by Katy Cannon
I watched him go, enjoying the perfect moment a little longer – until I saw him catch up to Lola, walking close beside her as they turned the corner. Then I went and shut the door behind him, absolutely not slamming it. Much.
Clearly, I had my work cut out if I wanted Zach to really notice me, the way I’d noticed him. And not just so I could get the experience I needed to write Gran’s book.
Maybe he wasn’t an Austen fan after all. But he still made my heart beat faster when he smiled, and that didn’t happen to me often. Or ever.
Behind me, the sound of too-loud music playing through headphones started up, the sort of thumping where you couldn’t quite make out the tune. Obviously Drew had finished helping out at the front desk, then.
At the table across the way, a couple of Year Thirteens who’d just arrived to study glared at him. Rachel was still off making yet more festival committee phone calls, which meant, for now, I was in charge of the library. And Drew, at least, I had no problem talking to. Or complaining about.
“Drew!” My voice was half whisper, half shout. “Turn it down!”
“Shhhh!” he replied, not even looking up from his screen. “We’re in a library, remember?”
Half-term gave me a whole week to work on the two most important things in my life right then: figuring out how to get Zach to notice me as more than ‘that girl in the library’ and writing Gran’s book. For once, the second seemed easier than the first, so I set to work on that.
Now I’d experienced my own Meet Cute, I knew the story I’d imagined to begin with just wouldn’t work, so instead I spent a couple of days coming up with a way to make my Meet Cute with Zach romance-novel worthy.
Obviously Gran’s characters wouldn’t still be at school, so instead I moved the action to a big-budget TV drama, based on my experiences of visiting the set of Aurora last summer holidays.
I decided my heroine, Eva, would be a fresh new star, cast in her first series but already with a lot of buzz around her name. She’d be slightly out of her depth but excited at the opportunity – and determined to make the most of it.
(OK, so I might have been channelling some of my own current emotions – but wasn’t that what Gran had been telling me to do with her notebook?)
My hero, Will, was an older, more established actor, brought in to give some star power to the show. For my Meet Cute, I had him walk in when Eva was practising her lines alone on set, and had him finish the dialogue – just like Zach had done in our English lesson.
Their eyes met, sparks flew and you just knew there was something there…
And suddenly, I’d written the opening scene of my book. It felt amazing.
Obviously, being fiction, I needed to come up with all sorts of things that would keep my couple apart. An ex-girlfriend or two, perhaps, or a director who disapproved of on-set relationships. Maybe Eva had been burned by dating an older actor before or Will was used to girlfriends who only wanted to use him for a step up to stardom? Or maybe there was a gossip columnist hanging around causing trouble for them…
So many options! How did Gran ever narrow them down?
I just hoped my (still hypothetical) romance with Zach wouldn’t be so difficult.
I’d assumed that, having written the first scene, the next few chapters would flow naturally. But once again, as soon as I ran out of practical, personal experience to draw on, my writing stalled to a halt.
I swung by Gran’s study for advice and pretended not to notice as she switched her screen from a game of solitaire to a blank document.
Curling up in my usual chair, I filled her in on my basic idea for the book, relieved when she smiled and nodded along with my thoughts.
“Sounds like a great start,” she said. “And a TV show setting will be lots of fun, plus it’s something you know a bit about from visiting the Aurora set. So, what’s the problem?”
I sighed. “That’s as far as I’ve got. Now I’m stuck. What do you do when you don’t know what to write next?”
Gran leaned back in her chair, swivelling a little from side to side. “Usually I go hat shopping.”
“And that helps with inspiration?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “But it always puts me in a better mood.”
I sighed. “Don’t you have any useful advice for me?”
Stopping the chair with her foot against the desk, Gran bent forwards towards me, her forearms resting on her knees. “Just write, Tilly. It doesn’t matter what. Just get something out of you and on to the page. Once you’ve got words there, you can fix them – cut them, edit them, improve them, whatever. But you can’t edit a blank page.”
“So just … write?”
Gran nodded. “Just write.”
Somehow, that sounded far too simple. And also strangely impossible.
“And remember,” Gran added as I left. “This is our secret, right? Just ours.”
Since Gran was basically no help at all, I remained totally stuck. So instead of writing, I spent the next few days of the holiday watching videos of The Real Star School on my laptop, searching for any hints as to the best way to win Zach’s heart.
Unfortunately, while I was trying to watch reality TV, the twins decided to spend half term finding new ways to avoid bedtime. Their favourite was to slide out of our parents’ grasp straight after their baths, when they were still slippery with bubbles, and go rampaging across the landing naked. They particularly liked racing into my room, where Finn would hide behind the curtains and Freddie would bounce on my bed, both of them giggling the whole time. I spent a lot of time minimizing windows and pressing mute, so that my parents wouldn’t question my sudden fascination with stage school when they came in to retrieve the toddlers.
When I ran out of episodes to watch, I took to re-reading my favourite romance novels for more inspiration. Surely somewhere in there I’d find the answer? Something to help me get Zach to notice me, and like me, and maybe even ask me out. Because unless I got another special moment with him, I had no idea what I was going to write next for Eva and Will.
