Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally) Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘You’re boring, Fuller. I’m taking Susan to the formal instead.’ Those clouds came back. Or, technically, new ones formed: giant cumulonimbus, the type that rain thunderstorms in summer. I walked out of the room with my head held high and then I hid in the toilets. I couldn’t stop thinking that he’d broken up with me because I was a bad kisser.
    I recited things from Science and Maths and English so I could stop crying before the bell. ‘The area of a square is the sum of its sides. Analysis of language is important because the true meaning of a text is not always overtly stated.Clouds form when warm air mixes with the coldness of the atmosphere. They become too heavy and it rains.’
    After a while, though, I thought about other things: my winter coat collection and my fund-raising idea for kids with cancer. I thought about the dress I planned to wear to the formal and how I liked the way I looked in it. I thought: you’re very rude, Andrew Flemming, and unless we can conduct DNA testing neither of us can be one hundred per cent sure that the little bit of saliva hanging from our mouths was mine.
    When Brett kissed me I knew from the look on his face that I’d done it right. Then I worked out the strange thing about kissing: one person can be flying while it’s happening and the other person is standing on the ground looking up.
    â€˜I liked you for ages,’ Brett called down to me that first time we kissed. ‘Way before the comedy debate.’ I stood on the ground while he floated above me and I thought, well, that really should count for something. So when he asked if I’d be his girlfriend, I called up to him that I would.
    I made a list of all the things I like about him. He doesn’t hit people in the face on the football field. He doesn’t lean back on his chair and talk while the teacher’s talking. He watches the news and gets angrier about military dictatorships than his football team losing. He knows I’m talking about the leader of the United Nations and not ordering takeaway when I say Ban Ki-moon.
    I made a list about Andrew, too. I wrote all the things I don’t like about him. He punches people. He calls women ‘chicks’. He thinks the suffragettes are a girl-band. He’s eighteen and he hasn’t enrolled to vote yet. He swears morethan is necessary and he doesn’t always recycle. He broke up with me before the formal.
    I remembered that list when he came up to me at the beginning of this year. He leaned in and I smelt grass and he said, ‘Go out with me, instead of Mason.’ He was so close I thought I’d choke on all those birds crowding at my throat. I couldn’t think clearly and I almost said yes. I remembered my lists in time, though. I remembered that Brett liked me enough to tell the whole football team. I remembered how excited he looked when I said I’d go to the Year 12 graduation dance with him. I shook my head at Andrew and left.
    â€˜So I’ll see you at school Monday.’ Brett pulls away a tiny spider spinning a web from my fringe. ‘Must have been hanging there between us the whole time we were kissing,’ he says. ‘I never even noticed.’ He puts it gently on the ground. I watch it for a while after he’s gone and then place it carefully back into the garden.
    Dear diary , I write on the first page of Brett’s book and then I close it. Some things are too confusing to write down, even for me.

6
MARTIN
    I took off at the end of Year 12 because I’d failed my exams and I couldn’t face telling anyone. I took off because Dad had given me Mum’s phone number and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I was tired of thinking about her but I couldn’t stop while I was living at that house.
    I didn’t plan for Faltrain and me to stay broken up, not at the start. I thought I’d be ready to be her boyfriend again when I