Free It's a Girl Thing by Grace Dent Page B

summer began. (These are certainly, I feel, naturally bleached through all those long outdoors hours Jimi spends in search of nice waxy benches and handrails to skate along.)
    Oh, God.
    I really do find Jimi so unbelievably gorgeous that I almost feel sick every time I look at him.
    Is this normal?
    Yes, I know “love hurts,” but does it also make you puke and want to sit on the toilet a lot too? Or am I a freak?
    The worst thing is, I can’t even put my finger on what I actually want to do with Jimi. Do I want to snog him? Or just hang out with him and make him laugh? Or lock him in my room and make him listen to CDs with me? Or maybe I just want to be seen kicking about with him, holding his coat while he practices skating or helping him with his crutches when he has a fall, so all the other Blackwell girls say: “Oooooh, look! That Ronnie Ripperton’s going out with Jimi Steele! I’m sooo jealous.”
    Is that it?
    I really don’t know, I just know I want to be somehow more part of Jimi’s life than I am right now. Anyway, whatever it is I want to do, when I found Jimi actually standing in my home, I settled for standing gazing at him without blinking for so long that my eyes became all dry and fuzzy, like old sweets down the back of the sofa.
    Not a good image to portray.
    â€œHey, Ronnie!” shouted Jimi.
    Gulp.
    â€œOi, oi, it’s the landlady!” yelled Naz. “Hey, what do you think of the show so far, then, Ronnie? Not bad, eh? Considering our singer’s tone-deaf, eh?”
    Everybody, including me, giggled. Jimi blushed a bit and told Naz to shut his mouth.
    â€œWell, as far as I could hear, you’ve just sounded like a car crash for the last hour,” I chirped. “Have you lot got any actual songs, or just . . . noisy noises?”
    â€œOoooooh, get her!!!” Naz laughed. “She means you, Jimi, of course.”
    â€œI meant all of you,” I said, grinning cheekily. “I thought there was a fight going on down here, or something.”
    I’m not really this cool, I don’t need to tell you this, I was just pretending to be cool, and somehow it was working.
    â€œWe’d better practice a bit harder, then.” Jimi smiled, staring directly at me.
    Uccckkk—he was giving me that “nearly hurl” sensation again.
    I took the practice bit as my cue to leave, but just as I reached the door, Jimi shouted after me, “And you’re in luck, Ronnie, I’ve checked with our manager. Turns out we ARE free on July twelfth to appear at Blackwell Live. Lost Messiah can be your headline act, eh?”
    Jimi flicked his hair out of his eyes and played a loud B chord, shaking the foundations of the room, while Naz looked at him, sort of confused, trying to work out when in the last few hours Lost Messiah had acquired “a manager.”
    I waited until the sound subsided, cocked my head to the side and said rather cutely, “Well, first you best make sure you’re free this Monday after school, cos you’ll have to come to the auditions. You know? Exactly the same as everybody else.” Then I took a few steps away, turned and added, “Oh, and you better get some singing practice. Because, well, standards are going to be very high.”
    Then I shimmied out of the door, back up to my bedroom, to further screams of “Ha ha ha! She told you, Steelo, didn’t she, eh? You Muppet!” from the rest of Lost Messiah.
    What a triumph, eh?!
    And, yes, I did remember to pull, not push, the pull door this time.

Chapter 4
    the best of times . . . the worst of times
    After all the high spirits and jolly hoo-hah of the past few days, at precisely 3:00 A.M. this morning, I discovered what Mum’s been wittering on about all my life when she says: “Things always seem blackest in the middle of the night.”
    Silly old me thought this was Mum stating the bleeding obvious, like durrrrrr, of course