Any of you that missed my message last week – I’ve changed my fic update days round.  Now Popular is a Tuesday and Follower is a Friday ( Ch 28 of Follower went up on Friday just in case you were expecting that today!)

 

Sorry that this chapter is a very large pair of M&S black knickers – I’m having an incredibly awful week at the moment and so creative output is very slow! As soon as my life is back on track you shall get better chapters – sorry!!

 

Try and enjoy! xx

 

Chapter 10

 

I thumped my hand down hard on the keys causing a loud beeping noise to emit from the useless machine.

 

“Having problems?” a voice behind me asked.

 

I turned to see Simon pulling up a swivel chair and sitting down beside me.

 

“The computer isn’t working,” I muttered, hitting yet another key.

 

“I think its you not the computer with the problem,” he said gently, taking my hand away from the keys and fixing his eyes on the screen.

 

“Is not me,” I retorted indignantly, I refused to be beaten by the stupid thing.

 

“It is you, you’re scared of it.”

 

“How can I be scared of a bit of metal?”

 

He sighed and turning his attention to the computer began to tap a few random buttons, a second later my DT project was back on the screen.

 

I let out a squeal and turning to him wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug.  Immediately some other kids in the computer room began wolf whistling and feeling myself burn red I quickly let go.  It had been nice though, holding him in my arms, and judging by the way that he was smiling now he had liked it too.

 

“So what are you doing there?” he asked nodding at my work.

 

“Design Technology project.”

 

“They have you doing things on the computer?”

 

I nodded, pulling a face as I did so.  Design Technology was yet another lesson that I hated with a passion.  For some reason they had made us take a technology subject in year 9 and now I was stuck playing around with bits of old wood every week.

 

“It’s coursework.”

 

“I see,” he said, smiling at me and making my insides go squishy.

 

“What do you have to make then?”

 

“A child’s toy.”

 

He let out a low whistle, obviously impressed by the project.

 

“So what are you making?”

 

“Nothing,” I muttered, pretending to read back through my notes.

 

“Come on, let me see.”

 

“No, I don’t want to show you,” I covered the big A3 book up, much like a small child who was trying to prevent the kid next to him from cheating in a test.

 

“Come on babe I only want to see.”

 

Wow – had he just called me babe?  I’m sure he had, unless my ears were playing tricks on me, but then the school nurse had only checked them last week, in which case it had to be right, he had just called me babe! No one had ever called me babe before.  I reached out and gently touched his arm, making little pulses of electricity pump up my arm.

 

“Ah ah!” he seized up the book and began to flick through it.

 

No fair! He had purposely distracted me, yet for some reason I didn’t seem too bothered.

 

I sat and watched him as he flicked through the book, my eyes particularly locked on to his cute little freckled nose.  I really wanted to kiss it, but held myself back (something told me that boys didn’t particularly like having their noses kissed)

 

“Oh mi god!” he interrupted my thoughts, “you are making bookends.”

 

“Yeah and what’s wrong with that?” I asked pulling the project back from him and examining the diagram of my bookends.

 

“Kim, it’s two blocks of wood nailed together, you can hardly call that a good piece of woodwork can you?”

 

“Well, its all I can do,” I muttered, “I’m hoping that I can get through the exam by blagging through the written coursework, I don’t know the first thing about woodwork.”

 

“Awwww, well I really fancy girls with brains.” He said softly, his mouth right up against my ear.

 

I giggled quietly, “do you?”

 

He’d snuggled up really close to me now, his chair touching mine and his arm wrapped casually around the headrest.

 

“Yep, can’t wait to get you on the dance floor tonight.”

 

My heart skipped a little.  I had forgotten that today was the school dance and that I had agreed to go as Simon’s partner, may be I’d get to slow dance with him, that could be nice, although may be also slightly nerve wracking as I’d never danced with a boy before.  Who am I kidding? I’d never done anything with a boy before!  What happened if he wanted to kiss me or something?  How did I know where to put my head?  Was I meant to keep my eyes shut?  What if I was crap?  My mind became overloaded with all the possible things that could go wrong – suddenly having him this close didn’t seem so nice anymore and I quickly pulled my attention back to the computer.

 

“You OK?” he asked.

 

“Yep,” I forced a convincing smile back at him, “just need to get this finished before class.”

 

The answer seemed to satisfy him as he gave my arm a quick affectionate rub before leaving the computer room.

 

10 minutes later I found myself staring at a block of wood that was held firmly in the vice.  Worries about tonight’s dance still plagued my mind so I was thankful for the distraction of class, even if I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

 

I glanced over at the vice across the bench from me.  Positioned neatly between its two jaws was a perfect looking wooden car.  I leant forward a little to get a proper look and the detail of it amazed me, how on earth could anyone get something to look that perfect?  I glanced up, eager to know who had made such a masterpiece. 

 

My eyes immediately met a pair of bright blue ones.

 

I looked quickly down.

 

Shit! Now his royal arrogance would think that I was looking at him.  I knew he was still looking at me, I could feel his eyes burning into me.

 

Finally he spoke, “what on earth is that?”

 

I forced myself to look at him again and mumbled a quiet response, “bookends.”

 

He chuckled a little, I couldn’t quite work out if he was laughing at me or with me so forced my mouth into a little smile to put myself at ease.

 

“We can’t all be good at woodwork Ben,” I replied.

 

“Yeah, but I don’t think any of us are that crap!” he nodded towards my bookends, shook his head and strode off.

 

OK, now I was pretty sure that he was being just plain rude, forget having a joke with me, he was actually taking the piss… arrogant sod.

 

I returned my attention back to the job in hand. 

 

OK, one plain bit of wood sitting in a vice, what could I possibly do that would make it look like I was actually doing some work?

 

I picked up a piece of sandpaper from the bench next to me and began to quietly sand it down, even if it looked crap, at least it would be smooth, and surely that was something that would get me brownie points.

 

I began to absentmindedly look around the room as I worked.  There were some pretty scary looking machines in here.  I could still remember as clear as anything the first day I had ever come into this room as a small girl of 11.  The teacher had frightened us all to death with stories of kids getting their ties trapped in sanding machines and ending up with their heads cut off.  Thinking back to it now they had probably made it all up, but at the time it had scared us.  Maybe that would be a good way out of tonight, somehow getting my hand sawn off by the electric saw didn’t seem so bad in comparison to a night at the school dance.  There had to be some way of getting out of it, if I thought about it for long enough it actually began to make me ill anyway.

 

I wasn’t sure but I knew that something scary was going to happen tonight, I wasn’t sure if it was scary good or scary bad, but being the complete chicken that I am I had decided that whatever it was I didn’t want to confront it.