AFTER MY LITTLE RENDEZVOUS WITH Jet in the library, I had some serious thinking to do.
On the one hand, my Jet Lucas fantasy looked like it was about to turn into reality – but which reality? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out whether Jet wanted me to be his sound engineer, his songwriting partner or his girlfriend – or a combination of all three. On the other hand, it didn’t really matter because either way, it would not go down well with the KGB.
At this point in time, anyone with any sense would have been busy coming up with a plan to protect themselves from certain pain. It might have helped if I had someone with whom to discuss potential plans but, although Meko was talking to me again, acceptable topics of conversation did not include Jet Lucas. In fact, Meko had decreed that every time I slipped up and mentioned the J-word I would have to buy her a new mobile phone charm. At the rate I was going, she was not going to be able to lift her phone. Not only that, if she suspected I was even thinking about Jet, Meko would whip out her iPod and start listening to her impressive collection of J-punk. Which is kind of fitting, when you think about it.
So what did I do? Nothing. Like an ostrich in knee socks, I stuck my head firmly in the sand and hoped all my problems would go away. By which I mean that I hoped Kravitz and Goss would get run over by a tram on their way home from school and that Jet would somehow divine that, yes, I was more than happy to be his little shadow/girlfriend/muse/ whatever he wanted – without me having to actually pick up the phone.
And yes, I know that sometimes you have to make hard choices in life, but surely not until you’re grown-up and all the fun’s over anyway. And that’s the whole thing about being a teenager. Most of the time you don’t have a choice. You’re told what to do, you’re pushed this way and that. Things just happen to you over which you have no control. I don’t think I’ve asked for much – or expected much. Not since you … not for a while.
And then Jet Lucas asked me out on an actual date!
I was on my way to History class, when, like a blond Superman zooming down to save Lois Lane in freefall, Jet appeared in front of me and whisked me around the corner of the Science building and kind of tossed me up against the wall. He grabbed my hand and checked my fingers.
‘What are you doing?’ I squawked. All I needed was for Melissa Kravitz to see me getting jiggy with Jet in the playground and I was toast. Jet didn’t seem to get how things worked in the real world – the one where the KGB was in charge.
‘Hmm,’ he said, still examining my hand. ‘I don’t understand it. None of your fingers are broken.’ He trained those bottomless blue eyes on my face. ‘So why haven’t you called me? I thought’ – and he did that thing where he leaned in so close that his voice was just a breath against my cheek – ‘we had something going?’
Kravitz could have been standing next to me holding an AK47 and I wouldn’t have noticed she was there.
‘Songwriting, yeah?’ I wheezed. ‘We’re talking about songwriting?’
‘We can talk about whatever you like. Saturday night, eight o’clock. I’ll meet you out the front of the Leaning Tower of Pizza.’
Needless to say I never made it to History that day.
I realise that I’ve transcribed practically every word that Jet Lucas said to me up to this point in time, and I’m scaring myself. I am definitely not going to describe our first date – except to say, deluded fool that I was, I truly believed I’d died and gone to teen heaven.
Oh, stuff it. I will tell you, because despite everything that happened and everything I know now, it was still one of the best nights of my life …