Love-shy

by Lili Wilkinson

  And I laughed and laughed, because they were so beautiful, and I felt so happy.

  I sat there, staring at the screen until my eyes hurt. Who was he? With a sigh, I switched off my computer and went to bed.

  I woke up at three in the morning, with Rin’s voice in my head.

  I’m so glad I moved here.

  I was a total and complete idiot. Of course the yearbook was out of date. I’d crossed off the boys who had left East Glendale at the end of last year. But I hadn’t taken into consideration the new boys who had only arrived this year.

  Well, new boy, actually. There was only one. The one who stared out the window in Ms Leroy’s French class as girls pretended to faint in order to catch his eye.

  Nick Rammage.

  I was too impatient to

  work at the usual duties

  assigned women on

  newspapers.

  NELLIE BLY

  6

  NICK RAMMAGE?

  Really?

  Nick Rammage, the boy who was too cool to speak to anyone? Nick Rammage, who dressed like an indie model and wore oversized headphones all day long? Nick Rammage, who every girl at East Glendale had a planet-sized crush on?

  Maybe there was another new guy in Year Ten. Surely.

  Although now I thought about it, Nick didn’t seem to have any real friends. I couldn’t remember actually speaking to him. In fact, I couldn’t remember him speaking at all.

  I’d never seen him hanging out with anyone at recess or lunchtime; it was as though he just disappeared. I was pretty sure he didn’t play any sports.

  I’d made one of the worst mistakes a journalist can make. I’d listened to those rumours about him kissing Olivia Fischer, and the mysterious girlfriend at another school, and believed them. I hadn’t verified my sources. Nellie Bly would be disgusted with me.

  After I got over my initial disbelief, it started to make sense. He looked cool, sure. But it was all an elaborate smokescreen. That was how he got away with it. With his oversized headphones and floppy emo hair and tight black jeans, everyone just assumed he was aloof and cool. It was an utterly brilliant disguise.

  Except surely it could unravel at any moment. What did he do when those simpering blonde girls approached him? He was one of the most desirable boys at school … why wasn’t there a cluster of girls around him at all times? And if he did talk to them, and they realised how strange he was (because he must be strange if he was loveshy), how come they didn’t immediately run and tell everyone about it?

  It was such a puzzle.

  Also, why had he left his old school? Had something happened? Or was it just a moving-house thing?

  I’d be careful, this time. I didn’t want to spook my subject. I’d watch him closely first. Get to know him better before I confronted him. Although I felt as if I knew him well already, from reading his blog posts.

  This was so much more than an exercise in journalism. Reading PEZZimist’s – Nick’s – posts had me convinced that he needed help, and that I was the one to help him. He was obviously a smart, sensitive guy, and all he wanted was to be loved. It seemed so unfair that he couldn’t have that. Especially since his looks certainly weren’t a barrier.

  Nick Rammage. I still couldn’t quite believe it.

  The weekend seemed to go on forever, yet I didn’t achieve anything. I went over every single post PEZZimist had ever written, reading each word in a new light now I knew his true identity. I spent hours staring at my Biology textbook, or at a blank Word document that was supposed to become my Othello essay for English. Dad tried to get me to go out with him and Josh to see a new exhibition at the National Gallery, but I declined. Instead I did laps in the pool until I nearly passed out, the rushing of water in my ears and across my face reminding me of PEZZimist’s dream about the bottom of the lake.

  What was wrong with me? Should a journalist become this involved in a story? Was I staying objective? Not that subjectivity was strictly forbidden in journalism. Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote and Hunter S Thompson and the other gonzo reporters and New Journalism people got involved in their stories all the time – and mine didn’t involve motorcycles, rubbing alcohol or nineteen different kinds of illegal drug. No, this was good. The deeper I got into this story, the better it would be, I was sure of it. I didn’t want to write a dispassionate, clinical analysis of loveshyness. I wanted to write a feature article that would make people laugh, cry and award me a Pulitzer Prize.

