Things I Know About Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

been before I’d started to get sick. I was terrified of being seen again by people who hadn’t seen me for ages. I’d been out of school for well over a year and hadn’t socialized in all that time. I felt like a freak — was a freak.
    But it’s funny, when you’re separated from all school life, you develop a strange kind of confidence at the same time. For one thing, you’re literally dealing with life-and-death issues about yourself, so you stop worrying about small things you once obsessed over—for me, things like whether my nose bent slightly to the right, or whether the muscles next to my knees were freakishly big. You stop asking “Does my bum look big in this?” after you’ve gained more than thirty pounds and lost most of it again and you realize how thin you used to be when you used to think you were fat. It goes beyond all of that, even: in hospital, everything happens in a kind of time-has-stopped, not-real world, where people feel sorry for you and the people you meet are all kind and lovely and tell you how pretty and young you are. This is so different from school, which is a kind of scary jungle where anyone could be out to get you any day just because they feel like it, and you don’t feel young or pretty, and you have to watch your back all the time. When you go straight from one place to the other, the weird artificial confidence bursts like a bubble-gum bubble all over your face. You know the other kids know all about you, and that they know they’re supposed to be nice to you, but, what with you being a freak and all, it’s not going to be easy for them….
    Case Study B: Luke
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    When I came back to school, I found out that my friends now ran the place. Around the time I’d left to go into hospital, everyone I knew had been about as cool as I was, i.e., not cool at all. I returned to find myself in some kind of nightclub world where people lazed around on common-room furniture, wearing their own clothes, playing loud music, talking about sex—but in broad daylight. Sixth Form. See, once again, this makes me sound like a mad old lady: school students up to this sort of thing? In broad daylight ? I must write to the Times !
    Not only was I unprepared for everyone suddenly being as confident as…like, C-list celebrities, but there were all these new faces among them. Our school is one of only a few in a fairly big area and, at this stage, the local schools split up and mix a lot. Some people come to our school from other schools, people from our school leave to go to university-prep schools—it depends on the sort of subjects you want to study. Most of the university-prep schools are much more focused, with introductions to subjects like law and psychology. Our school is quite old fashioned and well rounded, but it’s also seen as the solid, reliable choice.
    I didn’t start right at the beginning of the year, so I kind of felt like the new girl for a few weeks, although obviously my friends were there and they were protective of me. I hoped there hadn’t been big public announcements about, you know, Leukemia Girl’s return, but at the same time I didn’t want to have to do any explaining to anyone about my condition, or why I was starting term late. I just wanted to slot in quietly and not be looked at. I wasn’t dressed quite like everyone else, because you really have to be around other teenagers to know how everyone’s dressing, and you have to think about it every day, which I hadn’t been. My clothes were new and I’d loved them when I bought them—I went on a few big shopping trips with my mum especially for that purpose—but they weren’t quite right. My skirts were a bit too long, my shoes were too straight—everything was too schooly. I guess all my friends had been going shopping together a lot. There was a look now—not just fashion, something more like a uniform but nothing like school uniform, and none of my clothes fitted it.
    So I was different in lots of