How to Convince a Boy to Kiss You

by Tara Eglington

  I took her hands. ‘You can’t listen to someone like him,’ I said in my fiercest voice. ‘He’s twisted and he deliberately set out to play with your emotions. You can’t let him win.’

  ‘You aren’t judging me?’ Lindsay’s face was drenched with tears as she looked at me. ‘I know how highly you respect love. How can you be okay with the way that I disrespected it?’

  I hugged her. Who was to say, situations reversed, that it couldn’t have been me bowled over by poetry and supposed romance? ‘I can see where you’re coming from, Lindsay. And you didn’t cheat on Tyler, even though Hunter was doing everything he could to persuade you to. You do respect love.’

  ‘How can I tell Tyler what happened?’ Lindsay pulled away from the hug. ‘I know Jelena or Sara would tell me not to. But I can’t lie to him.’

  It was true in a way that telling Tyler would serve no purpose, except for hurting him — but I hated the dishonesty behind that approach. I couldn’t keep something like that secret either.

  ‘Do you want to stay with him?’ I asked.

  ‘I want to try,’ Lindsay whispered. ‘What all of this has proved — even though I shouldn’t have needed proof — is that Tyler’s a good guy. The type of guy who means what he says and proves it with what he does for me. He might not understand poetry, but a relationship is more than that.’

  ‘I think you need to be prepared for the possibility that he might react badly,’ I warned her.

  Even though she’d stayed faithful, I knew Tyler would be broken up by her confession.

  ‘I know. I’m going into this aware that I could lose him. After all, if he was breaking this type of news to me, I might dump him. I’ll head over to his place right now — he deserves to know the truth straight away.’

  CHAPTER 30

  ‘So one of our matches has not only dumped Chloe and left the program, but also changed schools?’ Jelena said to me and Lindsay the next morning.

  We both nodded. Lindsay’s eyes were red round the edges. Tyler had had a fit when he heard about what had gone down with Hunter and had told Lindsay he needed till Monday to think their relationship over. Lindsay had been up half the night crying.

  ‘So now I only have one fake couple to present on Monday?’ Jelena went on.

  Lindsay and I nodded again. Neither of us knew what to say. We were still shell-shocked after the unexpected grenade Hunter had thrown at us.

  ‘Stop it, for god’s sake. You look like bobbing babushka dolls!’ Jelena put her head in her hands. ‘There was no way to prevent this?’

  ‘Hunter was rotten to the core.’ Lindsay’s jaw was tense as she said his name. ‘He was playing around on Chloe.’

  ‘The Chemistry Calculator is supposed to screen the matches! I’m going to have a hard word with Hayden!’

  Jelena stormed off before I could stop her. She returned ten minutes later still looking angry.

  ‘He reckons he can’t help the fact that people misrepresent themselves,’ she said. ‘The calculator only deciphers the information it’s given.’ She sighed dramatically, sounding like Sara. ‘Thank god for One Hour Later. I knew this Find a Prince/Princess Program™ was a liability.’

  ‘That’s enough, Jelena!’ I cried.

  Not only did I have to watch my program collapsing from the inside, but now my friend was trashing it too. It had meant the world to me to be able to put my theories into practice and now it had all gone to waste. I’d lost Jelena’s faith, and soon I’d lose the faith of everyone else at school.

  I headed off to get a drink from the canteen before I completely lost my cool. After consoling Lindsay yesterday, I’d then had to break the news to Chloe. I hadn’t told her who the other girl was that Hunter had been simultaneously wooing. That was Lindsay and Tyler’s business. Not even Jelena knew the girl’s identity. Chloe had been completely devastated, of course, and when I’d seen her this morning, her eyes had matched Lindsay’s.

  The hardest thing for me to face was that my program had done this to them. For all my attempts to play at Cupid, it appeared I was hopeless at it. Like Jelena had said, the grand total of weeks of effort was one fake couple. I was a failure. I brushed away a tear.

  My phone rang. Mum.

