My life got tipped upside down in the library. I was sitting there with a book, when I became aware of a stare burrowing into me. Yes, burrowing is the right word - it was that intense. I glanced up and saw the culprit was a beautiful vision in black- a girl vision. There had to be some mistake. Girls didn’t look at me. They didn’t even see me, or if they did, they quickly looked the other way. Fat guy, that’s me. But this girl’s eyes were locked on tight. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel annoyed about it or uncomfort able. I felt peaceful.

Then something truly amazing happened. She came over and sat down beside me.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Urn,’ I replied.

It wasn’t up to my usual witty standard, but you have to remember, I was in shock.

‘I’ve seen you here before,’ she said.

That was odd. I hadn’t seen her - and believe me, a Goth girl stands out in sleepy Canleytown.

‘I noticed that you’re nearly always in the same section of the library,’ she continued. ‘Non-fiction - literary stuff. That’s why I came over. I got curious.’

‘About what?’

‘The whole deal - who you are, what you do.’ She gestured at the book beside me: The Lives qf Writers.

‘Why do you read books like that?’

I’ve got this theory that sometimes the words that fall from our mouths are chosen by someone else. I never would have been brave enough to say, ‘I want to be a writer.’ But those are the words that tumbled out.

‘Are you sure?’ She leaned in closer. ‘I know a lot of people say that, but it’s not easy. Hardly anyone makes it.’

‘I don’t care. That won’t stop me.’

Someone else had picked out those words for me, too. I didn’t share my crazy secrets with strangers - until now.

‘Wow ... what do you want to write?’

‘Poems. Stories. Anything. Everything. I’m into writing. Full stop!’

Her chalk-white face lit up. ‘Yes, you are a writer, I can tell. And you’re really passionate about it. That’s so cool.’

Those words went straight to the framers. In my mind I have a shop that frames good things that have been said about me. It doesn’t get a lot of business. No one had ever thought of me as ‘passionate’ or

‘cool’ before.

I tried to nod in all the right places as she raved about books and her fondness for words.

‘My faves are true stories,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean they can’t be fiction, but they have to ring with honesty and be written from the heart. Good writers can transport me to another world.’

I was having trouble finding any words at all. My brain was in meltdown, possibly because I was day dreaming about kissing those red, red lips. But I was able to conjure up one small slice of conversation.

‘Are you interested in angels?’

The book she was clutching hinted that she was.

‘Not this kind. This is silly stuff I only flicked through it to see if they got it right.’

‘And did they?’

‘Nope.’ Her eyes were the colour of clouds. ‘They never do.’

That was too good an opening for me not to dive in.

‘So you know about angels, do you?’

I said it in a jokey way, hoping it might score a grin. But she looked back at me very seriously and said, ‘I’m learning.’

There was an uneasy silence after that. I didn’t know what to say next, apart from, ‘You’re really weird,’ which didn’t seem like a good idea.

Thank god she laughed. Not a rattle-your-bones kind of laugh or a cute chuckle, but enough to let me know she wasn’t so strange after all.

‘It’s good to talk to you,’ she said.

I shrugged as if this was nothing to me, as if I regularly got chatted up by drop-dead gorgeous girls. I did, too, though not in my waking hours. But this girl was definitely not a dream, and I didn’t even know her name - so I asked her.

‘Shari,’ she said.

I told her mine - Andrew - and as I did, I took a huge risk. I smiled at her.

My smile hadn’t been used for a long time so it probably wouldn’t have won any awards, but if it was lame she didn’t say so. Instead, for the first time in my life, a girl looked at me as if I was more than a fat boy.

It was all going so well, until she crushed me to a pulp.

‘This place is way too cold for me,’ she said. ‘I’m out of here.’

But then, in her very next sentence, she un-crushed me. ‘There’s a cosy coffee shop at the mall. We can talk some more there - if you like?’

I managed to restrict myself to only two nods, in case my head got up momentum in the excitement and couldn’t stop.

I was worried. The mall was more brightly lit than the library. Perhaps Shari hadn’t really seen me prop erly before. The subdued lighting might have made me look slimmer; that and the fact that for most of the time we talked, I’d sucked in my breath to shrink my waist.