  Monday morning found me staring at my wardrobe, agonising over an outfit. What did you wear when you were secretly observing a very shy person? I didn’t want to stand out. Not that I ever did stand out – I was strictly a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl – but I felt that this morning’s sartorial choices required an extra level of consideration. And there was always the chance that Nick would notice me watching, and that I’d have to bring all my plans forward and interview him then and there. I didn’t want to be wearing anything that would spook or intimidate him. I needed to appear friendly and approachable, but not desirable, because that would make him anxious.

  What was I doing? Fussing over what to wear? I was acting as if I were a typical hairspray-and-eyeliner girl, and I didn’t like it one bit. I needed to pull myself together and be professional. I threw on my usual: a comfortable pair of jeans, plainish T-shirt, and sensible sneakers. There. That’d do.

  I grabbed my notebook and left the house.

  Observations on Nick Rammage, aka PEZZimist. Monday, 8:36 a.m.

  Subject arrives at his locker. He’s wearing fitted black jeans, a black T-shirt with white, weathered lettering on it, his ubiquitous large headphones, black Converse sneakers and a chunky black watch. He carries a black backpack. Subject doesn’t make eye contact with other students in his vicinity. He keeps his head down, with his long fringe hanging in his eyes. However, his casual gait and slouched posture make him seem aloof to his peers, rather than awkward and antisocial.

  I didn’t have English on Mondays, so I couldn’t observe Nick up close in class. I scoured the school grounds for him during morning recess, but he was nowhere to be found. How was I supposed to observe and analyse my subject if I couldn’t even find him?

  I fidgeted through the next two periods, and when the bell rang for lunchtime I sprang from my seat and sprinted to the Year Ten lockers, where I spotted Nick pulling his lunch from his backpack before sauntering outside. I followed at a distance, trying to appear nonchalant. I was skipping my meeting for the Gazette – but I was on official journalistic business and, despite what Thomas Jefferson said, who really cared whether we led with a story about the school rowing team or an interview with an ex-student who had a minor role in Neighbours?

  I felt quite the gumshoe, watching Nick, waiting, subtly following him. He ended up on an isolated bench by the science building, overshadowed by a concrete stairwell.

  The temperature had risen over the weekend, and it was quite hot in the sun. Being totally aware of the dangers of the sun in regards to dying of cancer, something many of the tanorexic girls at my school were not, I situated myself beneath a shady tree and watched Nick from across the courtyard.

  1:07 p.m.

  Subject is sitting on a bench eating a sandwich. I’m too far away to discern exactly what kind of sandwich, but the bread is certainly white. I hope he knows how high white bread is in processed sugars. He’s balanced on the backrest of the bench, with his feet on the seat. His eyes are closed and his head is moving up and down slightly, I assume to the beat of the music pumping through his headphones.

  I wondered what he was listening to. Loveshys weren’t supposed to like rock music or anything loud or discordant. They liked melodic, romantic music. So the chances that Nick was listening to the kind of music everyone thought he was listening to were pretty slim.

  He opened his eyes a crack and scanned the courtyard. I pretended to be absorbed with writing in my notebook. When I looked up, he was staring at someone over to my right. I followed
his gaze. Was this her? The long-haired girl?

  It was.

  She was a Year Nine girl. Her name was Amy Butler, and she was a swimmer, like me. She had long brown hair (of course) and was very pretty in a petite pixie way. Her hair hung loose down her back. She was sitting with a group of other girls of mid-tier popularity, mostly blonde but not in a pouty, peroxide kind of way, more a healthy, sporty, tampon-commercial kind of way. Amy tended to smile in a distant manner, and when the other girls laughed, she would join in a few seconds late. I could see why she seemed like the perfect loveshy fantasy girl. Sweet, quiet, pretty, long brown hair.

  The thing was, I knew Amy Butler. We’d spoken a few times at swimming, and last year she’d been in the SRC, so I’d had plenty of meetings with her. And Nick had it all wrong.

