How to Keep a Boy from Kissing You

by Tara Eglington

  ‘Looks like Hayden would’ve missed out on knighthood then,’ I murmured to Cassie.

  ‘Aurora.’ Mr Bannerman shook his finger at me lightheartedly.

  Hayden used the projector to display the weaponry used by knights.

  ‘Lethal!’ Travis yelled, pointing at a disturbingly sharp-looking axe.

  Jeffrey made swishing noises as he swung the imaginary axe. Ethan James, sitting next to him, pretended to be hit and fell dramatically across his desk, making choking noises. You can’t fight evolution. Centuries of going to battle and wielding weaponry still survives in men’s cellular memory today. No wonder they’re always so restless in class. All that excess testosterone that used to be expelled by slicing into someone’s skull is now processed by playing Xbox games and firing up a barbecue.

  Hayden strolled over to one of the storage cupboards and drew out a long silver sword. ‘I thought I’d bring this in to show you all. It’s a model of a thirteenth-century sword used by English knights.’

  He ran his finger up the flat of the shining blade. The girls all gasped.

  Travis leapt up from his seat. ‘Man! You’ve got to let me see that.’

  The guys all started clambering over each other to get a better look. The girls stared at Hayden like a real medieval knight had manifested before them. Great. In one short moment, Hayden had blown my presentation completely out of the water. My only hope was that Mr Bannerman would value my great research over Hayden’s blatant use of a prop. I looked over at him. Mr Bannerman held the sword in his hand, looking as awed as a young boy.

  Hayden was swamped by willing sword handlers for the next ten minutes. I was hardly impressed. Throughout my childhood I’d seen Hayden in his backyard wielding imaginary swords. So now he had a real one. Big deal. It wasn’t like he’d defended a lady’s honour with it or anything.

  Mr Bannerman finally managed to gain control over the class. ‘Great job, everyone. Especially you, Aurora.’

  I smiled graciously. Obviously Mr Bannerman realised that all Hayden Paris had done was show off a boy toy.

  ‘And you, Hayden,’ he added. ‘You two definitely would have known how to treat each other right in a medieval court. Early mark, everyone.’

  Mr Bannerman’s statement was met with cheers.

  If I was in a medieval court, I would have arranged for a dragon to go after Hayden Paris a long time ago.

  ‘The nerve!’ I cried.

  Cassie and I stood at our lockers, picking up our books for the next class. Photos of Snookums and Bebe adorned the inside of my locker. Snookums’s photo was particularly cute — he was wearing a Santa hat. I smiled, thinking of how many times he’d knocked it off in protest during the photo shoot. Sometimes I suspect he’s against the holiday season. Every year he hisses when we bring in the Christmas tree.

  ‘The nerve of what?’ Cassie asked as she pulled out her cooking folder.

  ‘If you’re talking about nerves, let me tell you, mine are frazzled,’ Sara said as she and Lindsay came out of the advanced mathematics room next door to the lockers. ‘Mr McKay was wearing tartan pants.’ She clapped a hand to her forehead in horror. ‘I understand pride in a Highland heritage, but those pants are too much. The red and green checks made me dizzy every time I looked at him.’

  ‘The nerve!’ I repeated before everyone totally forgot my original statement.

  ‘The nerve of what?’ Cassie said again. I was having a déjà vu moment.

  ‘The nerve of Hayden Paris!’ I cried. ‘Did you see that smile on his face when history class finished?’

  ‘Aurora, he was probably just happy that his presentation went well. You know how he loves to get good marks,’ Cassie said, applying pink lip gloss.

  ‘Believe me, it was not an I’m-happy-about-my-scholastic-achievements smile,’ I said. ‘I know Hayden’s smiles. It was his Ha!-I’ve-foiled-you-again-Aurora! grin. Similar to his I’m-laughing-at-your-dating-disaster smirk, only with more of an upwards tilt of his chin.’ I jutted my chin up to demonstrate.

  ‘Doesn’t the fact that you know the minute details of Hayden Paris’s smiles tell you something?’ Cassie said as the four of us started walking towards our respective classes.

  ‘Huh?’

