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wouldn’t get angry with him for it. Instead I’d feel like a bad person, a worthless person. Then he’d say something nice about me, so I’d be completely grateful to him for cheering me up and being such a good friend.
    It’s a dangerous trap to fall into, letting someone else control how you feel about yourself. Why do you do it? Simple. It’s for the moments when they make you feel better .
    Anyway. Summer post-Junior-Cert-trauma, everything’s going wonderfully wrong. Abi feels like crap and takes up recreational arm-slicing. (She always meant to have another hobby.) Sarah fails to notice. Graham possibly does, but doesn’t say anything. Actually, thinking about it, he probably didn’t, because otherwise he wouldn’t have wanted to go out with me. He’s not good with people with problems. Complaining about his own, sure, but scars would have scared him off.
    It was one day at the end of July or the start of August that he told me he loved me. I kid you not, he actually used those words. And if they hadn’t been coming out of the mouth of someone I was beginning to hate, I probably would have been flattered, at the very least.
    Instead I just stared blankly at him and then said, “OK.”
    “I’m serious,” he said.
    “So . . . what do you want me to say?” I glared at him. I was pissed off with him. He’d put me in an awkward situation, and I didn’t like it.
    “Forget it,” he snapped.
    And I thought that was the end of it, I really did. And when I say “it”, I don’t just mean the love part, I mean our entire friendship. I was hoping it was.
    But of course it wasn’t. Then came the stalker-like phone calls and unexpected visits to the house. And although you’ve probably come to the conclusion that I’m a cold-hearted bitch, I’m actually hopeless at being mean to people if they’re being friendly towards me. I mean, Graham was getting on my nerves with his fake “I really value our friendship” line, but I couldn’t yell at him for it. I just couldn’t.
    I suspect his text message says something along those lines. Let’s see . . . oh, I was right. Abi, I miss having u 2 talk 2, ur such a good friend. Call r txt soon. Graham.
    I consider it, and scroll down through the options. Reply. Forward. Ah, there we go.
    Delete.
     
     

Chapter Sixteen
     
    You can probably understand why Graham isn’t exactly my favourite person in the world. After I reluctantly agreed to be friends with him again, he took this to mean that I reciprocated his feelings.
    And thought it would be appropriate to declare to all of his friends, and mine, that we were together.
    Even people who weren’t technically “friends” knew about it, like Leanne and Hannah and that crowd. And since Graham isn’t exactly . . . the most desirable boy around, they found it pretty funny. You know how it goes. The biggest loser you know turns out to have a girlfriend. It makes for great gossip. Especially when the girl is that weird ex-friend of yours.
    The one good thing about it was that people tended to be more surprised about him going out with someone than me going out with someone. I was, apparently, the lesser loser of the two of us.
    To make matters worse, at the time the word was spreading, I was in Tyrone for a long weekend, staying with my cousin Sharon. By the time I got back, everybody knew.
    I ran into Leanne in the newsagent’s. “I heard about your new boyfriend,” she said, grinning. To be fair, she was being friendly as opposed to bitchy that day.
    “What?” I asked, confused, having just arrived back the night before.
    “Graham, is that his name? Paul told me. He said the guy never shuts up about you.”
    “I’m not going out with him,” I said, in complete and utter shock. I was hoping Paul had gotten it wrong, but at the same time it seemed like a very Graham-like thing to do.
    Leanne seemed surprised. “He’s been telling everyone. I always thought he was your boyfriend, he always seems to be