  Amy wasn’t the gentle, romantic girl he was looking for. She was quiet, sure. But that wasn’t because she was shy and sensitive. It was because she was kind of boring. She wasn’t smart, or funny, or rude, or irritating. She had excellent backstroke technique, but that was all I could think of in her favour, apart from the fact that she was pretty. She was sort of … nothing.

  The only time I’d ever seen her do anything out of the ordinary was at Aylee Kim’s birthday party in January, where she drank too much Tia Maria and was sick in the pool. Nick wouldn’t be too keen to hear that. Hardly the proper behaviour for the ideal nymph-like fairy creature that he thought she was.

  I wanted to help Nick, I really did. But I wasn’t sure helping him hook up with his dream girl was going to work. He was too smart for her, too sensitive, too romantic. She’d break his heart in five minutes, and he was so fragile he’d never be able to put all the pieces together again.

  I looked back at him. The expression on his face nearly broke my heart. Such yearning and longing and loneliness, painted there for all to see. Then he started and looked straight at me, and his usual mask of detached cool resumed its position.

  This was going to be trickier than I’d thought.

  Nick’s shoulders tensed slightly, and I looked around. A blonde girl was approaching him, blushing furiously. It was like watching a nature documentary. She glanced back at her friends, who shot her encouraging grins, then turned to Nick, gazing at him longingly.

  Nick had seen her, I knew he had. How would he respond? Would he talk to her? Could he? I saw him start in a casual sort of way, and reach into his back pocket. He pulled out a mobile phone and pressed it to his ear. I couldn’t hear him, as he was too far away, but it looked as if he’d just answered a call.

  I thought he didn’t like talking on the phone?

  Actually, I thought he didn’t even have a phone?

  Nick laughed into the phone and stood up, jumping off the bench in one easy movement. The blonde girl froze, unsure how to proceed. Was she going to wait until he finished his call? Or was she planning on interrupting him and hoping her orange skin and perky breasts would convince him to hang up?

  Totally absorbed in his phone conversation, Nick walked straight past the girl, seemingly without noticing her.

  Smooth, very smooth. I wondered if that was what he did every time, or whether he had different subterfuge tactics. I’d find out.

  22:00

  There’s this girl who’s watching me. That’s not new, girls are always watching me. They watch and they smile and they toss their hair. But they don’t actually want me. But this girl, this new girl. She’s different. She’s sneaky. She’s not watching me like I’m a new dress she wants to try on. Or a piece of meat she wants to sink her teeth into. When this girl watches me it’s like she’s looking right into me. I don’t like it. It’s as if she knows. She doesn’t want me, she wants to unpick me. Take me apart and see how I work, like an alarm clock. She wants to know what makes me tick. And I don’t want her to know. She can’t know. But it kind of feels like she already does.

  Why is she watching me?

  What does she want?

  WHY?

  I wasn’t at all sure how to approach Nick. I didn’t want to scare him off – so no Dictaphone app – but I also needed to be firm and direct from the outset. Maybe just doing it would be the best tactic. Like ripping off a bandaid. I decided to wait until lunch on Tuesday, so we’d have time to talk. I popped into my Debating meeting to let everyone know I’d have to skip this week, then headed into the courtyard to where Nick sat on his bench, watching Amy Butler.

  He was there, looking bored, as if we were all far, far beneath him and not worthy of his interest or attention. I snuck up from behind so he couldn’t bolt.

  ‘Nick.’

  The muscles in his shoulders tensed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. I’d never heard his voice before. It was higher than I’d expected, but quite melodic. There was a faint tremor behind his carefully affected drawl.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I guess I’d better wait until you’re off the phone. Luckily I’ve got all day.’

  Nick slid off the bench and started to walk away. ‘Yeah, mate,’ he said into the phone. ‘Uh-huh. Yeah.’

  I followed him. ‘Unless you’re not actually talking on that phone, of course.’

  Nick veered off in a different direction and picked up his pace. I walked faster so I drew up alongside him. I could see a clump of girls nearby watching with interest. I let us pull away from them so nobody could hear us talking, and then I reached out and grabbed Nick’s phone.