  Lindsay’s mobile went off. She pulled out the baby-blue phone and looked at the identity of the caller. ‘It’s Tyler.’ Her voice was several tones higher than normal.

  We all stopped, listening to the ringtone: LeAnn Rimes’s ‘How Do I Live’. It was so not single-girl friendly. Lindsay had to change it.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked.

  ‘Not answer,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Not answer?’ Lindsay squeaked, looking from us to the phone and back at us again.

  ‘I’ll answer,’ Sara said. ‘Give him a verbal battering.’

  ‘I can do that myself,’ Lindsay said, her finger paused above the answer button.

  ‘No-one is answering!’ I cried. I grabbed the phone out of Lindsay’s hand. It suddenly went silent.

  Sara had a mischievous look on her face. ‘Maybe we should have answered and hung up.’

  The mobile started up again.

  Sara grabbed for it. ‘Verbal battering coming up!’

  I held the phone above my head. It was times like these that I was glad of my statuesque height.

  ‘Hayden was right,’ Cassie said. ‘Tyler’s already lonely and it’s only been four days.’

  Lindsay looked hopeful.

  ‘Lindsay, if you talk to him now, you’ll just be all flustered,’ I said. ‘What you want is cool rationality. Tyler broke up with you, out of the blue, with no real explanation. You can’t let him treat you like that and then take him back straight away.’

  ‘True,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘Plus, how do you know he’s just not calling to ask for his things back?’ I said as the phone finally went quiet. ‘That would be really embarrassing, thinking he can’t live without you and then discovering what he can’t live without is his rugby jersey. You deserve more than a phone call.’

  I pushed a few buttons on the phone, making Tyler’s display come up as: Mean guy who broke up with you without a good reason.

  ‘That’s why you shouldn’t pick up at all this week,’ I added.

  ‘What?’ all three of them cried.

  ‘When you’re not picking up, Tyler will start wondering, “Hmm. What’s Lindsay up to? Is she seeing another guy? Oh my god. She’s seeing another guy! No!”’ I said the last word like I was in an action movie and had discovered a bomb with a lit fuse.

  ‘Okay. Your plan sounds good so far. Tyler’s dying of curiosity. What next?’ Sara asked.

  ‘He realises that he has to talk to Lindsay face to face. Face to face meaning in front of all of us so we can read his body language and determine his true objective. We’ll prep Lindsay to deliver the perfect response.’ I gave Lindsay a critical look. ‘So, can I trust you not to answer?’

  ‘You can trust me,’ she said, in the most assured voice I’d heard from her post-break-up.

  ‘I’m holding you to that. And change that ringtone!’ I yelled after her as I headed off to biology.

  CHAPTER 8

  An Ill-Fated Audition

  Mr Blacklock strode in, throwing his books down on the desk with a heavy crash, making it clear that his ever-constant black mood had become even blacker.

  ‘Today we’ll be continuing our studies on bacteria,’ he said, and opened up our textbook. ‘Pathogenic bacteria; “pathos” being a Greek word meaning sadness or pain —’

  I guessed I could say this was a pathogenic class then?

  Mr Blacklock went into detail about the incredibly fast reproduction cycle of the bacteria, and how it produced toxins that seriously affected its host. His face was alight with interest. Very odd. I mean, how did he know that the bacteria weren’t aiming to come after him? Personally, I intended to maintain a healthy disinterest in disease-causing organisms. All this talk of disease and suf
fering made me think about mortality. Life was perilous. Who knew when some rogue group of single-celled organisms might take me out? I’d die without ever becoming an award-winning author. Without ever being kissed. That was just about the scariest thing I’d ever heard.

  I tried to think of something else. The Much Ado About Nothing auditions were straight after school, which was only about three hours away now. Last night I’d studied several of the opening scenes, making sure I was familiar with Hero’s lines. But I still felt nervous. Did Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep feel this way before an audition?

  ‘Now, I would like everyone to make a table showing different types of bacterial diseases,’ Mr Blacklock said, cutting across my audition jitters.

  I took out my sparkly ruler to draw up a table.

