It Started With A Kiss by Lindy Dale Page B

fun of skinny
Georgie in her too long, grey, tartan skirt and her big, blue,
school shirt. They made so much fun of her, in fact, that Georgie
wet her pants, something she hadn’t done since she was being toilet
trained. She was mortified. Especially when she had to suffer the
indignity of wearing the spare knickers from the teacher’s
cupboard. They were too big and the elastic was loose with age. And
they had pictures of My Little Pony on the front. Only babies wore undies with ponies
on them. She’d have been far happier if they had pictures of
the Spice Girls .
Georgie spent the rest of the day hitching the knickers up every
time she walked and keeping her eyes to the floor so nobody would
notice her. Needless to say, she had no intention of going back to
that school again.
    On the second day, having lost the argument
with her mother about going to school, Georgie entered the
classroom subdued and quiet. All night long she’d prayed to God to
make her invisible but he hadn’t answered, so she’d had to get
dressed in the big baggy uniform and follow Mum into the classroom.
It was as she was putting her lunch order into the basket that she
met Nate. He was skinny too, like her, but he was tall and blonde
and he had a mouth as big as a football and no front teeth. It made
his whole face look like a gaping hole when he grinned. Which he
did constantly.
    “ I’m Nathan,” he said, his
blue eyes twinkling with boyish mischief.
    Georgie looked around. Surely, the boy wasn’t
talking to her? After the events of the day before, she’d fully
expected the entire class to ignore her. “Are you talking to
me?”
    “ Well, I’m not talking to
the bookshelf. Are you new in our class?”
    Georgie swallowed. She waited for one of the
other children to approach Nathan and tell him he shouldn’t talk to
the new girl because she wet her pants but everyone else seemed to
be waiting to see what this boy would do.
    “ Yes. I’m
Georgie.”
    “ I was sick yesterday. My
stupid sister Charlotte gave me Chicken Pox and my mum wanted me to
stay home ‘one more day’ to make sure I wasn’t gonna die or
anything.” He rolled his eyes as if to say there’d been nothing
wrong with him, only girls had to stay home when they got a disease. Then, he
held out his arm and pushed up his sleeve, revealing three brownish
scabs on underside of his wrist. “See?”
    “ Eww,” Georgie
said.
    Nathan beamed proudly at having repulsed her.
“Have you had Chicken Pox?”
    “ When I was five. I have a
scar.” She lifted the hair at the nape of her neck, showing him the
indent.
    “ That’s big.”
    “ I know. I have one on my
foot, too. I had scabs in my hair and all over my
tummy.”
    “ I had them under my arms,”
Nate countered.
    “ I had them between my
fingers.” Georgie revealed yet another tiny scar.
    “ Coolaphonic.”
    Georgie had no idea what ‘coolaphonic’ meant
but it sounded like the type of word she ought to know.
    “ What’s that
mean?”
    “ It means more awesomer
than cool,” Nate replied.
    Georgie nodded, storing the information
away.
    Their conversation ended as the bell rang and
the children went to sit on the mat ready to begin the day. Nathan
squeezed into the space next to another boy and sat beside Georgie.
He sat very close so that his knee touched her knee when they
crossed their legs and when he was chosen to take the lunch orders
to the canteen, he picked Georgie to accompany him. He smiled at
her the whole way there and back, chattering incessantly about the
things they did at school and the things he liked. He asked if he
could come to her house to play one day and Georgie told him he
could. She was smitten. Nobody, other than her parents, had ever
given her so much attention. When the returned to the classroom
five minutes later, Georgie Bird was no longer the geeky
wet-your-pants girl. As Nathan held the door open for Georgie to
enter before him, she realized she’d moved up a notch in