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else and some
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Chapter Four
    I’m standing at the bus stop waiting for the school bus. This has definitely got to be the worst part of the day for me. Well, this and the bus home. There’s only one other person from my school who catches the bus from this stop and that’s a boy from Year Eight, so we ignore each other. As the bus comes round the bend and pulls up at the bus stop, I curse the fact that it’s a single-decker bus. I do this every morning. If it was a double decker I could get away from Sasha and her cronies. But as it is, by the time the bus gets to my stop, she is sitting halfway up the aisle and the front of the bus is full of boys from Years Seven and Eight so I have to go past her to get a seat.
    Every day Sasha makes it her mission to embarrass me in some way. She used to call me ‘Anorak’ because Mum wouldn’t let me out of the house without my coat on. It was no good explaining to her that
nobody
wears a coat (except a few geeky boys) and that by making me wear one she was literallyruining my life. Then I hit on the solution of getting a bigger rucksack and hiding my coat in the bottom of it. Now Mum is willing to accept that I have one of those raincoats that packs up into a small bag which I keep in the bottom of my bag, ‘for emergencies’. Of course there is no emergency on earth which would force me to actually wear the thing, but Mum lives under the illusion that if it was raining hard I would get it out and put it on.
    So far it’s been at the bottom of my bag for over a year and is covered in specks of melted chocolate, and is sticky at one end where a banana gunked all over it because I forgot it was in my bag and I didn’t find it until it had gone black and split. So anyway, Sasha stopped calling me ‘Anorak’ and took to tripping me up as I went past and then saying, ‘Ooh look, it’s Alice in Blunderland.’ Everyone laughs of course, not because it’s funny but because everyone always laughs when Sasha does something cruel. I think they’re relieved it’s not them she’s picking on. Sasha has a way of saying things that seems to require a reaction, like she’s playing to an audience.
    I steel myself for what she has in store today. As I walk past her she says, very loudly so that even the Sixth Formers at the back of the bus look up, ‘Oh look, it’s The Virgin Alice.’
    I know I’m blushing and that everyone is staring and giggling and I hate her so much and I hate myself for blushing and probably looking like I’m about to cry, but I can’t help it. I stumble as far down the bus as I dare without entering the Sixth Form zone. I sit down in the nearest available seat and pretend to be looking for something in my bag, because I daren’t look up and catch anyone’s eye.
    My red face is just subsiding and my heart is returning to its normal rhythm when the person I have sat down next to leans over and says, ‘You should just ignore her, you know.’
    I look round and once again the blood rushes to my cheeks and my heart goes mad again. I’m sitting next to one of the Sixth Form boys. What’s he doing sitting this far forward? I’ve never seen him before – he must be new. I mean, he’s not the sort of person you could miss. He’s absolutely gorgeous. His hair is longer than most of the boys’ and it’s caramel-coloured. He’s got blue-grey eyes and no spots. And he’s talking to
me
. Then I remember that only a few minutes ago the whole bus was sniggering because Sasha had called me a virgin and I want the floor to open up and swallow me.
    I spend the rest of the journey trying to look busy, checking my timetable and stuff, but I can see, out of the corner of my eye, that the boy is watching me the whole time.
    Eventually he leans towards me and says, ‘Are we going to sit here all day? Not that I’d mind if I could sit next to you, but I think we should go into school. This is only my second day and I don’t want to blot my copy book this