  ‘I want sketches of the bacteria as well,’ Mr Blacklock said with a glower, before burying his head in a thick book.

  Would bacteria really be that particular about getting their portraits done? I mean, with all that single-cell multiplying, each one was exactly the same, right?

  I let out a sigh. At the sound, Hayden lifted his head from his work and turned to face me.

  ‘The bacteria, right? I’ve taken it upon myself to make them a little more cheery.’ He grabbed his exercise book and pointed to his bacteria, which he’d given top hats and canes. ‘What do you reckon? I was thinking Fred Astaire.’

  I giggled. Hayden let out a laugh. Suddenly a sense of foreboding came over me and I slowly looked up into the unamused eyes of Mr Blacklock.

  ‘Paris, Skye, you’re both coming back here after school. Year Seven never fails to make a shocking mess of the lab, and today you can have the pleasure of cleaning it.’

  ‘But, Mr Blacklock, the auditions for Much Ado About Nothing are this afternoon!’ I cried.

  ‘Be here or I’m suspending both of you.’ His voice was icy.

  ‘Sir, it was my fault,’ Hayden said quickly. ‘It’s not fair if Aurora misses the audition.’

  ‘Life isn’t fair, Mr Paris. Now get back to work.’ Mr Blacklock walked back to his desk.

  I felt like killing both him and Hayden. Now, after all the work I’d done to get my friends wanting to audition, I was going to miss out myself! I glared at the back of Hayden’s head. I glared at my biology textbook. By the time I’d glared through the rest of my classes and the end-of-school bell rang, I felt like the Grinch. As I walked to the biology lab, ready to do slave labour for the tyrannous Mr Blacklock, I realised that I couldn’t let the girls know about my fate. If I said I couldn’t be at the audition, then one by one they’d all decide not to go themselves. Then there’d be no distraction for Lindsay from the loss of Tyler, no great role for Sara, and no way for Cassie and Jelena to spend time with their crushes. No, I would suffer silently until they’d finished the auditions.

  I strode into the biology lab. Hayden was already there, standing by a mountain of cleaning products.

  ‘Aurora —’

  ‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said furiously. ‘My audition is completely ruined.’

  My phone started ringing.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ My mother’s calm voice came down the line. ‘Just checking in. Isn’t the audition this afternoon?’

  I gripped one of the desks. How was I going to explain to my mother that there wasn’t going to be any role for me now?

  ‘It’s this afternoon,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to get the role because —’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you’ll get it,’ Mum interrupted.

  ‘Listen, Mum —’

  I had no chance to explain the situation before she cut in again. ‘No excuses, Aurora. Good luck.’

  She hung up.

  ‘Your mum’s back?’ Hayden asked, looking at me with a cautious expression in his eyes. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I said, don’t talk to me.’ I put my cherry-red mobile back in my pink handbag. ‘My mum is going to kill me for missing the audition. And I’m missing out on Shakespeare. So if you value your life, I repeat, do not talk to me.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Hayden ran a hand through his hair, a miserable look on his face. ‘You have no idea how hard I’ve been working towards this audition. But if we hurry through cleaning —’

  ‘Hurry?’ I said, looking at the floor, where a river of black lapped at my feet. ‘It looks like there’s been an oil spill in here!’

  ‘Year Seven was doing some sort of experiment with ink,’ Hayden explained. ‘But if we rush through it, we’ll still make the audition. Mr Peterman’s auditions are epic. If he could, he’d do callbacks.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go for it,’ I said, grabbing a sponge. No-one can say I’m not an optimist.

  Hayden started frenetically mopping.

  ‘I guess you have a lot of experience with cleaning now,’ I said, a smile forming on my face as my sponge soaked up spots of black ink. ‘You know, after the job you had to do on my desk the other day.’

  Hayden squeezed out the mop. ‘I hope you’ve learnt your lesson about graffiti. It’s sad to think that the person you wrote that message of love to bore the consequences of it.’

  ‘I’m not even going to deign to reply,’ I said, rinsing down the beakers.

