in my hands while the mood was right and pull him down and kiss him? I still think I should have done. Honestly, I could have cried as I lay there with him stretched beside me on the prickly bracken.
    Bracken . Will gave me a present two months later. At first I thought it was just a little brown pebble shaped like the end of a thumb. But when I unwrapped it from the blue ribbon he’d tied round it, it broke into two and I found I was looking at the inside of the pebble where there was a tiny frond of baby fern, a sprig so perfectly fossilised I could see every weeny leaf on each little branch. Eight branches on one side of the stem, nine on the other up to the point of the tip. So lovely. So poignant. A second of life one hundred thousand years ago preserved in stone. I could read it like Braille with my fingers. Could read it like print with my eyes.
    ‘Pteridium aquilinum,’ Will said.
    I hadn’t a clue what he was on about so remained silent. Silence is often the best defence. In case of doubt say nowt.
    ‘Older than the last ice age,’ he said after a bit.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Over a hundred thousand years old, older than us homo sapiens.’
    ‘Heavens!’
    ‘Roman soldiers used it for bedding for themselves and their animals.’
    ‘You don’t say!’
    ‘And people have always used it for roofing thatch and for packaging. Some people even burned it for fuel and used the ash to make a kind of soap. It’s been used for brick-making.’
    ‘Think of that!’
    ‘Cattle can eat it when there’s nothing better, and in