Girls in Love Read Online Free PDF

I quote, sending myself up.
    Mrs. Madley is wrong-footed. She even looks mildly amused. “Well, take care you don’t sink too far, Eleanor. Look what happens to these star-crossed lovers at the end of the play. Now, girls, settle down, and let us
all
concentrate on Shakespeare.”
    I decide I’d better concentrate too—so I don’t really have time to plan what on earth I’m going to say going home from school with Magda and Nadine.
    In maths last lesson there’s no point my trying to concentrate because I can’t figure any of it out, so I sit nibbling my thumbnail, worrying about this boyfriend situation. When I was little I used to suck my thumb a lot. Now when I’m ultraanxious I find I have to have a little weeny suck and chew just to calm myself. I wondered if smoking might have the same effect—not in a classroom situation, obviously—but when Magda shared a packet of Benson’s with me I felt so sick and dizzy by the time I lit up my second it’s put me off for life.
    I have to sort out what I’m going to say about Dan. I think of his blond hair and dark brown eyes . . . only, that’s the boy I saw this morning on the way to school. I don’t even have a clue who he is. I just started describing him when Magda and Nadine asked all those questions. I couldn’t tell them what the real Dan looks like or they’d crease up laughing.
    Oh, God,
why
did I open my big mouth? I was like some demented fairy godmother waving a wand over nerdy little boy Dopey Dan in Wales and turning him into the Golden Dream I saw this morning.
    Magda and Nadine believe it all too.
I
practically believe it. I’ve always had this crazy habit of making things up. It was mostly when I was little. Like after my mum died . . .
    It was so horrible and lonely that I kept trying to pretend she wasn’t
really
dead, that if I could only perform all these really loopy tasks like go all day without going to the toilet or stay awake an entire night then suddenly she’d come walking into my bedroom and it would all be a mistake, someone else’s mother had died, not
mine
. Sometimes when I was lying awake holding my eyelids open I’d almost believe she was really there, standing by my bed, leaning over ready to give me a cuddle, so close I could actually smell her lovely soft powdery scent.
    Even after I gave up on those daft tricks I didn’t give up on my mother. I felt she still had to be around for me. I talked to her inside my head and she talked back, saying all the ordinary Mum things, telling me to be careful crossing the road, and to eat up like a good girl, and when I went to bed she’d chat to me about my day and she’d always say “Nightie Nightie” and I’d whisper “Pajama Pajama.” I did that long after Dad married Anna. She said some of that stuff too, but it wasn’t the same at all. I used to hate Anna simply because she wasn’t Mum. I’m older now. I can see it’s not really Anna’s fault. She’s OK, sometimes. But she’s still
not
my mum.
    So what would Mum say? This is the awful bit. I can still make Mum say all this stuff to me, but it’s the
old
stuff that I needed to hear when I was little. My made-up mum can’t seem to get her head round the idea that I’m big now. Big enough to want a boyfriend. Only I haven’t
got
one and yet I’ve told my two best friends I have.
    “Tell them the truth, Ellie,” Mum says firmly, her voice suddenly loud and clear.
    She sounds so real I actually look round the classroom to see if anyone else can hear her.
    I know Mum is right. In fact I even work out how to do it. I shall say I was just teasing them, playing a silly joke to see how much they’d swallow. I’ll say I did meet a boy called Dan on holiday but I’ll say what he’s
really
like. I’ll even tell them about the gorgeous blond bloke on the way to school. I’ll draw a cartoon for them, the real Dan and me with my wand turning him into the Dreamboat. They’ll think it’s funny. Well—maybe more funny