The bell for last period sounded with a harsh trill; Maths dragged on forever. I had taken off my watch for the last fifteen minutes of the period and placed it discreetly on my desk among my books where I could stare at it without it being too obvious.
The bell sounded like a jaildoor opening. I was free. But almost immediately came another feeling. A jittery, flighty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Why did Erica want to see me?
I threw my books into my schoolbag and was first out the door. I struggled not to run as I made for the library. No point. I’d have to wait for Erica anyway. Beautiful, icy Erica. At that point my mind started playing games with me.
She’s already got a boyfriend, and he’s seventeen. She’s just going to laugh at you.
Then came another thought. Why would you want to go out with her, anyway? Just because she’s pretty? Maybe that’s true, but who wants to go out with Frosty the Snow-girl? She may be pretty and smart, but where’s her personality? She’s just a big snob.
And actually she isn’t all that pretty when you think about it. There are lots of girls who are better looking than her.
I tried to think of one but failed.
You don’t really want to go out with her. No matter what she says, just tell her that you made a mistake; you didn’t mean to say it.
Or even better …
Tell her you made a deal with Ben, and you only asked her out so that Ben would stand for student council.
That was it. Before she got a word in I was going to make it clear that I had no real interest in her. Then, when she gave me the bum’s rush, or even if she let me down gently, it would be me who had turned her down.
I nodded my head to myself and scurried on towards the library. I had made up my mind.
The library was big, old and made of block and old brick, giving it the appearance of ramparts, almost like the castle I often felt it to be. I wandered around the shelves feigning interest in several subjects without even noticing what I was looking at. My legs were unsteady and my hands were quite shaky as I picked a few books off the shelves and put them back just as quickly.
I was glad Erica had suggested the library. It was the one place I felt most at home. Safe. Secure. I wondered why she had suggested it. I often saw her in there. Maybe she felt the same way, that it was a place of refuge.
Or, maybe, she just found it a quiet place to get away from all the other kids, and be aloof in her beautiful ivory tower.
She walked in while I was skimming through a book on ancient Peru and smiled nervously at me.
I forced my hands to be steady and smiled confidently back. Confidence was important. I couldn’t let her see how nervous I really was.
Now the trick was to let her down gently, before she could let me down.
She wandered over to the long couches at the New Zealand Fiction section of the library and I sheepishly followed her. She sat, and I sat on the couch opposite. Not next to her. There were a few kids in the library, doing homework or killing time till their parents picked them up, but where we were was deserted.
‘Hi,’ I said, trying to sound warm and friendly but in control of things.
‘Hello,’ Erica said and glanced down at her hands.
‘First of all, thanks,’ I said. ‘Thanks for sending in the cavalry, the other day, at the GWF.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘I just guessed,’ I said and took a deep breath. ‘I thought I should tell you …’ I tried to launch into my pre-prepared I didn’t mean it speech but faltered, and she jumped right in.
‘I guess you’re wondering why I wrote that note,’ she said.
My speech went right out of the window, and I just nodded mutely.
‘I’m sorry about the other day,’ she said, staring at her hands. ‘You asked me if I wanted to go out with you …’
‘Yes, but I was just …’
‘I’m sorry I got upset.’
‘My fault. But I was … I didn’t really mean …’
‘But nobody has ever asked me out before.’
I shut my mouth with a snap.
‘And I wasn’t really sure what to say.’
My mouth fell open again, and I stared at her. The most beautiful creature on the planet and nobody had ever asked her out. (Yes, I know what I said before but I was just trying to convince myself, OK?)
‘I heard you already had a boyfriend,’ I said. ‘I heard he was seventeen.’
She nodded and smiled, a little sadly I thought. ‘I heard that one too.’
‘But you’re …’ I hadn’t intended it to go like this, but now it all came out in a rush, ‘but you’re beautiful. You’re gorgeous. You’re smart, you’re … you’re … I can’t believe you haven’t been asked out by lots of guys.’
She shook her head. ‘Never.’
That was a real eye-opener. It dawned on me that we look at people and we judge them and decide what is going on inside their brains without ever getting to know them.
Erica wasn’t icy. She wasn’t aloof. She didn’t consider herself better than the rest of us kids.
Erica was just shy!
No-one had ever asked her out before because, like me, they’d been frightened off by her looks and her intelligence.
I guess she was naturally shy, and that hadn’t helped because it made her seem quite stand-offish.
And, I reasoned, the more other kids ignored her, the more isolated she became.
I said, ‘My dad was a radio announcer, we moved around a lot.’
She looked up at me curiously.
I continued, ‘I’ve been to five different schools in the last six years. Found it hard to make friends every time we moved.’
Her eyes widened. She drew in a sudden breath and said, ‘Me too!’
I smiled at her; I had guessed as much.
She stared straight at me, for the first time, and the whole story came bubbling out. ‘I was born here, but we moved back to Scotland when I was still a baby. Stayed there till I was eight. Then we returned to New Zealand. I had to leave all my friends behind, and all the new kids spoke funny, and they played different games and it took me ages to make any friends, and then, just when I did, we changed cities and … and …’
She looked like she was going to cry so I jumped right in and said, ‘That’s the story of my life. Except the bit about Scotland. And the part about kids speaking funny. And the games.’
She laughed, and the nearly-tears went away. She said, ‘They told us that Kiwi kids were really friendly, but I never found that they were. And then all the other girls in the class started to get boyfriends, and nobody ever asked me, and I started to think that there must be something wrong with me.’
I changed couches and sat next to her. It felt like the right thing to do.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ I said. ‘Not by a long way! I guess all the boys were just a bit afraid of you.’
‘Except for you,’ she said.
Just then didn’t seem like the right time to tell her that I had been blackmailed into asking her out. So I didn’t.
I said instead, ‘So, um …’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you, um, go out with me?’
She turned to face me.
‘Everyone says you’re a troublemaker. A loner.’
I held my breath.
‘But I don’t think it’s true,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the things you do.’
I looked seriously at her. ‘You’ll ruin my reputation if you tell anyone.’
She giggled. ‘I won’t say a word. And by the way, yes.’
It took me a moment or two to work out what the ‘yes’ meant.
And then I walked her home.
As I said, Erica didn’t really live on my way home from school but she could have lived in Invercargill and I’d still have walked home with her.
Words are powerful things. They can start wars and stop them. They can change people’s minds and change people’s lives.
I didn’t know it then, but those few words of mine, not particularly wise, not particularly wonderful, would change Erica’s life. A few days later, she mustered up the courage to come out of her shell and made an effort to make friends with one of the girls in her class. And that was just the first step towards a whole new Erica.