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my
body.
    Yet, of course,
it’s not my body.
    It’s not even my
mouth; because, when I finally get to hear Iain’s long-awaited
declaration of love, do you know what I do?
    I
laugh.
    I say, ‘Jeez
Iain; love ? How pathetic !’
    At school, our
positions have been perfectly reversed.
    Iain’s lacking
in confidence, fumbling.
    Everyone laughs
at him, the way he comes running after me as soon as I call
him.
    I laugh
at him, whenever he’s not around. Letting everyone else know how
pathetic I think he is.
    (Sure, my dreams
have so taken over my life at Heartache High that they don’t even
have to involve Iain anymore for me to become completely absorbed
in them.)
    Even Cherry and
Mary are shocked by the way I treat him. They no longer hang around
with me.
    Huh, like I care!
    But the thing
is, I do care!
    It’s this girl
who isn’t really me who doesn’t care.
    I’ve gone from
being shy and innocent to easily being the most outrageous girl in
school, if not the entire district.
    If there’s any
guy around, I flirt with him.
    Even if Iain’s
there.
    Particularly if Iain’s there.
    If they end up
in a fight over me, that’s all the better.
    Usually, Iain
wins.
    Sometimes,
though, he loses.
    Not that I ever
go off with the other guy.
    I sneer at
him.
    Let him know how
pathetic I think he is, thinking he can win me by showing how macho
he is.
    Iain, he’s
covered in bruises.
    He’s hardly ever
without a swollen black eye.
    After a fight,
he’s always angry with me.
    But I hear
myself whispering things to him, things I never thought I’d hear
myself saying.
    ‘Hah, he always
comes crawling back,’ I boast to my new and ever growing group of
admiring friends afterwards.
     
     
    *

Chapter 15
     
    ‘Maybe it’s a
way of getting back at him for all the suffering he’s caused
you.’
    Dave, as ever,
makes an effort to understand what I’m going through.
    ‘Well, he didn’t really cause it to be honest,’ I say to Dave. ‘That’s what
some of my primer deals with; how, really, we’re the ones
responsible for our suffering. Because we’re not prepared to let go
of even the most hopeless cause.’
    ‘True, when you
sit down and reason it all out,’ Jassy says. ‘But when it comes to
love, we rarely let reason get in the way, do we?’
    ‘More’s the
pity,’ Dave sighs.
    ‘I’m torturing
myself even now,’ I admit. ‘These dreams; they’ve become the worst
form of self-torture I’ve ever put myself through.’
    ‘There’s
probably some Greek myth that deals with something like this, but I
can’t think of one,’ Jassy says, her eyes raised as she tries to
recall anything she regards as relevant information from the vast
library of her mind. ‘Morpheus; he was the god of dreams. That’s
where we get the word morphine from, by the way. Then there’s the
incubi of course, but they hardly apply in your case.’
    ‘Incubi?’
    ‘An incubus was
a demon who appeared in your dreams as a beautiful man, as a way of
drawing off your spiritual energy, or even your blood. But in your
case – although I’m sure Iain is a beautiful man – he’s
hardly the one in control here.’
    ‘Plus, of
course,’ Dave says light-heartedly, ‘there’s the problem that
incubi don’t actually exist; they’re just a myth.’
    ‘Whereas
Heartache High is something that all our well known scientists had
stipulated must exist somewhere in the universe.’
    ‘Touché!’ Dave
says.
    I
chuckle.
    ‘Thanks Jassy,
but I don’t think I’m going to find any answer to my problem in
Greek myth!’
    ‘Babylonian
then? Aztec?’
    She
laughs.
    ‘Sure Steph;
only joking. I know what you mean!’
    ‘Excuse me. Are
you Stephanie Johnson?’
    It’s the girl
I’d seen wandering around the school when I’d first checked the
list of classes pinned up in the porch.
    She still
refuses to become involved in the school’s activities.
    She’s an even
worse case than I am.
    She’s holding a
copy of my primer.
    ‘You’re the