  ‘Why don’t you come over for dinner on Sunday, darling? Carlos has a friend from his entertainment group staying with us and we can all talk future options for you.’

  I agreed, desperate for a distraction from my own thoughts. If I sat around all weekend thinking about my failures as a matchmaker, I’d go crazy.

  As I hung up, Hayden came over.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what happened with Hunter and Chloe?’ He sounded hurt. ‘I had to hear about it through Jelena.’

  ‘Maybe I was worried you’d say I told you so, after you warned me that they were rushing in.’

  ‘Oh, Aurora.’ Hayden’s face looked sad. ‘You don’t really think I’d gloat about that, do you? I know that program is close to your heart.’

  For some reason, his pity made me feel worse than I would have if he’d gone on about being right. I felt my chin tremble.

  Hayden must have seen it because he enveloped me in his arms. ‘I know you were on a deadline, but there’ll be other chances for your candidates, you’ll see. You just need more time. It was a hard ask of anyone to get results that quickly!’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, my head buried in his shoulder.

  I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but I didn’t have any more time. The program would be shelved by Jelena and Alex on the very reasonable assumption that it didn’t work.

  ‘What are you doing on Sunday night?’ Hayden said, stroking my hair. ‘There’s a really funny movie on at the cinema that I thought we could see.’

  ‘I just promised to have dinner with Mum.’

  I felt him sigh. ‘Aurora, I know you’re excited about having her back in your life, but I’m worried —’

  ‘She’s my mother. I’m tired of feeling guilty about the fact that I want to see her!’ I realised, as the words came out, that my frustration with Dad and Ms DeForest, as well as my disappointment over the program, had made them more aggressive than I’d intended. ‘After four years, you might want to make up for lost time yourself.’

  ‘I know. We’re only trying to protect you.’

  ‘By “we”, I assume you mean you’ve been talking to Dad and Ms DeForest?’

  They’d arrived home last night, but thankfully had been too tired after the drive to attempt any serious conversation.

  ‘They’re concerned —’

  I cut him off. ‘They weren’t concerned by how their sudden commitment ceremony might affect me, so I don’t see why they should be worried about Mum. It’s just because she hurt Dad and Ms DeForest is taking his side.’

  ‘What your mum did to your dad is pretty hard to get over,’ Hayden said seriously.

  ‘I know the situation, Hayden. I lived it. Of course Dad has a right to feel hurt. But should I write my mother off too because of that?’

  Hayden was silent. He couldn’t understand. His parents were picture perfect.

  ‘You don’t have the answers,’ I said. ‘So let me struggle with finding my own in peace.’

  Around 7 pm on Saturday my mobile rang. I could see from the caller ID that it was Jelena.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Only about forty-one hours till voting starts. Are you pumped?’

  I was hoping to keep her focused on the positive. I couldn’t take another session of analysing why the program had failed. I knew Jelena wanted to identify the holes in the original business model so we could move it forward, but it was still too painful for me.

  ‘Aurora?’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘I need you to come over to my place right now.’ Her voice broke. ‘The others too. Please hurry.’

  She hung up. I immediately dialled Cass and then Sara. The three of us could handle whatever Jelena wanted from us. Lindsay had been pushed to her maximum emotion-wise i
n the last few days.

  ‘Something’s wrong with Jelena, something serious,’ I said to Cass and Sara as they each picked up the phone. ‘Can you head round there straight away?’

  I grabbed a cardigan and called a taxi, then scribbled a note to the NAD. He and Ms DeForest had gone for a presumably raw dinner at some macrobiotic friend’s place. It was only as the taxi pulled away from my place that I realised I’d left my phone in my room. Well, I wasn’t going back for it now. Jelena needed us.

  When I rang the bell, Sara whipped the Cantrills’ front door open. ‘She won’t talk to us,’ she said. ‘She’s just curled up on her bed, crying and shaking her head.’

  I took the stairs two at a time.

  Cass was sitting on the bed, stroking Jelena’s hair and making soothing sounds. Jelena was wearing a black triangle bikini. She didn’t seem to see Sara and me as we entered.

