Big Boy Did It and Ran Away Read Online Free Page B

around, worrying that her rota had changed and he’d already missed her; all of which being before he had to actually speak to her. He’d feared his voice would disappear, and then when it didn’t, that she could read his thoughts even as he chatted and joked. When he finally asked, he’d felt his words soften and tremble in his throat, his lips seeming to numb as though he had some kind of palsy, hardly presenting the strong‐
jawed image that would enhance his chances.
    Her name was Maria. He’d known her for years in as much as they were in some of the same classes at school, but he hadn’t known her to talk to until recently. The guys just didn’t talk to the girls at school, not unless they wanted to lay themselves open to all manner of teasing and ridicule. Even among themselves, nobody talked about who they fancied, unless they meant models and movie stars. It was as though it was a sign of weakness, or something the others could use against you. Worse still, they could tell her, and then you might as well commit suicide.
    Maria had a job at one of the big department stores over the summer holidays, and he had genuinely bumped into her on her break on Monday. It had taken him by surprise that they had been able to talk so comfortably, but what surprised him more was the way he felt after she was gone. He couldn’t think about anything or anyone else. From being just a girl he knew of, she became the only girl in the world he wanted to know.
    He went back the next day, thinking he’d just try and catch a glimpse of her, but not let her see him (what would she think?), but it turned out to be her day off. On Wednesday he had to help his father lay chips in the garden, and the truck didn’t turn up on time, so the job wasn’t done until late in the afternoon. He thought about going into town and waiting to catch her coming out when her shift was over, but when he came downstairs after having a shower, Jo‐
Jo was in the kitchen, waiting for him to come and join a kick‐
around in the park. He would go tomorrow, he told himself, and he wouldn’t just sneak a glimpse, he would speak to her. He would ask her out.
    She didn’t say yes. Instead she began nodding and smiling before he had even finished his tremulous, stumbling sentence, making it plain that she had read his thoughts, had known what was coming, and already knew her answer. It felt amazing.
    They arranged to meet outside the cinema. She had surprised him by saying she wanted to see the American movie Close Action 2, which Tony hadn’t considered ideal date material, and he came close to blowing their relationship before it started when he suggested she must fancy the star, Mike MacAvoy. Maria didn’t regard herself as a ‘girly’ girl. She listened to The Offspring and Nine Inch Nails as her classmates drooled over the latest bubble‐
gum teen‐
idols, and while they gossiped about soaps, she could tell you everything about The X-Files and The Sopranos.
    She was late. Not very late, not late enough for him to start seriously worrying about being stood up – yet – just late. The sense of anticipation had been present in varying degrees of intensity for at least thirty‐
six hours, but what he was feeling now was something different, something unique. This was a good nervous, an exciting nervous. He was trying to remember how she smelled, to picture what she’d wear, how she walked, the way she smiled, and marvelling that so many wonderful and fascinating things could be contained in one small frame. It tingled in his stomach and it quivered in his chest. It was as though he had to remember to breathe.
    And then he saw her, suddenly emerging from behind two old women dressed in widows’ black. She wore a cornflower‐
coloured sundress that made her look like she ought to be barefoot and the pavement knee‐
high grass. Last month he’d scored from a direct free‐
kick in injury time in the last game of the schools season to clinch the