the
more quiet and intellectual of the two, would develop the hobbies of those boys
who took her interest. She would learn all about the subject and be able to
impress if necessary. She would arrange ways to constantly be bumping into the
boy until he thought destiny kept throwing them together. Rose would tease her
that it was tantamount to stalking but it did actually seem to work with
alarming regularity and Grace was regularly asked on dates. However Grace found
fault easily and tended to dump every boy after one date. Rose sometimes
wondered what Grace was holding out for.
Sophie was
more outgoing and used a lot of loud laughter and hair flicking to attract boys
to her side. Sophie said she enjoyed the game of flirting so much that she went
off a boy as soon as it actually seemed to be going anywhere. However Rose knew
that this was really because the only boy she was remotely interested in was
Jack and all the others were just practice till the day he noticed her.
She thought
about the two techniques. She already shared his main interest of art. She was
passionate about art and spent a lot of her spare time in the school art
studio. It was only now, as she was thinking about it, that she realized so did
he. Other than that, she couldn’t think of any thing else he did regularly in
his spare time. Reading perhaps, could she see what he was reading? She tilted
her head sideways to see into his lap. Oops! He caught her looking at him, and
not at his face! Damn. She pretended she had been bending down to pick up a
piece of fluff from the floor. She would swear he had that smug smile on his
face again though. She could feel it from several feet away. She tried to look
focused on the board game.
Ok, she
could find out what book it was later, and maybe get a copy and read it as
well. What else could she do that Grace would do? Run into him more often. Well
they were already in the same school house so they already had a lot of lessons
together. How could she mastermind doing that if it already happened anyway?
Hang on though, didn’t that mean she’d already got that one covered? Perhaps
she could see him more in the Common Room, maybe first thing in the morning,
before anyone else was about, he was an early riser. But everyone knew that, so
wouldn’t it be a bit obvious if she suddenly started getting up early and
hanging out in the Common Room? Hmm, stalking was harder than it looked!
She had her
turn, tried to invade Canada and lost about fifty troops. She really ought to
be paying the game more attention.
Instead she
pondered on what Sophie would do. Ok, that was easier, it didn’t require
anything but him being in the same room. She wound a lock of hair round her
finger as she had seen Sophie do when flirting. She played with it for a while
slowly. Was he looking? She couldn’t check or he might see.
At that moment,
Alex made a funny comment about Jack’s intentions towards Poland as Jack
amassed a huge force in Germany. Rose laughed loudly at Alex’s joke and tossed
her hair back.
He was
bound to be looking over now. What should she do next?
Ah ha!
Sophie’s ‘I’m interested in you too,’ double glance. There was a masterpiece of
body language, which she well remembered Sophie teaching her.
The trick
was to look up, see a boy looking at you, and then look down and smile. If you
looked to the left or right then you were saying: “I’m not interested”, so it
was important to look down. Hold the eyes down and smiling pose for two seconds
then look back up at him again. Hold his gaze for maybe three seconds, which is
too long for it to be meaningless, and keep smiling to make yourself seem
friendly and approachable. Then turn back to your friends, more laughing and
hair flicking, then time about five minutes for him to get the nerve up to come
over. Sophie swore it never ever failed.
Rose looked
up. What were you supposed to do if he wasn’t looking at you?
As if he
felt her eyes, he did suddenly