  ‘Jelena?’ I said softly as I approached the bed.

  ‘You were right. I should have remembered what happened to Josephine,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Alex,’ Sara guessed. She made his name sound like a swearword. She sat down on Jelena’s computer chair and gripped one of her throw cushions, twisting it like she was wringing Alex’s neck.

  ‘Pride before a fall.’ Jelena’s voice was almost lost in her pillow as she cried into it.

  ‘What’s he done?’ I asked.

  ‘I did it!’ Jelena wailed. ‘I set myself up. I walked straight into the trap!’

  I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Please, Jelena. We’re all here for you. Whatever it is, we can get through it together.’

  Jelena sat up and took a heaving breath. ‘Like Sara said, he’s been flirting with me since last weekend. Outrageously. I encouraged it because I thought it meant I’d be able to control him. When I texted him today that I was home alone, swimming in the pool, he told me he was coming over. I let him in and we swam for a while. He kept complimenting me on my bikini and my body and I just laughed. I felt like Cleopatra with Mark Antony, knowing he was at my mercy.

  ‘Then it got cold, so we got out. I showed him upstairs to the guest bathroom. He showered, and I was heading into my room to grab an outfit to change into after showering when he appeared at my door. He said he wanted to see my room. I didn’t think anything of it. We were both standing in the doorway and I felt his eyes on my bikini top, which was dripping.’

  I looked at Cass and Sara. We were all frozen, holding our breath.

  ‘I got embarrassed,’ Jelena went on. ‘I tried to put my towel over me but he pulled it away.’

  Cassie gasped. I felt my palms become sweaty.

  ‘He said, “No, don’t hide from me.” I laughed and he laughed too, and the next minute he launched into this speech about how I was not only a goddess to look at but also a formidable leader and an intelligent woman. He said he’d made a terrible mistake not recognising that earlier in the term. He said part of the reason he’d wanted to run with me was so he could get close to me again, that he just couldn’t help himself when it came to me, when it came to …’

  ‘What?’ Cass, Sara and I nearly shouted.

  ‘Passion.’ Jelena made the word sound broken. ‘He put his arm round my waist and pulled me to him and started kissing me.’

  ‘And you RESISTED, right???’ Sara asked.

  ‘Sara, let her finish,’ I said. I looked at Jelena’s expression; it was fragile. Her brows were pushed together as if she was in pain. She couldn’t have kissed Alex back after everything he’d done to her the first time round …

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I let him kiss me. I know, Sara, I know. At first it was because I saw it as an opportunity for some power play, but then … with him kissing me, I let myself feel things again. You know, I really fell for him that first time, before he dumped me.’ Her voice had become a whisper. ‘I didn’t notice that he’d moved me over towards my bed until he threw me down on it. And then he was on top of me and still kissing me. I didn’t notice his fingers undoing my bikini top until I felt the cool air on my chest. And then … then he had his hands here …’ Jelena gestured at her bikini top. ‘I freaked out and told him to stop, that this wasn’t what I did with guys —’

  ‘Thank god.’ Sara breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘He stopped, didn’t he?’ Cass and I asked in the same second.

  I felt like I might throw up. This couldn’t be why she was so upset …

  ‘Not straight away,’ Jelena whispered. ‘He gave me this look of triumph as he held me in place. I was trying to get away from him, but he was too strong. It was only when I screamed and burst into tears that he let go, yelling that of course he wasn’t that type of guy. He scrambled off me, and then I heard this tiny click. He took a photo — a photo of me without any top on …’

  Now Jelena was crying so hard she couldn’t talk.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ Sara said, grabbing her mobile. ‘Or better yet, my dad.’ Sara’s father was an officer at the local station.

  ‘No!’ Jelena grabbed the phone out of her hand. ‘I don’t want my parents to know about this. I don’t want them to see me this way. Alex said if I told anyone he’d text the photo to everyone he knows.’

  ‘Jelena, you’re under eighteen,’ Sara said. ‘It’s underage pornography. The police will destroy the photo before he can send it to anyone.’

