Free Love Bomb by Jenny McLachlan Page A

said I looked like a giant baby.
I love being near him, just like Eric loves mud, rain, stones, buttons and empty boxes.
I’m not sure he walks in beauty like the night. It’s more like he walks in hottiness like a panther.

    So that didn’t help.
    I can’t ring Kat, and Bill’s already given me his Shakespeare advice so that leaves Bea … or DeadMum. Bea doesn’t answer her phone so I have to go with Dead Mum. I know which letter I want to read: The one where I fall in love .
    I don’t want to open the letter if there’s a chance Dad could walk in. I haven’t told him about the letters and I’m enjoying having a secret from him. I decide that the safest place is in the bath.
    Ten minutes later, I’m up to my nose in wolfberry bubbles (gift from Poo to my dad – I use half the bottle) and the door is locked. After carefully wiping my hands on a towel, I open The one where I fall in love and pull out two crisp sheets of paper. Three papery petals fall into the bath. I sink down into the bubbles, keeping my hands up high, and start to read.

    Dear Plumface,
    Being in love can be very confusing, especially the first time you experience it. It’s a bit like the London Underground.
    The first time I fell in love was with Rich and I was eleven years old. Every breaktime for a week, Rich gave me a Curly Wurly. Just in case Curly Wurlies don’t exist any more and you’re thinking I was getting an exotic love bite, don’t worry, a Curly Wurly is a twisty bar of toffee covered in chocolate. If I’m honest, back then they were just about the cheapest chocolate you could buy, but it was still enough to make me hold Rich’s clammy hand under the desk and to scratch ‘I lve Rich Musher’ on the lid of my Ghostbusters pencil tin.
    With the benefit of hindsight, I wasn’t actually in love with Rich, I just really liked Curly Wurlies. I am so glad I didn’t marry him, Betty. Imagine it, Lorna Musher.
    The first time I really fell in love, I was fifteen and it was with Carlo Ferrari. Lorna Ferrari … now that’s more like it! Carlo moved to our schoolfrom Wales. The moment he walked into my classroom, I fell for him big time. He had these huge brown eyes that made my internal organs dissolve and just looking at his fingers made me blush because I wanted them to touch me so badly. Not in a rude way, just in a holding hands, pushing-a-strand-of-my-hair-behind-my-ear type of way. Best of all, he was brave.
    There was this girl in our class called Eleanor who had spots. Every single day, when she walked into our tutor room, Jamie Watts called her Pizza-Face. The rest of us just watched this happening because we were so relieved he wasn’t calling us Pizza-Face. On Carlo’s first day, he heard Jamie doing his Pizza-Face routine and he walked right up to him, stared into his eyes, pointed a finger at him and said, ‘Shut it, boy!’ (Remember he came from Wales.) Jamie never called Eleanor names again.
    When Carlo became one of my best friends, I still loved him. When he started going out with Eleanor a year later, I still loved him. When I went to university, I still loved him. I never told anyone that I was in love with Carlo Ferrari … until now.
    These petals are from a rose he gave me. A while after he stood up to Jamie, we were walking home from school when he disappeared into someone’s garden and then reappeared holding the most beautiful pink rose I had ever seen. He handed it to me and there was this amazing moment when the world stood still and I knew I was seconds away from discovering what it felt like to hold Carlo’s wonderful hand. Then I said, ‘Thanks,’ and shoved the rose in my bag like he’d just given me a 10p Curly Wurly. I was so in love with Carlo I couldn’t believe he would like me … even when he gave me a rose. A rose , Betty! The internationalsymbol for ‘I Love You’. Two weeks later, he started going out with Eleanor.
    I was way funnier than Eleanor. I would have been a great