In Sarah's Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

geranium oil, a bird feather and a piece of coal – none of which Ihappened to have handy – I never got round to trying it out.)
    “Yeah, OK, so you were wearing a towel, but still, Megan! Weren’t you mortified?!”
    “No,” I shrug. “I wasn’t. I know I should have been, and I know normally I absolutely would have been, but somehow…he just didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.”
    It was true. However shy or weird I felt sitting with Conor for that little while on Saturday night, the one thing I didn’t feel was awkward. Or embarrassed. It’s like a miracle, really – normally, I hate my pear-shaped body so much that I’ll wrap a huge beach towel around me when I go swimming and only drop it at the last minute when I get to the poolside. On holidays abroad, I’m happier in long shorts and T-shirts than the micro-bikinis Sarah flaunts herself in.
    “But, my God,” Pamela goggles her eyes at me. “Wearing next to nothing in front of someone you fancy…I’d just die!”
    She’s imagining herself and Tariq, I can tell. You know, I’m really beginning to wish I hadn’t told Pamela about what happened on Saturday or that I fancied Conor in the first place. For a start, she’s pissing me off by making the whole thing sound seedy, and second, I’m not doing it to titillate her and get her mind workingovertime about being in the same situation with Tariq. As if that’s ever going to happen. They’ve never even been in the same room alone together, never said anything apart from shy “hi”s (still!) to each other. I mean, there’s something fundamentally nuts about flirting by text and then acting too timid to talk to each other in the (fully-clothed) flesh, isn’t there? OK, so I’m no super-confident ladette, who has a posse of male buddies and would think nothing of asking a guy out – I’m just the exact, polar opposite. But even I know Pamela and Tariq are goofing around pathetically. She’s in a win-win situation: she likes him and knows for a fact that he likes her, so what are they waiting for? Some kind of matchmaker, like they had in Victorian times – or like they have in arranged marriages – to formally introduce them? God, I’m going to have to end up doing it, aren’t I…?
    “Look, Pamela, me and Conor talking – it only lasted for about one minute, till my sister came scurrying in,” I say to the top of my friend’s bowed head. I try to bring her wandering mind back to the conversation by thunking a particularly huge pile of books down into her arms…
    “Oww!”
    “Oops! I’m sorry!” I gasp as Pamela clutches the top of her head and tries to rub the pain away with the palms of her hands.
    “Are you OK in there?”
    Close up, Mr Fisher has the look of an older David Beckham about him, but maybe that’s just because he’s got that Number One buzzcut that Beckham made famous once upon a time. Behind him, Miss Jamal frowns at Pamela’s whimpering and at the scattering of books over the cracked lino floor.
    “I dropped them…only she, um, didn’t catch them,” I mumble uselessly in explanation, scampering quickly down the stepladder and immediately crouching down to gather up the mess.
    “Come out here where it’s brighter, so I can check you haven’t been cut,” Miss Jamal motions to Pamela, who shuffles past me, her scuffed, black, school brogues sending textbooks skimming off to the farthest corner of the cupboard.
    “It’s like an episode of Itchy and Scratchy in here!” Mr Fisher says wryly, squatting down and helping me gather up everything. “What was going to happen next? Was Pamela going to hit you in the face with a giant frying pan?”
    “No – I was going to hide a bomb in a copy of David Copperfield and then ask her to read it out loud to me while I ran away!”
    Mr Fisher laughs and I get that same spine-tingling thrill as when Conor laughed out loud at something Isaid on Saturday night. People – male people – finding me funny; this is a