Super Awkward (4 page)

I stomped back out into the freezing night. Now what?! Was going back to the warmth of Pop-Swop better or worse than slowly dying of hypothermia? I
hobbled
to the hall to assess the options. A man was on stage announcing that they were moments away from the delights of Pearls Allowed (the OAP girlband), Oldplay (clue's in the title) and BigMacFly (a Weight Watchers cover band). Hypothermia won. Resigned to waiting for Mum to finish posing like a post-menstrual panda, I trudged back to the caravan.

The park seemed foggier than usual. Or was it just talcum powder billowing out of my hair? There was also a gross smell of pickled pear drop. I sniffvestigated, only to discover it was me. Wow, embarrassment sweats had upgraded my Loserdom to 4D. Still, I had to keep warm, or I might die, and then all over the world they'd publish my underwhelming life story alongside one of my awful school photos.

Maybe I could try some basic PE stuff. That could help? I flung my arms and legs around trying to remember what Mrs Nyatanga taught us. What was it . . . grape vine? Spotty dog. Yeah, this was working. And the way my costume was bobbing around was kind of funny. Ski jumps. Jumping Jacks. And I did feel a
bit
warmer.

But one simple high kick later and I'd frozen solid.

One simple high kick later and I was staring at a life in jail.

Exercise is bad for your health. Fact.

CHAPTER

FOUR

“Your elbow's in my groin.” A man-voice was coming out of my ribcage. Surely not even the most advanced stomach could rumble sentences?

“Sorry, could you possibly move? Your elbow really is in my groin.”

Argh, it wasn't a man-voice. It was an actual man. And it just said the word ‘groin'. To me. As if strangers should ever say ‘groin' to each other.

Sorry, Bella. Back up. What
had
happened in the last fifteen seconds? I thought back. One particularly enthusiastic jumping jack – yup. Heel stuck in the mud – check. Losing my balance like a comedy cartoon character – done. Sailing through the air, legs akimbo – achieved. Shoe flying off like a glittery
missile
– kap-ow. And the final cherry on the cringe-cake? Landing full force on a big boney cushion – AKA an actual human. Oh excellent.

I looked like a mad woman – and one who thought it was OK to play spontaneous horizontal musical statues with strangers. But who,
or what
, was beneath me?

I looked down and freaked out as I couldn't see a thing. Had the fall knocked out my sight?! But as I felt around in the dark, I realized with massive relief that the giant arrow bit had just fully flapped over the hole for my face. Phewphs. I yanked it off and squinted at my human landing pad, trying to make out some features. It had hair. Scruffy, brown hair. It had a face. A squashed and wincing face. And as it came into focus, I made out something far more terrifying. It had a squashed, wincing and undeniably
fit
face. WTWOMG.

Was my man-mattress actually Louis Tomlinson? Had I squashed The Tommo to death!? Harry was going to kill me. Who knew they holidayed in Wales? The news report was totally going to use that school photo of me now.

“Err, it's actually starting to hurt quite a bit.”

I lifted my head up off my landing cushion, chest,
whatever,
and assessed the crime scene. My elbow was digging into something sort of warm, squishy, and . . . in his jeans. The area that shall not be named!! Mortification! This is not how my first boy-part contact was meant to be. I plucked my elbow out of the danger area and scrambled to my foot. It would be feet, but only one of them was in contact with the floor, the shoeless one could only dangle two inches above ground.

“Ughghgorry.”

Instead of apologizing, I sounded like I was trying to simultaneously gargle while getting tickled. As the attack-ee stood up, I got visual crush confirmation. Attack-ee was a lean, mean, scruffy haired fit-machine – and I'd potentially caused him organ damage. Not ideal. Must try again.

“Ughghgorry. I'm gory. Soggy. Sorgy. I'm sorry.”

Attack-ee was patting down his jeans, so luckily didn't see my face giving my mouth evils for being so lame. Come on, guys, work together, you're a team.

“Don't worry about it, these things happen.”

They do? Shoe projectiles and spontaneous mountings might be a common occurrence to him but it's deffo a first for me. But if he could play it cool, so could I.