If nothing else, re-reading gave me a good idea of exactly what sort of moments I needed to orchestrate with Zach to be able to write about them. All the classic stages of a great romance, from the Meet Cute to the Happy Ever After, got listed out in my notebook.
Now I just needed to find a way to make them happen.
By Thursday I was getting desperate. So I called in reinforcements.
Anja arrived first, her hair wet and her swimming bag over one shoulder, obviously fresh from a training session at the pool. She stood on the doorstep with a Tupperware box under the other arm, which boded well.
“Papa’s been baking again,” she said, handing over the box. “Dad’s away with work for a few days and I think he gets lonely in the evenings when I’m out training.”
“His loneliness is our tasty treats.” I peeled open the lid to find my favourites underneath – Kladkakka, the traditional Swedish sticky chocolate cake. “Did you tell him you were coming here after training?”
Anja nodded. “He said if we were talking about boys we’d need this.”
“Who said we were talking about boys?” I protested.
Anja just rolled her eyes. “He always thinks we’re talking about boys. Even Rohan.”
“Even me what?” Rohan asked, arriving just behind Anja, as we stood in the open back door. “Never mind – is that Kladkakka?”
“It is, and it’s all mine,” I told him. When he started to protest, I added over him, “But I might be persuaded to share if you guys help me out with my … English project.”
“Is that really what we’re calling it?” Rohan frowned as he shut the door behind him. “Can we not come up with a better code name than that?”
“Code name?” Dad walked into the kitchen with Finn on his hip. “What on earth are you lot up to that you need a code name for? And how worried should I be?”
I glared at Rohan. That was why it didn’t have an interesting code name
.
“Nothing,” I told Dad, but his attention had already been drawn to the Tupperware box I’d placed on the kitchen counter.
“Ooh, is that Klaus’s Kladkakka? Make sure you save me some!”
“Cake!” Finn shouted helpfully. “More cake!”
“No cake for you.” Dad swerved towards the kitchen door again, taking Finn out of eye line of the cake. “At least, not until after your nap.”
“So, no code name, then?” Rohan said, wincing apologetically.
“No. And I suggest we take this conversation – and this cake – somewhere a little more private,” I said. “Don’t you?”
My bedroom has been my room at Gran’s house since long before we moved in. When I was a baby, they put my cot in there and Mum stencilled ‘Tilly’ on the door in green letters with vines and forest animals around the letters, so it’s stayed mine ever since.
When Dad and I moved in after Mum left, Gran let me redecorate it any way I liked, which might have been a mistake. I didn’t have a lot of interior design knowledge at twelve and I’d been living with the princess bed with the jewel-studded, green velvet headboard ever since.
Anja settled on to my desk chair, while Rohan sprawled across the bed, as usual. I grabbed the beanbag chair from the corner of the room and pulled it further in, dropping down into it with a satisfying wumph.
“So,” Anja asked. “We have cake, we have privacy – what’s the plan?”
“Can it be ‘Rohan eats Kladkakka while Anja and Tilly talk about boys’?” Rohan suggested.
“So you’re not willing to help one of your best friends find her path towards true love?” Anja asked, eyebrows raised. She looked deadly serious but I was pretty sure she was joking. Probably. It was hard to tell with Anja sometimes. Her deadpan delivery made other people’s look like a fit of the giggles.
“Despite what your papa believes, I don’t actually enjoy talking about boys with you two,” Rohan said.
“When have we ever done that before?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, never,” Rohan admitted. “But I’m guessing it’ll be less fun for me than you.”
“And what about the many, many times we’ve listened to you talk about girls?” Anja pointed out. “Offered advice, even. Remember when Lucy James—”
“I’d rather not, thanks,” Rohan interrupted. I didn’t blame him. The Lucy James incident had been a debacle from start to finish.
“Besides, it’s actually really interesting,” Anja said, shifting back to my problems rather than Rohan’s dismal attempts at romance. “I’ve been re-reading your mum and dad’s latest book, Tilly, and it’s all there. Love is mostly a mixture of brain chemistry and probability.”
“Only you could make this as boring as school work,” Rohan said. “You get a swimming analogy in there and we are done for the day.”
“It’s true!” Anja insisted. “You just need to figure out the odds of falling in love with someone. You take every person in a certain radius who fits your basic criteria—”
“No!” Rohan sprung forwards to sit on the end of the bed, as he argued back. “Just no. That’s not how it works outside of textbooks. Love is … it’s fate. It’s finding the one person you’re supposed to be with.”
“Who just happens to live in the same town as you?” Anja’s eyebrows had almost disappeared into her hair at this point. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Look at your dad and papa,” Rohan countered. I stared at him, amazed that, after all these years, I’d never known he believed in soulmates. “One from America, one from Sweden and they just happened to meet over here in Britain because they were meant to be.”
“They met on an online dating site because neither of them knew anyone in this country when they moved here,” Anja said. “A mathematical algorithm decided they were perfect for each other.”
“Still,” Rohan said, “they had to both sign up for the same site once they were in the same country. What are the chances of that?”
