Read Online This Is All by Aidan Chambers - Free Book Online Page B

I’ve touched him, really touched him, and it quite startled him, took him aback as they say, in fact actually aback because he leaned back like I’d triggered a spring. And I giggled like you giggle when someone catches you out with one of those electric shock toys, because touching him like that, not thinking, on the spur of the moment, while wanting him the way I did right then, was like an electric shock. The feel ofhis mouth, his lips, his chin on my hand, the softness of his lips and the hard boniness of his chin. And when I’d giggled and taken my hand away and he’d sprung back, we were both shock-silent for a minute before I said, I tell first, and he nodded, and I had to take a deep breath and turn away and look at the trees again to collect myself and nerve myself because I was a bit afraid that when he heard what I had to tell him he might ditch me. Doris always says the best thing to do at times like that is just get on with it straight, no frills.
    So I said, Look, Will, about us playing Schumann together, I like it, don’t get me wrong, but the fact is, to be perfectly honest, the real reason I asked you to do that with me is, well, you see, I read somewhere that the average age when girls have sex is sixteen and three months, or some such rubbish, and to tell the truth, I haven’t yet, had sex, I mean all-out sex, I’m still wearing L-plates, I’m still flying Virgin Atlantic, and you see I don’t plan to be one of the average, not about anything, if I can help it, and so I decided to, you know, choose the boy I’d like to have my first sex with, and you were the one by a long way, I mean a long long way, and I had to meet you somehow and playing Schumann seemed like a good idea at the time, and I hoped you’d make a pass but you didn’t, and well – you know the rest – and here we are – and I feel a bit dreadful about it now, actually, but that’s what I wanted to tell you.
    Lordy, did he stare! A sort of blank silent-movie stare, like him, whatshisname, the one with the white face, Keaton, him, Buster Keaton. But with glasses. So I stared straight back at him through my glasses. Who would blink first? Neither. Stare stare. Thought the end had come, thought he’d get up and walk away and leave me stranded in the woods, Gretel abandoned by Hansel (not quite, he not being my bro). But he didn’t. Both of us staring unblinking, he opened his mouth in his blank Buster face and said, I’m coming to get you. Then I blinked. What? I said. For that, he said, I’mcoming to get you. I said, Here? And he said, Yes. I said, Not here . And he said, Give me ninety-nine good reasons why not? And he hitched himself along the bench towards me, his face still blank as a kipper and his eyes still not blinking (how could he not do it for so long?). I said, No you’re not! and I was giggling in ripples already. And he said, Just watch me, and hitched closer. I pushed myself up off the bench and took a couple of steps back, and he hitched himself to the end of the bench and stood up and came towards me, slow step by slow step, like a lion or a tiger stalking its prey, and I took a step back to match each of his, and thinking, He’s going to chase me, that’s what he wants, he wants to chase me, wants to play tag, and my vag was so wet I even wondered if the excitement had started my period ’cos it was due soon. Then he made a lunge with his hand, and I screamed one of those ear-splitting sex screams that curl your toenails with embarrassment when other people suddenly let them off, but couldn’t help myself, and as much because of the embarrassment as because of Will lunging at me, I turned tail and legged it along the path, Will in his hunky hiking boots pounding the earth behind me at about half the rate of my fleeting legs. Not surprisingly, he managed to tag me within about twenty strides, and I realised then he wasn’t just playing tag, because he tried to grab me, but I side-stepped and tagged his