  Hayden finished the floor and joined me by the work stations. He began putting away the Bunsen burners. ‘You seemed to enjoy my presentation today. That smile you gave me, the one where your apple-green eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and your lips —’

  ‘Are you delirious?’ I splashed water in his direction.

  ‘Why don’t you take my temperature right now?’ Hayden said, transferring the bottles of ink to the cupboard below the bench. ‘Here’s the excuse you’ve been waiting for to get up close and personal.’

  I just rolled my eyes in response.

  ‘Or perhaps you’re the one with the temperature,’ Hayden said, tapping a finger against his lips thoughtfully. ‘Burning up with love. I think we should check it right now.’ He pulled out a lab thermometer and leapt towards me.

  ‘We are not checking anything, Paris!’ I yelled as he tried to put the thermometer under my arm.

  I pushed him away, and in the struggle Mr Blacklock’s plastic model of the human heart fell off the bench. Arteries and valves scattered across the floor.

  ‘We’re meant to be cleaning up, not making more mess!’ I cried. ‘We’re never going to get to the audition at this rate.’

  Hayden put the thermometer away with a reluctant look on his face. I chased a runaway ventricle.

  ‘So, a thought crossed my mind,’ he began.

  ‘Must have been a long and lonely journey,’ I quipped, surveying the room for anything else that needed doing.

  ‘Very funny.’ Hayden put the cleaning equipment back into the cupboard. I guessed he’d come to the same conclusion as I had that the room was finished. ‘If you have nothing to occupy your time other than coming up with anti-Hayden comments, then I feel sympathy for you.’

  ‘Sympathy?’ I cried with a laugh, slamming the cupboard shut. ‘That’s an unknown concept for you, Paris. Believe me, I have plenty of things to occupy my time.’

  Hayden grabbed his jacket and we headed out the door. ‘Oh yeah? Go on then. I’m dying to hear about them.’

  He strode away down the hall. With my long legs, I was just able to match his pace.

  ‘Okay then,’ I said. ‘I’m writing what’s going to become a bestselling non-fiction book: He’s So Into You.’

  ‘He’s So Into You?’ Hayden repeated with a naughty look in his eyes. ‘So you think you’re an expert?’

  ‘Are you daring to question my appeal to the male sex?’ I said, feeling my blood heat up.

  ‘No. Believe me, from the guys’ comments about your group’s “aesthetic appeal” there’s no question of that,’ Hayden replied.

  ‘What’s “So you think you’re an expert?” supposed to mean then?’ I asked, hurriedly applying pink lip gloss as we raced towards t
he audition room.

  ‘Just that you’re blind to what’s going on half the time.’

  ‘I see perfectly!’ I cried, almost stumbling on my pink heels as we dashed across the courtyard’s uneven paving. The drama room was in sight now!

  ‘So am I right to assume you’ll be doing a lot of field research for this book?’ Hayden asked.

  ‘Yes. In fact, you can help with that. What signs would you say your friend Scott displays when he’s into a girl?’

  ‘Aurora, I know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Research,’ I replied innocently.

  ‘You’re trying to suss out Scott’s feelings for a certain blonde friend of yours.’

  ‘All research is for purely scientific purposes.’

  We dashed up the steps of the drama room. I felt jittery from head to toe. Why couldn’t I have got here early, prepared myself, and soothed my nerves with positive affirmations as I waited for Mr Peterman? Oh, that’s right. Hayden had ruined that plan.

  Hayden twisted the handle of the door, to no avail. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘Locked!’ All hope was gone.

  ‘We’ll have to go round the back, through the backstage area.’

  Hayden started jogging again. I let out a sigh and dashed after him.

  ‘Seriously, though, don’t you think our friends are able to look after their own love lives?’ he asked.

  ‘In my opinion, Cupid is understaffed,’ I puffed. ‘Therefore, I’m offering a helping hand to high-school couples — giving them a little nudge —’

  ‘A shove, you mean.’

  Hayden turned his hazel eyes on me. I met them unwaveringly.

  ‘How do you think any goal is achieved?’ I said. ‘You’ve got to have energy and drive. So, are you going to have some input into this bestselling book and tell me about Scott’s romantic habits?’