I shook my head. The last thing I needed was this descending into a debate – Anja always won those, anyway. I needed them to focus on my plan.
“Rohan, stop baiting Anja.”
“I’m not!” Rohan protested. “She’s wrong about this.”
“If you really believe in soulmates and true love, why are you always trying to get about three different girls at once to go out with you?” I asked.
Rohan looked faintly embarrassed for a moment but then gave me his usual cheeky grin. “Well, while you’re waiting for your soulmate to be ready for you, there’s no harm in getting some practice in, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “OK, enough about the theory of love. I need real experience, remember?”
“What you need is a proper plan – a sort of scheme of study for love,” Anja said, nodding. “With practical assignments.”
“Like writing the book,” I said.
“Like kissing Zach,” Anja corrected me.
I blushed automatically. “That too. But I’m guessing there are probably a few more steps before we get that far.”
“I don’t get why it has to be him,” Rohan said.
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “He’s the perfect romantic hero. He basically looks like he stepped out of the pages of one of Gran’s books.” And now I was going to write him back into one.
“Yeah, I get that,” Rohan said. “But I mean … sure, I get that he’s good looking. But if all you’re out to do is get kissed, does that even matter?”
“Yes,” Anja and I said in unison.
“Why?” Rohan asked.
“Because … because it’s about more than that. It’s not just kissing. It’s … really falling for someone. That’s the part I can’t make up. So it needs to be someone who really makes my heart race, who I get tongue-tied just looking at. I mean, that’s why kissing you wouldn’t work.”
“You’d probably end up writing a comedy, not a romance, if you did,” Anja commented under her breath.
“Ouch!” Rohan clutched at his chest as if she’d shot him. “Way to break a guy’s heart.”
Anja rolled her eyes at that. “As if you wouldn’t run a mile if Tilly ever actually fell for you.”
“Hey!” I objected. “I resent that implication.”
Anja waved a hand at me. “Oh, you know what I mean. Not because you’re not lovely. Because you’re friends. It would be weird.”
Rohan tilted his head as he looked at her. “You think?”
“Definitely,” Anja said with a decisive nod.
“Huh.” Rohan leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees. “I am learning a lot about your twisted view of love today.”
“And I’m learning a lot about your strong belief in fairy tales,” Anja replied.
“And I’m still not learning anything about actual love, which was sort of the point of the day,” I said. “So back to Zach.”
“OK. What do you have so far?” Anja asked.
“Well, I figured out what I need to do to get the experience to write Gran’s book. Now I just need you guys to help figure out some of the finer details.”
“Like?” Rohan asked.
“How to actually get Zach to go along with it.”
Anja and Rohan both reached for a piece of cake.
While they were chewing Kladkakka, I explained about the idea of a Meet Cute and how, having already managed that one by chance, I needed to find a way to make the other steps happen too, in the right order.
“Then all I need to do is fictionalize my experiences, write them up and – boom! Instant book.” I beamed at them both and waited for general appreciation of my genius.
Anja and Rohan shared a look. It wasn’t an encouraging one.
“Don’t you think Zach might object to being used to come up with a book plot?” Anja’s tone was cautious.
“And what if he doesn’t like you anyway?” Rohan added. Anja shot him a glare. “What? It could happen. I mean, yes, we love Ti
lly – not that way, but still – what if he doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll have to find a way to convince him,” I said, clinging on to the certainty I’d felt when I came up with this plan.
“Maybe he just needs to spend enough time around you to fall for you,” Anja said, more optimistically.
“Exactly!” I bounced on my beanbag. “Forced proximity! That’s point number two on my plan. Finding a reason for the hero and heroine to spend time together.”
“Well, you’re already sitting together in English,” Anja said thoughtfully. “How about getting him to work with you on an English project or something?”
“That could work, I suppose.” It didn’t sound like enough, though. I needed Zach to want to spend time with me, the way I wanted to be with him, if I was going to get this to work in time for me to get writing. Enemies to lovers was all very good in Gran’s books, but I didn’t have time for Zach to go through the stages of hating me before falling for me. I needed him hooked from the start.
But how?
Mentally, I ran through our interactions so far, searching for what I already knew about him that I could use in the plan, and pairing it up against the plots of books I’d read recently.
He was terrible with names. He’d never read Pride and Prejudice. He liked a challenge…
“Got it!”
“That was quick,” Rohan observed.
Anja leaned forwards in her chair. “Tell me everything.”
“Zach told me he likes a challenge,” I explained, running through the plot of The Billionaire’s Bride Challenge in my head. In that one, the heroine had convinced the hero that he could never win her heart – and suddenly that was all he wanted to do. “So I need to set myself up as one.”
Rohan blinked. “And you’re going to do that how, exactly?”
I gave them both a blinding smile. “That’s the beauty of it. Not me. You two. And everyone else we know at St Stephen’s.”
“What if I don’t want him to want me?” Eva asked.
“Getting men to not want you is easy. All you need to do is hang on their every word, act like you’re in love with them until they know all they have to do is ask and you’ll come running. Then they’ll definitely lose interest.” Honey rolled her eyes. “That’s men for you. They’re all about the challenge.”