Jamie still hasn’t called me; or even messaged.
Why hasn’t he called?
Maybe I shouldn’t just have assumed he’d know who ‘Summer’ was? Maybe I should have written down my surname, too? Then again, how many women called ‘Summer’ can he possibly know?
“Er, I meant for you to read it out loud,” Alex says from the next balcony. “Not in your head. I’m not a mind reader, youknow.”
I hesitate, running my hands over the worn cover of the diary. I don’t really trust him to keep his word and resist making fun of me over it. But Iamstill desperate to talk to someone about Jamie, and Alex is the only person available, so…
“Okay, but youhaveto remember you promised not to take the piss out of it, right?”
“A Scout always keeps his word,” he replies, closing his eyes.
I open the diary at random and begin…
The Secret Diary of Summer Brookes, Age Thirteen-and-Three-Quarters
We have a new girl at school this term. Her name’s Chloe Gardner, and she looks just like a Disney princess, with blue eyes and all this wavy blonde hair down her back. Well, her eyes aren’t down her BACK, obviously. That would be weird. Her eyes are in the normal place, and she has these really cool pink glasses that kind of go up the ends. She can hardly see without them. I’m going to the optician next week for a check-up and I’m SO hoping it turns out there’s something wrong with my eyes because Mum says she won’t buy me glasses like Chloe’s unless I actually need them.
(She’s also got these weird thick-soled shoes which she said she has to wear because she has “flat feet”. She really hates them, but I think they’re quite cool. I’d quite like a pair.)
Anyway, she’s just moved into a house near us, and it turns out she’s a massive Taylor Swift fan, like me, so she came roundafter school to listen to music and stuff. After a while, Chloe asked me what I want to do when I leave school, and I wasn’t really sure how to answer her. I mean, I know I want to be a famous singer, obviously, but I’ve noticed that most people just laugh when I tell them that, so at first I said I didn’t really know: that I don’t want to pick just one thing, because, a) it’s much too stressful, and b) if I pick ONE thing to be then I would lose the opportunity of all the rest. Like, if you decide that you’re definitely going to be a train driver, then you can’t very well go off and be a helicopter pilot, too, can you? (Unless there are train driving helicopter pilots, and I don’t think there are, but I’ll ask dad about it later.)
The thing was, though, Chloe kept on saying I had to pick something — which I guess is true, because that’s how life works, isn’t it? So in the end I just blurted out that I want to be famous and sing on stage, and of course, she laughed at me. So I pretended I was just joking, and that I want to be a beauty therapist, like her, even though I can’t imagine anything worse than having to get up and do the same job, every single day, over and over until you basically just die of either boredom or old age. I just can’t.
Chloe says that’s just life, though; that not everyone can be the next Taylor Swift, and I know she’s right, but then, at choir practice last week Jamie Reynolds was standing behind me and when we were done, he tapped me on my shoulder and said I had a really nice voice. He said it like he meant it, too. Like, I don’t think he was just trying to be nice? But as soon as he started speaking to me, I went bright red and I couldn’t say anything back. It was so embarrassing. I wanted to die. He’ll 100% know I like him now, so I’m having to wait untilI see him leave for school every morning so there’s no chance of me bumping into him outside the house and making it even clearer.
I stop reading and glance over at Alex, who’s still leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed and his hands folded neatly in front of him, looking for all the world as if he’s fast asleep. Which is probably a good thing, considering what an utter cringe-fest these particular diary entries turned out to be.
I close the diary and get quietly to my feet, hoping to make it back into my room before he wakes up.
“I can’t believe you wanted flat feet just because your friend had them,” Alex says, without opening his eyes.
Damn.
“I was thirteen,” I point out defensively. “I expect you were busy doing good deeds and selflessly thinking of others at that age, were you? Saving cats from trees and stuff?”
“Well,” he says seriously, “We weren’t allowed pets at the orphanage, of course, so there were no cats to save, but we were encouraged to do good deeds, yes.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to make another joke now, would you, Alexander Fox?” I ask, looking at him sternly over the top of the diary.
“Who, me? The… what was it you called me? A ‘dementor’, wasn’t it? Surely not?”
He pouts in fake outrage. It’s actually quite sexy. Or it would be if it wasn’t, you know,him.
“If I apologize for saying those things, will you be serious for a minute?”
“I’m always serious, Summer. I’m a serious kind of guy.”
“Yeah, I got that. You didn’t actually grow up in an orphanage, though, didn’t you?”
He grins.
“No, I grew up in Brighton. What about you?”
“Margate,” I admit, waiting for him to snigger at this — most people do, when they find out I’m from Margate — but he’s uncharacteristically quiet.
“This Jamie,” he says, after a short silence. “I hate to ask such an obvious question, but why was it so awful for him to figure out you liked him? It would have saved you all this drama if you’d just told him at the time, wouldn’t it?”