  ‘Sara’s right,’ I said. ‘It’s an easy way of stopping him. Jelena, I know you don’t want to tell your parents, but this is really serious. You know how the internet is — once an image winds up there, it’s permanent. It’ll be around for the rest of your life.’

  I hated to drive home how bad this was, but she needed to see that it was vital we tell the police. We wanted to help her, but there was only so much we could do as her friends.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Jelena said. ‘He knows it too. That’s why he told me that he’s going to save the photo somewhere that no-one can trace back to him. He can upload it to the internet the same way — it can go out to all the teachers, students and parents and nobody will ever know it was him. He said the only way to guarantee it not being made public is if I drop out of the election.’

  Jelena blew her nose on a tissue Cass passed her.

  ‘That’s blackmail,’ Sara said. ‘If you won’t go to the police, then I will.’

  ‘Sara, please!’ Jelena begged. ‘This is my issue.’

  ‘You asked us round to help you. This is the only way we can,’ Sara shot back.

  ‘Guys!’ Cassie glared at Sara and me as Jelena started crying into the pillow again.

  I waggled my eyebrows at Sara, signalling that the two of us should leave the room to talk. We headed down the hall and into the bathroom. I shut the door.

  ‘If she won’t budge on calling the police, we need to move fast,’ I said. ‘The only other option is to intercept Alex before he gets home and transfers the image onto something untraceable. We know he’s on foot, and his place is pretty far from here, so there’s still a chance we can do it. We need an interceptor to get his phone off him. I think it’s time to get a guy we trust involved.’

  ‘Hayden?’

  ‘No. We need someone Alex won’t suspect. He knows Hayden can’t stand him so he’ll be wary if he approaches him. It has to be someone Alex knows — but not too well. And who’s also good at acting. I’m thinking Johannes.’

  Sara and I spent the next few hours on edge, waiting to see if our plan would work. Jelena had begged us to stay the night, as she didn’t want to be alone, so Cass shared her queen-sized bed while Sara and I set up sleeping bags on couch cushions. There were guestrooms galore, but Jelena wanted us close by for comfort. For hours we tried to persuade her to report Alex, but she only shook her head and told us she wanted to think about it first.

  After she fell asleep, the three of us continued to whisper. Sara and I filled Cass in on the plan. We were all praying it would work, but if it failed we needed to make a stand and go to the police or Sara’s
dad to report the incident. Or at least tell Jelena’s parents, so they could support her and figure out what to do.

  This wasn’t simple high-school nastiness. What Alex had done was harassment — from physically intimidating Jelena to emotionally threatening her with the potential consequences of the photo. Not to mention the fact that he’d taken it illegally. He could do the same thing to countless girls in the future, blackmailing his way through life.

  Around 12.30 am, Sara’s phone rang. She answered, and gasped at whatever the person on the line was telling her.

  ‘Thank god! Oh, Johannes, I owe you a kiss for sure!’ Sara said. She hung up and punched the air.

  ‘Success?’ I sat up, every muscle tensed in the hope that we’d pulled this thing off.

  ‘You guys don’t have to keep up the act of loved-up couple 24/7,’ Jelena said grumpily, woken by the call. ‘In fact, if you want, you can drop it altogether. I’ve lost the election.’

  ‘He wasn’t calling to whisper sweet nothings; he was calling with your salvation,’ Sara said. ‘Johannes stole Alex’s phone, right out of his back pocket. Alex thinks it’s been taken by someone at the bar.’

  ‘Wait a minute — Johannes and Alex were at a bar?’ Jelena sat up too.

  ‘I called him earlier, straight after you told us what had happened. Aurora and I made a plan of attack,’ Sara explained.

  ‘You guys! It was private!’ Jelena sounded furious.

  ‘Shut up, Jelena. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I told Johannes what had happened and he said he’d try to intercept Alex on his way home from here. Johannes spun some story about how he’d been forced to date me because of Jelena’s campaign, but he wanted a real hot chick, not some man-hater —’

  I let out a laugh. ‘He didn’t really say that?’