Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 04] (16 page)

‘And the new editor
will be…’ said Mrs Allen, as we stood in assembly on Friday.

I held my breath as
Nesta gave
me
the thumbs-up. ‘Before I announce the winner, I must say
it’s been very difficult,’ continued Mrs Allen. ‘The standard of entries was
exceptionally high and I’m very proud of all of you. Ultimately, there are no
losers. We’ve had a very hard time deciding and…’

Izzie gave me a look
as if to say, ‘I wish she’d get on with it.’

‘Finally, we narrowed
it down to two. We decided on a tie. Two winners. First, Emma Ford from Year
10. And, second, TJ Watts from Year 9.’

There were cheers from
Nesta, Izzie and Lucy at the back of the class. But, best of all, Wendy Roberts’
face was a picture. Her mouth literally dropped open.

I gave her a huge
smile as I went up to join Emma on the stage with Mrs Allen.

After school, we all
piled back to Lucy’s for celebratory ice cream and cake. When the girls were
settled chomping away, Steve beckoned me up to his room. ‘I… I have something
for you,’ he said shyly. He went to a drawer in the cabinet next to his bed. He
pulled out a small package wrapped in silver, with a gold bow and a card and
handed them to me. ‘These are for you.’

I opened the card
first. On the front it had a black-and-white photograph of a man on a road,
with a caption underneath saying, ‘Life shrinks or expands in proportion to
one’s courage.’ Inside he’d written, ‘Good Luck to the new Editor
of For
Real
.’ ‘Thanks. That’s really…’ ‘Open the pressie,’ he said, smiling. I
ripped off the paper and found a beautiful pen inside. It was Indian-looking,
shiny turquoise and silver with sequinny things on the side.

‘
Yu… nu… wee
,’
I said, slipping back into Zoganese for a moment.

‘You’re welcome,’ he
said, as if he understood perfectly. ‘It’s for writing your novels.’

For a moment, we just
stayed looking at each other. It was the most perfect feeling. Like rime
stopped still and we were somehow melting into each other. Then Steve grinned.
‘So next…?’ ‘Next?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean? Next?’ ‘That day in the park,
when you asked how does anyone ever get together and you said for you, they’d
have to make it
really
obvious — pressies, cards, a billboard in
Piccadilly…’

I looked at my card
and my present and smiled. ‘Oh. But please, no, not a billboard in Piccadilly,
I’d
die . . ’

Steve laughed, then
leant towards me, pushed a lock of hair away from my face, looked deeply into
my eyes and…

‘We could go and see a
movie next,’ he said.

‘Love to,’ I said. ‘As
long as it’s not
Alien Mutants in Cyberspace
. And you don’t spend the
whole movie eating popcorn.’

‘Deal. Anyway, I hate
popcorn.’

We sort of grinned
stupidly at each other, then I remembered what he’d said that day in the park.
That he sometimes felt scared when he liked a girl.

No time like the
present, I thought, as I leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips.

About the author

Cathy Hopkins lives in
North London with her handsome husband and three deranged cats.

Or is it the other way
around - her handsome cats and deranged husband? She has had twenty books published
including the four titles in the
Mates, Dates

series and is
currently working on the first book in a new series for Piccadilly Press:
Truth,
Dare, Kiss or

Promise
. Apart from that, she is looking
for the answers to why we’re here, where we’ve come from and what it’s all
about. She is also looking for the perfect hairdresser.

Also available
from Piccadilly Press by Cathy Hopkins:

MATES, DATES AND
INFLATABLE BRAS

MATES, DATES AND
COSMIC KISSES

MATES, DATES AND
PORTOBELLO PRINCESSES