“I was just doing some jumping jacks. To keep
warm.
Because I'm locked out. And I'm only really wearing cardboard. Which might sound a bit like cardigan. But is nowhere near as warm. And is a terrible choice of clothing. Unless you're an actual cornflake. Which I'm not.”

He didn't reply.

Must knock ‘playing it cool' off the list of talents I previously wondered if I had. I looked up. Wow, he was proper tall. About six inches taller than me. (Even wearing one heel. Me, not him.)

“And I wasn't throwing myself at you. On you. I just tripped. I promise. I wasn't . . . being a weirdo or anything.”

Attack-ee looked bemused. Argh. Had I left gaps between those words, or just delivered the world's longest mono-word? Was he going to dial 999?

My fate hung in the balance as he calmly straightened the collar of his denim jacket and brushed down his grey jumper that was peeping out underneath.

“Well, that's good to know. All makes perfect sense now.” He laughed like a horse warming up pre-neigh – but in a hot way. My stomach lurched like when my mum goes 25mph over the small bridge by our house. Had I made a real life discovery of a specimen of Boy-Shouldus-Be-In-A-Band-Ius?

I
tried not to stare at him as he picked bits of grass out of his ruffled hair. Out of all the no-hopers at Black Bay, why did I have to achieve my most mortifying accomplishment in front of this unique specimen?

“I'm so embarrassed. I didn't mean to do
any
of that. And now look – you've soiled yourself.” His eyebrows shot up. “Not soiled! I meant like, earthed. Like grounded. Like dirted. . .” Someone invent a mouth filter for me, please.

“MUD!” I shrieked. “Yes, I meant you got mud on yourself.” We both flinched. Him because I bellowed in his ear. Me at having a Eureka moment remembering a three-letter word. Could I pretend English wasn't my first language? Sure, if I had the ability to think of a single country more obscure than France. I don't.

“Are you OK? You look more weirded out than me. And I've just been hit in the face by a shoe. . .”

Oh great. The flying shoe had hit him. I'd been hoping things could get even more cringe. He looked me up and down.

“. . . all while dressed as a giant . . . Cheerio?”

The horror of being labelled as the notorious Black Bay's Sex Pest Shoe Attacker had made me numb to what a total dork I must look. Without the arrow bit, I
was
basically just a lone-girl dressed as a cereal box and smelling a bit of bins.

“I'm SO sorry. I'm not a complete loon. Promise. This is fancy dress.” It should really be called no-one-will-ever-fancy-me dress. “I don't normally wear food packaging.” Hope that was stating the obvious. “It
was
an arrow. Now it's pointless.” A bit like me trying to explain myself. “I was just pretending to be One Direction. As in not
them
. Not the boys. I mean, I can't even grow a beard. Or dance. Or sing. I'm just their name. Well, I was until I squashed half of the arrow off. I mean, are you even OK? Please don't report me.”

Attack-ee pointed at the large purpley bruise above his left eye. Some shoe glitter twinkled on it. Was that glitter embedded?! Oh great, I'd not only injured him, I'd permanently accessorized him.

“And who would I report you to? I don't
think
the police have a department for crimes of landing on people.” He smiled. He must be pretty laid back to be taking this in his stride. “Although you do kind of look like a cereal killer. . .” Oh ha, very ha. “. . . and if they've caught it on CCTV, it'll be a most excellent YouTube vid.”

Oh, the relief! Attack-ee wasn't going to press charges! Attack-ee watched terrible videos too! I
giggled.
It came out like a three-year-old child's, so I lowered it to sound more alluring and sophisticated, but sounded like Father Christmas instead. Attack-ee took a more traditional approach to silence-filling and made conversation.

“So . . . have you only just arrived? I haven't seen you about?” Aaaah, a Liverpool twang to his voice. Northern accents make me all melty like a human toasted cheese sandwich.

“No, I've been here for a few days – but haven't seen you about either.” Obviously, as one sighting of him and I'd have been sleeping under his caravan. “We're leaving tomorrow – THANK GOODNESS.”

He looked fake hurt.

“All right, Black Bay's biggest fan?! It's my fifth time here. . .”

Cringe. Why couldn't I be less insulting with my insults?

“. . . and none of them have been near death experiences for me – yet. Although more recently some stranger attacked me in the dark with some footwear. Don't know if you remember that one?” He looked even cuter when he was teasing me.

