Free Things I Know About Love by Kate Le Vann Page A

totally up to you.”
    “No, that’s fine,” I said coolly. “Yeah, it’d be nice to see more of him, sure.”
    “I’m going to get another carrot. You fancy one?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “We won’t be eating for hours.”
    “I’m fine, thank you.”
    “Mum keeps asking me if you’re getting all your fresh veggies, you know.”
    “All right, give me a bloody carrot!”
    I spoke to Mum this afternoon, just before she went off to work. It’s more than a week since I saw her, and I’ve never spent so much time away from her. She was on the webcam and I’d never seen her on it before and not been in the same room. She was there in the corner of my screen, smiling at me, thousands of miles away. I know that I’m coming up to the point in my life where I will properly leave home—but thinking about that still makes me very nervous and sad…and panicked, as if I suddenly might forget how to make my heart keep beating. Anyway, she was putting on a lovely, sunny voice, and telling me funny stories about the people at work, but I could hear a kind of strain in her voice, as if she wanted to cry. I love it out here, but I wish I could just go back every couple of days (sometimes, I wish I could go back every night) and hug my mum.
    Kyle is a weird driver in that he goes slowly but you never feel safe. He shouts a lot at other drivers, and surely you don’t usually find that many people driving that badly on a fifteen-minute drive? He also constantly turned to look at me when he was talking to me—I was sitting in the passenger seat, Jeff and Krystina in the back—and I wished he’d keep his eyes on the road. Behind us, my brother and my new friend seemed to be getting on a lot better. They were talking in low voices, Krystina giggling at whatever Jeff was saying. I realized that to give Jeff some time to impress her, I’d have to do my best to get on with Kyle, and “take one for the team”—Jeff started using that expression when he first came out here. He and I are a team. I’m so happy about this: his friendship is one of the best things in my life.
    I was relieved, though, when we pulled into the cinema car park and joined up as a four again. Jeff bought the tickets to thank Kyle for the lift. Kyle bought a gigantic bucket of popcorn for us all to share. I ended up sitting between him and Krystina—Jeff was on Krystina’s other side—and we passed the popcorn up and down our little line the whole time, which became a bit distracting when I was trying to follow the film. But there was something more distracting than popcorn to contend with. Kyle had laughed a lot in the coffee shop, but that turned out to have been only been a small hint of what he was capable of. Here in the cinema, Kyle laughed his giant’s laugh at every single joke and—just for fun—at lots of lines that weren’t jokes at all. On my right, Krystina was leaning the other way, her head resting on Jeff’s shoulder. I sat up very straight.
    “So, you seemed to like the film,” I said to Kyle, as we were walking out together.
    “Not that much, not really,” Kyle said. “It was full of clichés, old jokes, kind of predictable. It was okay, nothing special.”
    Right, exactly how insane is he? Who laughs like that at a film they don’t like?
    I was hoping we’d be able to lose them when we went to meet Adam at the Indian restaurant as we’d arranged, but I knew Jeff wouldn’t want to say good-bye to Krystina so early, so we all piled in together. Adam was already sitting down at a big table, and I felt embarrassed about coming in with Kyle. I wanted him to know we hadn’t come together , but as far as I knew Adam didn’t care one way or another.
    “How was the film?” Adam asked me, shuffling along the bench to make more room for me. I sat down right next to him. I just had a clear, selfish moment, where I thought: No one can stop me and I want to sit here. And I was suddenly close to him for the first time since working