How to Get to Rio (18 page)

I glanced back over my shoulder. Persephone and Jordan were smiling and waving from the ice-cream shop.

Rio released me into a chair in the busy medical centre. He handed me a magazine, gave my details to the receptionist and then sat down next to me.

‘All right?’ he said, smiling.

‘Much better,’ I said, trying to work out what was going on behind his smile. Surely he thought I was a major loser, and was annoyed about having to spend the afternoon waiting to see a doctor. I searched his face for signs of irritation, but he looked quite content as he reached for a fishing magazine and started flicking through the pages.

‘Thanks,’ I whispered. ‘You’re really sweet.’

Rio looked up from his mag. Our eyes met for no more than a second or two, but it was long enough. I felt myself falling, my heart racing, my mind spinning. Who would have thought that a sprained ankle could be romantic?

I glanced away to compose myself, watching a boy who had just walked in. He had blood on his face from a gash on his forehead. My euphoria vanished. ‘What a way to spend the holiday.’

‘Yeah. Hopefully you’re fine,’ Rio replied, ‘and it’s nothing too serious.’

I nodded. ‘Hopefully.’

Rio glanced back at his magazine for a second, and then closed it. ‘I was out for most of the soccer season with a broken foot last year,’ he said.

I winced. ‘Sounds painful.’

‘It was. And really, really annoying.’ He hesitated. ‘Even though it was actually my own fault.’

‘Why? What happened?’

Rio looked away for a second and then told me the whole story. It was the first game of the season and he’d ‘taken a dive’, which apparently meant making a tackle look worse than it was by falling to the ground. He’d been trying to force a penalty in front of the goal mouth. He ended up getting the penalty, but by diving he’d also managed to break his foot. ‘I guess I got what I deserved.’

I was surprised; it was almost exactly what had happened to me. I glanced at Rio, wondering if I should share my story, too. But I pushed the idea away. He’d just get the wrong idea about me. It was one thing to fake an injury on a soccer pitch to help your team out. It was another to lie to your friends. So, instead, I focused on soccer.

‘Big fan of Real Madrid, are you?’ I asked, making use of the bit of intel I’d picked up from his folder in the bridge-building session.

Rio raised his eyebrows. ‘Is it that obvious?’

I smiled coyly. ‘The sticker on your folder at school gave you away.’

Rio laughed and then talked more about soccer, his friends and his brother, who were all as mad about soccer as he was. Rio lived and breathed soccer from the sound of it. Not that he really had a choice, he said. Because his dad was Argentinean, football was basically in his blood. That explained Rio’s slight and very cute accent.

‘Shame I didn’t inherit my dad’s artistic skills, though,’ Rio said, sighing. ‘He’s a graphic artist. He’s got an amazing imagination.’

‘What sort of work does he do?’

‘Really modern stuff. Totally offbeat. A bit like him really. It’s hard to describe. I’ll have to show you sometime.’

I felt my heart skip a beat as he said the words. Rio was inviting me to see his dad’s work. I could barely believe what I was hearing.

I couldn’t help a smile spreading across my face. ‘That’d be cool.’

Rio glanced at his hands. ‘You’re going to think I’m a complete stalker,’ he said slowly, ‘but remember that bridge picture you drew with the dragon?’

I laughed. ‘How could I forget!’

‘Well, I rescued that picture out of the bin and took it home to show it to my dad. He thought it was really good. You’re really good.’

I felt myself blush. ‘It was nothing. Just a doodle,’ I said. ‘I’m not that good. Anyway, you’re not a stalker. I’m the one …’ I took a deep breath to stop myself from saying any more. I was just about to blurt out my own stalker story. I knew Rio would run for the exit if he knew I’d been studying him on the bus practically every day. I scrambled for something sensible to say. ‘I haven’t told you the whole story about my ankle,’ I said before I’d had a chance to work out if now was the right time for a confession. And then it all just came out. Every last terrible detail. ‘Probably got what I deserved, huh?’

I waited for Rio to judge me, feeling totally exposed. I’d probably made a terrible mistake telling him that I’d lied to my friends. He’d think I was completely two-faced. But he just shrugged.

‘Don’t beat yourself up. We’ve all done it. You were just trying to protect your friends’ feelings.’

‘Yeah, I was,’ I said. ‘But I guess I got what I deserved.’

I looked down at my ankle. It was still throbbing, and looked worse than ever. Somehow, though, it didn’t really feel like a punishment anymore. I felt like I’d won first prize in some cute-guy lottery. I was sitting centimetres away from Rio, the guy I’d been dreaming about for months. I knew everything about his face, his hair, the way he moved, and the way he laughed from watching him on the bus. But now I was actually getting to know him.