I shrugged my shoulders back at him, although all he saw was my arrow bob up and down.

“
Nope, no recollection. Sounds awful though. You should let someone know, they sound dangerous.” I smiled. Maybe I
had
been too harsh. If Black Bay was good enough for this McFittie's biscuit, it was good enough for me. “On second thought, you know, thinking about it more carefully, maybe it's not
that
bad here.”

“My gran's been coming here since she was little. That's why we come back every year for her birthday. So . . . putting your total overwhelming-under-enthusiasm to one side, it
would
have been a nice change to have had someone to hang out with who was born in the same decade as me. Or even century.”

Did he mean me? Was this fit boy saying it would have been nice to have hung out with
me
? Could I somehow get him to repeat this – on camera?

“Sorry, do you mean
me
?”

It splurted out.

“Erm, yes?” He'd definitely noticed that I wasn't normal.

“Cool.”

‘Cool' was the understatement of the century. Ten minutes earlier I'd been counting down every second till we left, now I reckoned I could permanently live in a place where my bed played hide and seek. Plus, he thought I was his age, whatever that was.

“
Aaaaaanyway, let's start at the start. What's your name – or can't you tell me as you're a highly skilled undercover agent, disguised as a box of breakfast?”

“Ha. Ha. I'm Bella. With zero special skills. Although I can get all five of my foot toes in my mouth.” Overshare. I hadn't even attempted it since I was seven. “People call me Bells for short.” Luke also calls me Blobfish or Fishy Balls, but I didn't feel I needed to offer all options.

“Well hello, Bella slash Bells slash foot chewer. . .” He put his hand out. Making full contact with his brown eyes made me all limp inside, like a school canteen baguette. “I'm Zac.”

So the love of my life was called Zac. Good to know who I was going to be obsessing over for the next for ever. I smiled up at him.

“Nice to meet you toooooo.” I accidentally did a ghost impression, as my body involuntarily shivered, like a little human earthquake.

Zac didn't flinch and flicked off his jacket.

“Here.” He swished it over my shoulders, as if him catching hypothermia for a girl he'd just met was no big deal. “In the words of someone very profound, the cold never bothered me anyway.”

I swooned so much I even felt it in my liver.

“
And if you're locked out, how about we go somewhere a bit more sheltered? I could show you a spot that none of the oldies ever make it to? Kind of my own personal hideout.”

I nodded slowly and tried to squeeze out a normal reaction, but I was so overwhelmed with the excellence of this idea that I just sounded like Siri.

“Yeah . . . seeing a . . . new bit of Black Bay . . . sounds . . . good.” By ‘good' I meant, best idea ever suggested in the world ever, including the invention of Daim Bar Dairy Milk.

So, off we limped – him from injury, me because I only had one shoe on. As we meandered towards the wood, I figured that with such a disastrous start things could only get better. But the only destination I was hurtling towards was the capital of Cringe City, population: me.

CHAPTER

FIVE

So here I was. Just casually picking my way through a tiny forest path with the world's fittest man. As you do, Bella, as you do.

“So, er, what do you do when you're not being hit in the face by strangers?” Fingers crossed he wasn't going to say ‘kidnapping people in forests'. Or line-dancing.

“Well, that's kind of a full-time thing.” Oh, great. Fit AND funny. “But, when I
do
take a break from it, I'm mainly at college.” Soooo he was at college. He did look older. “Or working on some prints. I spend half my life covered in paint.”

So he was a hottie arty type. I got a body tingle – bingle – in a way I'd never felt before. Probably the lesser-sighted-sexy-art-boy bingle – very hard to come
by
in Appleton, where the majority of boys think the highest form of creativity is weeing a pattern into snow.

“Oh, cool.” I said, ducking under a branch that he'd stopped to pull out of my way. “What kind of, er, prints do you print?” I was completely clueless, but knew the golden rule is to always show an interest.

“It depends really. Kind of abstract stuff, expressionism. You know.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Obvs I had no clue. The only expressionism I knew was the intelligent expressionism I hoped was currently on my face. If only Rachel was here to help; she's got a room full of books all about art (that up until now I've artfully avoided).