He looked confused. ‘What does a Julie look like?’
‘Not me, that’s for sure.’
He puffed out a laugh.
‘I just would’ve preferred something else, that’s all. I couldn’t say that in front of my mum though. She was aSound of Musicsuperfan. Her first-born daughter could never have been called anything else.’
A smile danced at his lips.‘You’re named after Julie Andrews?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, it could’ve been worse,’ he sighed. ‘Your mum might have used some curtains to make matching lederhosen for you and the rest of the family.’
This cracked me up. We were still laughing as we reached the gate and our feet slowed. He turned to me.
‘You know, I have no idea why you’d object to that name. It’s really pretty.’ Then he looked me in the eyes and added, ‘Like you.’
Heat shot to my cheeks. I could hear my heart in my ears. And I remember gazing at him and thinking,Please, oh please, kiss me right this second because if you don’t I might just die on the spot.A slow smile appeared on his face and my palms suddenly felt slick.
‘Same time again tomorrow?’ he said.
I tried to look like this was no big deal but suspect I failed entirely.
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Why not?’
Chapter 11
We met up in the park regularly over the course of several weeks and studied together as we listened to some of those albums everyone played to death back then. ‘Automatic for the People’by R.E.M. ‘Blue Lines’ by Massive Attack. And that one song – ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ by the Orb – which demanded by some unwritten law that you stopped whatever you were doing to lie on your back and gaze at the sky to fully appreciate its profound trippyness.
We’d loll next to each other for hours, pausing to buy ice creams or to unwrap the tinfoil on sandwiches put together that morning, occasionally swapping if we hadn’t found anything decent in our parents’ fridges. Sometimes, we’d test each other on our respective subjects, which definitely helped, even if the incomprehensible physics questions only reinforced my decision to have taken History and English.
I’d always wait for him to suggest when we should get together next, because he seemed to be on some kind of schedule which meant he was unavailable at certain times. Whenever I asked about it, his responses were vague, and he quickly changed the subject.
The girlfriend question started playing heavily on me. I strongly suspected he was seeing someone – whoever it was that was keeping him away from me on certain days. But I was hardly in a position to push the issue. As far as I could tell, Sam had put me firmly in the friend zone. And it was nearly killing me.
By now, my crush on him was feverish, being around him an agonising bliss. With each new moment we spent together, I regretted having signed up to Camp America. Nothing, surely, was going to beat these endless summer days . . .
I had to snap out of it. It wasn’t like he was my boyfriend. In fact, he’d never made even the slightest move. And sadly, my own sense of empowerment did not stretch as far as humiliating myself by making an unwanted pass.
When the sun returned on our final day of study, it was intense, the kind that makes you feel woozy, even in the dappled light beneath the trees. The park was deserted, the rest of the world at work, the end of our schooldays within touching distance. When I mentioned I was feeling overheated, Sam walked over to the lakeside café and returned with two ice-cold lemonades.
‘Press the bottle against the back of your neck. It’s the fastest place to cool you down.’
‘Not your forehead?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Back there is closer to the thermoregulation centre at the base of the brain.’
‘Okay, Einstein. I hope for your sake that comes up in your final exam.’
‘Sadly, it’s not on the syllabus.’
I pulled my hair away from the nape of my neck and pressed the bottle against it, closing my eyes as a shiver ran down my spine. When I opened them again, Sam was looking at me, his gaze soft and indefinable. He cleared his throat and glanced away.
‘Good tip,’ I said. ‘It worked.’
I was about to roll over and carry on reading, when he said, ‘Your shoulders are pink, Jules.’
‘Oh. Damn.’ I reached into my bag to pull out some sun cream as he returned to his book.