I glanced at Rio’s face. He caught me watching, but instead of looking away, he just smiled.

‘What?’ he asked, even though he must have known exactly what I was thinking.

‘Kitty MacLean,’ someone called.

I looked up, startled. I’d almost forgotten where I was until I stood to walk.
Oh, the pain!

Rio helped me into the doctor’s room. She checked me over, squeezing and prodding my foot and ankle. She didn’t think it was broken but she told me to have an X-ray if it didn’t get better in a couple of days. She sent me on my way with a bandaged ankle, crutches, instructions on painkillers and a stern telling off for playing around on the rocks.

I felt like a naughty three-year-old. I glanced at Rio, who was trying to hide a smirk. I elbowed him, but it only made him snort, which gave me the giggles. The doctor frowned as I thanked her and shuffled out of the surgery, trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face.

I was still smiling right up until the moment that the receptionist cleared her throat, and I realised that I had to pay a bill.

‘Seventy-five dollars for today’s visit, thank you.’

This was exactly what my mum had in mind when she gave me an ‘emergencies only’ stash of cash. Just a shame I had spent most of it on bikinis. My heart was in my mouth as I pulled out the last of the money from my purse. Thirty-five dollars. I unzipped the change section and counted out my coins.

The receptionist stared at me and tapped her pen. ‘Is there a problem?’

I scrambled through my purse one more time. And then I saw a bulge in a side pocket that I never used. I opened it up and pulled out a roll of twenties and a note. It read ‘ABSOLUTE Emergencies Only’.
Thank you, Mum!

‘No problem,’ I said, smiling at the receptionist and handing her the cash.

Rio gave me a cheeky smile as he opened the door to the medical centre so I could hobble out on my new crutches. ‘Thought we were going to have to wash the floors to get out of there. What a first date!’

I almost fell off my crutches.
First date? Rio thinks this is a first date?

I looked up at him, smiling, trying to play it cool. ‘Oh, I really know how to have fun. I never stop.’

‘So,’ Rio said, as we stood on the footpath still looking at each other. ‘We should find the others.’

‘Yeah, totally.’ I nodded, but neither of us moved. It was like we were held in a date spell. If we moved, the magic would all be over. I studied Rio’s face, unable to do anything, until I heard someone calling me.

‘Kitty, is your ankle okay?’

I managed to drag my eyes away from Rio and saw Persephone and Jordan running across the street. They looked so cute, hand in hand.

‘I’m totally okay,’ I said, feeling dazed. ‘Amazing. Couldn’t be better.’

It was true, but I wasn’t talking about my ankle. I’d never felt so good inside.

‘What’s it like to be in love?’ I asked Persephone as we lay in our beds that night.

She sat up, fluffed her pillow and then looked at me with a sly smile. ‘Do you think you might be in love with Rio?’

‘I’m not sure. I hardly know him. And every time I see him I’m doing something really stupid like flashing my knickers or falling flat on my face in the sand.’

‘That doesn’t seem to bother him. I think he finds you intriguing.’

‘So you think he thinks I’m weird?’

Persephone smiled. ‘Maybe, but in a really cute way.’

She lay back down on her pillow and stared at the ceiling fan whirring slowly above us.
‘
Tori says being in love is like a disease. And sometimes it nearly kills you. But I don’t know. I’ve never been in love.’

I rolled over on my side and stared at Persephone. ‘No way.’

She shrugged. ‘I think I’m falling for Jordan, though. When I see him, I get this excited, anxious, sick feeling, all at the same time. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Uh-huh.’ I knew exactly what she meant.

‘And you know what I did when you were in the shower?’

I shook my head.

She pulled out a notepad from under her pillow. ‘I wrote an acrostic poem about him. You know like the ones we did in primary school. The first letter of each line spells Jordan.’ She opened the notepad, showed me the poem and then read it out loud.

‘
Jordan is the cutest

Only guy for me

Really like it when we talk

Does something to my heart

And one more thing

No-one else is like him.
’

I smiled. ‘So sweet.’

She handed me the notepad. She had decorated the borders around the poem with flowers and love hearts and then written Jordan’s name, probably a hundred times. Yep. She was definitely falling for him.

‘You know what I did while
you
were in the shower?’ I pulled my sketch pad out from under my pillow. I flipped through the pictures until I got to the most recent one. It was a drawing of Rio on a tiny boat, in a stormy sea. I was flying in to save him on a dragon, not so much because I was into fantasy, but just because I liked drawing dragons.

‘Wow! That’s amazing! You did all that while I was in the shower?’