Three Paper Hearts

CHAPTER THREE

I didn’t really want to explain to Shaun why we couldn’t go on another date for a week because I was grounded, but I didn’t want to come off all weird because I didn’t want to go out until then. So I had to tell him. All he did was laugh and call parents lame, which was a relief.

            It also meant that I had to wait all the way until next Wednesday to go on another date with him. He said he was going to take me out for afternoon tea. I had no idea how I was supposed to look good in my uniform. At least I could put on lipgloss and have a shiny coat of light blue on my nails.

            Nail polish wasn’t allowed in school but that didn’t mean I didn’t wear it. You just had to be careful around certain teachers. Ones like my Maths teacher didn’t care; ones like my English teacher did. I had learnt back in year nine how to tuck my nails away every time a teacher went past after my home room teacher had given me two detentions for catching me so much and started threatening to call my parents. For a term she made me show her my nails everyday. It was painful not being able to paint them on a weekday. After that she decided that I had learnt my lesson and she never caught me again…because I didn’t let her look at my nails.

            I was walking with Charity and one of our other friends, Rayleigh, at the end of the day back to our lockers, when I saw that Shaun was already there, waiting beside my locker. How did he even know which one was mine? My heart immediately started to pound harder and I could feel a blush creeping up my cheeks for no reason.

            Rayleigh nudged me. “You are so lucky, girl,” she said.

            Shaun was smiling even before we got there and I only got wider when I said hello. He moved out of the way so I could put my books away and take homework out of it.

            “Ready to go?” he asked as I swung my bag up onto my back and I nodded.

            “See you later,” I said to Charity; Rayleigh had disappeared off to her locker.

            “Have fun,” she said and wiggled her eyebrows at me when Shaun wasn’t looking. Thank God he didn’t notice.

            “Bye,” I said and quickly turned around before she could say anything mushy and/or embarrassing.

            “Sooo,” I said as we walked out of school and started walking down the road, “where are we going?”

            “This place…” he said and slipped his hand into mine. It shot tingles through my hand and up my arm.

            I was walking down the road holding hands with Shaun McDonald. I knew I kept repeating things like that but I had been crushing on him for ages! And this was like, a real sign of girlfriend-boyfriend-ness. Holding hands where everyone could see. Inside I was jumping up and down and screaming. On the outside I tried to stay normal.

            “Where is this place you speak of?” I was aiming to sound wise and funny. From the smile that he had, I hoped that I got it right.

            “Surprise.”

            “Ooh! I love surprises.” Well, I usually did. Sometimes with surprises, you could build up what the surprise was going to be into something amazing and then when you found out what the surprise was it was really crap compared to what you thought it would be and what it could have been. So I had to stop myself from imagining a horse-drawn carriage pulling up for us to hop in so it could take us off for a picnic somewhere really romantic where he would propose to me. Yeah…better stop those thoughts right about now…