I’m dreading school this week. I know full well that another vlog puts me right in Erin’s bombing range, and I don’t know how to respond to Danny’s heart. It might just be a friendly heart, or it might be a big, pulsating, “LET’S BE TOGETHER” heart.
No prizes for guessing which one Lauren thinks it is. When we’re searching for a table in the cafeteria at lunch, I tell her about the heart.
“He could just be being friendly,” Lauren says grumpily. This isn’t really the answer I want to hear. She’s been grumpy all morning.
“You don’t know that for sure!” I say.
“Oh, come on, Millie.” Lauren almost snaps at me. “You know Danny and Erin are spending LOADS of time together. Stop being greedy! Bradley is your man! He is a major full-on nerd, and you are pretty with a mega brain. You went on a date. Do the love math.”
The truth is, I think she may be right. He did look at me through his glasses in the same way that he looks at escalators—with love and respect. “But do I want to have a relationship with someone who spends all their time in lifts?”
“Lifts are sexy!” Lauren says with her big wide eyes, annoyed. “In films, people always kiss in lifts because they are private, aren’t they? You could even combine vlogs! ‘Hashtag Help From An Escalator.’”
This makes me laugh LOTS. “Lauren … don’t be ridicu—”
What happens next will go down in history.
While I’m laughing, I seem to completely lose the ability to actually walk. My right leg decides it would like to break free of my body and make a dash for the other side of the room. I find myself flying through the air in slow motion. I slam my hands down to break my fall, but my tray and my food fly absolutely everywhere. I basically create a chip fountain. It’s probably spectacular to watch.
The whole cafeteria erupts into clapping and cheering. This is normally what happens when someone drops their tray, but it’s probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me EVER.
Lovely Gracie runs over and starts helping me pick up the chips. Lauren picks me up. She understands falling over. “It’s hormonal,” she whispers. “We can’t help it. It causes an ankle-and-toe imbalance. Even without high heels. Remember when I did it? It’s a normal part of life.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Danny staring at me.
Way to go, Millie. There’s nothing like a good carpet of carbohydrates when you’re trying to impress the man of your dreams.
I also see Erin. The grin is wide and the phone is UP. She got all the aftermath.
Also RUNNING toward me is Bradley with another plate of food. How did he get that so quickly? He must be sacrificing his own chips.
“Here you are, Millie!” he says. “Saves you waiting in line again.”
I know where that photo is going to end up, too.
Erin has double missiles now. “The Fall” and what she would term “The Dweeb Save.” She certainly doesn’t approve of someone like Bradley. He’s got the following, but he hasn’t got any cool in her opinion.
I brush myself off and slink into a chair as fast as I can. Things get back to normal in the cafeteria quite quickly, but in my head there’s a big, really bad music festival of Erin and people’s mouths yelling and laughing and staring and pointing and noise and …
Breathe. I just have to take deep breaths and BREATHE.
“Mills, are you all right now?”
Lauren knows that the answer to this question is no, but she isn’t sure what to do about it. Her asking “Are you all right?” is kind of her way of saying “Please be okay” and “I don’t know what to do to make you feel better.”
I tell her I’m fine, but my heart is racing and I feel dizzy and sick and like I might explode. Of course I’m not fine. What just happened is embarrassing in a terminal way.
When he’s actually around, my dad still talks about things that happened to people at school, and he’s ancient. He can’t remember his credit card PIN, but he can tell you about the time Nicholas Clarkson’s swimming trunks floated to the top of the swimming pool before Nicholas Clarkson did. He was called “Nudey Nick” for SEVEN years after that. My dad still calls him it. To my dad, he’ll always be “NUDEY NICK, NUDEY NICK, YOUR BARE BOTTOM MAKES US SICK.” They even made up a song for him.
Now I’ll be Mills … MILLS THE SPILLS. It even rhymes! “Mills the Spills, Mills the Spills, with her dropped-chip-lunch coolness, she kills.” I will be called this forever. Even when I am forty-three and living in—
Breathe, Millie. Breathe. That’s what I have to say to myself.
It’s at times like this that my mum rushes into my head and says, “Millie, you’re fine. You’re okay. You’re okay.” It’s like she’s chanting it. She’s done it in real life, and she does it in my brain when I need her to.
Eventually, I sense the feeling come back to my face a bit. My second lunch has gone very cold, and I just push it away. I feel bad rejecting Bradley’s chips, but I’ve lost my appetite completely. My mouth isn’t working, but my eyes are. Erin has squeezed next to Danny, and they are giggling. I know what will happen now.…