Free Red Dirt Diary 2 by Katrina Nannestad Page A

boy likes you, but the you he ends up liking will be so different from the real you, that he doesn’t actually like the real you at all!
    Phew! Doesn’t sound like it’s worth the effort to me!
    No wonder Miss McKenzie was so miserable when she was engaged to James Welsh-Pearson.
    Anyway, Mat obviously thinks it is worth the effort …
    Sophie, Mat and I were down at the dam today. We were lying on our towels, nibbling on chocolate, when Peter and Gavin rode down on the motorbike. Mat didn’t want to be seen eating, because that would be so TOTALLY UNCOOL, but she didn’t want to throw her whole block of chocolate in the dam either. I could see a real struggle going on in her attractively tiny brain. Just as the boys arrived, she decided to stuff the whole block in her mouth at once, to conceal the evidence.
    Mat’s cheeks were bulging. Gavin asked how she was going and she couldn’t say a word. She just nodded stupidly and tried to keep the melting chocolate from oozing out between her lips.
    I could see sheer terror on her face when Gavin started telling a joke and Sophie and I burst out laughing. Mat’s eyes filled with tears and bits of melted chocolate started to dribble out the sides of her mouth. In a last desperate attempt to save face, she ran to the dam and dived in.
    Unfortunately, she dived straight into another dead sheep and came up out of the dam screaming hysterically, waving a rotten sheep leg in her hand, and dribbling chocolate all down the front of her yellow bathers.
    Peter and Gavin staggered around laughing.
    After they’d gone, Sophie and I tried to console her.

    â€˜It wasn’t that bad,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m sure he didn’t notice anything odd.’
    â€˜And even if he did,’ I said reassuringly, ‘I’m certain he feels like you’re dumber than him.’
    Mat gave me one of those withering stares.
    Sunday, 28 January
    Petal is all grown up!
    I accidentally shut her inside while I went to feed the chooks. She carried on like a pork chop until Mum opened the door for her. She ran straight off the edge of the veranda and flew to me! I caught her in my arms and she nibbled my ears with joy.
    I’m so proud. Her first flight!
    Mat and Sophie are both driving me nuts. They spent the day in the sleep-out, painting their toenails purple and going through Sophie’s Girl Alive magazines. They were reading the Love Doctor letters — the ones where girls write in and say things like:
    Dear Love Doctor,
    My next-door neighbour is a fourteen-year-old spunk and even though he has a brain the size of a walnut, I am madly in love with him. The only trouble is he doesn’t seem to know that I exist. What should I do?
    Yours sincerely,
Shy Girl Next Door With A Brain The Size
Of A Peanut
    Sophie and I usually laugh ourselves stupid at them. But Mat was taking the letters really seriously. She said maybe she should write in and ask about her relationship problems with Gavin.
    Relationship???
    I told Mat she was such an expert on love that she should start her own Love Doctor column. She took it as a compliment . Good grief!
    I went outside to muck around with Peter andGavin. We spent the afternoon shovelling sheep manure from under the shearing shed to put on Mum’s garden. It turns out that Gavin is fascinated by poo. He has serious plans to start his own organic fertiliser company, using the vast quantities of unused poo lying around on farms. It sounds like a great idea, actually — environmentally friendly and money saving.
    Mat, however, was not impressed when I told her. I pointed out that Gavin probably wouldn’t have time to study the law if he was busy travelling the countryside, collecting enormous vats of poo.
    She stared out the window for a long time, then said, ‘Who cares? I never liked him anyway!’
    Just like that!
    Can it really have been love if a little bit of poop scares it away?
    I JUST