Like I told my friends, I’d barely seen Jonah since I brought him a coffee. He’d been in his room, or in the pupil support unit at school, or just wherever I wasn’t. He seemed to be timing his kitchen snack-raids for when I was out, or asleep. He’d said his door was always open, but when he ignored me all the time, it was hard to believe that.
A ripple of dread crept from my toes all the way up my body until it settled as a tight band of tension around my head.
I waited another fifteen minutes before telling Katie and Alicia I had a migraine, rudely shooing them out before Jonah’ssibling contact finished so I wouldn’t have to face him in the hallway. The second they left I sprinted upstairs and pulled out my journal.
I’m such an idiot. If Davis thought I was flirting, then what must Jonah think, when I probably actually was? I took Wagon Wheels to his room. Could I have been more lame or obvious? I sat on his bed and held his hand. That’s probably classed as sexual harassment. He’d be too scared to say anything because it’s my word against his, and if I kicked off he’d think no one would believe the damaged foster kid over me…
And now he’s hiding from me, and wants to leave a lovely home because I’m a loser with a crush on her foster BROTHER.
After pacing up and down in a panic for a few minutes, I added a list of potential options to undo the mess I’d caused.
Die of humiliation
Convince him that I hate him (which doesn’t explain the Wagon Wheels, and honestly, enough people dislike him without me pretending to be another one)
Be totally clear that it was just a sisterly hand-hold
Option three was a no-brainer. I decided the best way to convince Jonah that I didn’t have a crush on him was to pretend I liked someone else.
I put the plan into action at dinner that evening.
‘So, I was stood behind Carlos in the queue for lunch today, and he said, “Libby, do you think that curry is chicken or pork?” And I was like, “Um, well, the sign says it’s chicken korma, so I guess it must be chicken?”’ I burst into a peal oflaughter that was irritating enough to me, so it only showed how patient my parents were that they merely smiled and nodded encouragingly.
‘Um, what?’ Nicky screwed her nose up in confused disgust. ‘Um, please tell me that’s not the end of the, um, story?’
‘Well, my guess is that it turned out to be pork,’ Dad said, with an expectant grin.
‘Or…’ Mum pretended to think. ‘Was it neither? That’s it – Quorn, and they’d fooled the lot of you!’ she said, pointing a triumphant fork in the air.
‘Er…’ The part of me that hated myself glanced over at Jonah, who was calmly eating his lasagne, absorbed in a book. I reminded myself that it was worth it, if it meant he chose to stay, and pressed on with acting like a simpering airhead. ‘No. It was chicken.’
Mum and Dad both sagged melodramatically into their seats.
‘Sometimes I genuinely think I must be adopted,’ Nicky muttered. ‘Either that or Ishouldbe.’
‘At least you didn’t embarrass yourself in front of Carlos!’ Mum crowed. ‘It’s a while since we’ve heard that name. I thought he had left Bigley Academy?’
He had, in what I hoped was a coincidentally short time after I confessed my undying love for him in front of our whole tutor group. I’d wept into my pillow about it for weeks. Jonah wasn’t at school anywhere near often enough to figure out there was no Carlos any more.
‘So, yeah. Once I’d reassured him it was chicken, he had the curry. With chips, though, not rice.’
‘And what did you have, Libby?’ Dad asked.
‘Let me guess,’ Nicky said, taking a strand of her now jet-black hair and twining it around a finger. ‘You had curry too, with chips, not rice! Because, like, um, you and Carlos have so-o-o-o-o much in common.’ She trailed off with a bat of her eyelashes.
I didn’t have to fake my flaming cheeks. It was harder to force my pasta into a stomach clenched at my own patheticness.