  Nick froze, his hand clasped to his ear where the phone had been.

  I pretended to talk into the phone. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Do you think I could talk to Nick for a minute? It’s kind of important. You can call him back later.’ I mimed listening, and then turned to Nick.

  ‘He says that’s fine, he’ll call you back this afternoon,’ I said, and examined the phone. ‘This thing isn’t even on. You’re not trying very hard.’

  Nick didn’t move. His hands trembled, and he stared at the ground.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. But my name’s Penny and I really want to write a story on you. An article. About your condition.’

  At the word condition, a shudder seemed to go through Nick. It was as though it unfroze him, because he clenched his fists and started to walk away, very fast.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Your phone.’

  Nick didn’t slow his pace or turn around. I hurried after him, the phone in my hand.

  He headed for the science labs and I noticed the blonde girls giggling at me, another spurned groupie. How ridiculous. I wasn’t one of them, pathetically chasing after the cute boy. I was on a mission.

  I tailed Nick through a maze of portables, and round the corner of the soccer oval towards the Drama Centre.

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I just want to talk to you.’

  He ignored me and I followed him around a corner.

  ‘Penny!’ It was Rin. She was alone, sitting at the bottom of the concrete stairwell that led up to the Drama Centre. She sprang to her feet, looking very pleased to see me.

  ‘Um, hi,’ I said, pausing awkwardly, craning my neck to see which way Nick had gone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Do you want to sit with me?’

  This was the problem with having friends. It was all very well for us to hang out and do jigsaws and eat Pocky, but I was busy now. I didn’t want us to be friends right now. But how was I supposed to explain that to Rin?

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘there’s somewhere I need to be. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Where?’

  Nick had totally disappeared from view. I’d lost him. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Where do you need to be?’

  ‘Oh, um … ’ I looked wildly around for an excuse.

  ‘It’s Nick Rammage, isn’t it?’

  I stared at her. ‘What?’

  Rin nodded. ‘You looked like you were following him.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘It’s
okay. Everyone loves Nick Rammage. He’s hot. I totally understand.’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t exactly deny that I’d been chasing him. There was only one thing for it. I swallowed and told myself it was all in the name of journalism. It was like when Nellie Bly pretended to be crazy so she could report on a mental asylum from within. I was going to have to pretend to be crazy too.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do like him. He’s a … ’ I took a deep breath and tried to sell it, ‘ … hottie.’

  ‘You’d be good together,’ Rin said to her shoes. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘I tried to,’ I said. ‘But he didn’t want to talk to me.’

  She shook her head. ‘I hear he’s totally uninterested in high-school girls. Emma Lee told me he’s got a girlfriend who’s twenty-one and goes to university.’

  I found this difficult to believe, so I didn’t reply.

  ‘Oh!’ said Rin. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I know I don’t have a chance with him anyway.’

  Not that I wanted him. And even if I did, my short hair and big boobs meant I was hardly the loveshy ideal.

  ‘Well.’ I shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I’d better go.’

  Rin seemed to grow smaller. ‘Okay,’ she said, in a tiny voice. She looked as though she was going to cry.

  This was ridiculous. I just wanted to leave and find Nick. But he was long gone now. He’d have gone underground, like a rabbit. Probably hiding in the boys’ toilets, and nothing short of a Hazchem suit and oxygen tank could make me follow him in there. And Rin seemed sad, and I didn’t like the thought that I had made her sad. Why was she sitting here alone anyway? Where were her friends?

  My watch told me there were only ten minutes until the end of lunch.

  ‘Actually, I might stay for a bit,’ I said. ‘If that’s okay.’

  Rin brightened. ‘Of course!’

  I sat down on the concrete step next to her. ‘So how come you’re not at the canteen?’

  ‘Cherry’s got glandular fever,’ she said. ‘And Rebecca is at her Economics Society meeting. And Pieng and Stephanie are … a bit hard to talk to at the moment.’