Toward School with Heavy Looks

We waited in the bus station for ours to arrive. A group of girls in tight black lycra shorts and halter-tops came in and stood at another bay. The golden-haired girl stared at them.

Next second she was off, striding in their direction, her blue school skirt swishing. "That girl over there has a special sort of device you can use to make a telephone call," she hailed the lycra teens.

They, perhaps understandably, stared at her nonplussed. Her clear carrying voice had probably been heard all over the station. Wow, yet another thing that sure hadn't changed since school - if it was her!

"Really, it works just like a phone," she went on. "I'm sure she'll let you use it to call your parents, or the police. You must want to report the person who's stolen all your clothes."

Then she blinked in astonishment as she noticed what each girl had tucked down the waistband of her shorts. "Oh, aren't yours working?" she cried. "My friend's wasn't either, maybe something's wrong!"

By that time I'd hurried over to her. "I think someone may have to write to the Telephone Board," she told me importantly. I put my arm around her and steered her away from the teen-girls' stares.

As we walked back I did my best to explain the misunderstanding, not that it was easy even knowing where to start. "But they're standing there with their underwear on!" the golden-haired girl spluttered to me.

"I've got some shorts like that, name a girl who hasn't!" my friend laughed, when I'd asked her to explain to our little guest that the girls were in fact wearing outerwear.

"But..." the golden-haired girl exclaimed, blinking her big blue eyes as if really struggling to comprehend this. "You can see every last bit of the shape of their...! Wouldn't they get arrested?" she finished meekly.

When she was gazing the other way, my friend leaned to me and whispered: "Er, ever get the feeling now's not the best time to start her out on thongs? Who is this girl?"

"I've got an idea," was my reply. And I did, even though it was impossible! No girl had teased me more when we were at school together, and now it was like she'd come back to tease me with this new mystery.

A list of questions was flying through my mind, with which I might determine her identity. Scared of spiders, check? Favourite pop group Take That, check? Crushes on Mark Owen and Ryan Giggs, check?

Only it seemed to me half the questions like that, our little gold-haired stranger had already checked for me. The most maddening question right now was whether she was really a stranger at all.

And if she wasn't, then how was it possible she was here, and how were my friend and I going to get her back to where she belonged? Something told me there weren't any buses running that went there!

Speaking of the bus, it arrived. We bumped up the steps one by one, girls first. Breathlessly I watched from below, glimpsing first my friend's black knickers and stockings then the golden-haired girl's white.

With another bump I sat down next to the latter, and a hundred memories of happy mornings on the school bus flooded me. It was a real kindness when any girl chose to sit next to a boy she knew had a crush on her.

That curious mixture of kindness and teasing was what had made her my whole world. I couldn't resist. "Um, actually I'm glad we're missing gym, so thanks for that," I ventured to the gold-haired one.

I tried to keep my tone light, but I was very shy, and what was more my heart was pounding. "Most boys enjoy PE," she returned, haughtily, but in a put-on way to show she didn't mean it.

Oh, it had to be her, it just had to! All her familiar tricks! Trying not to seem too eager I pressed on, "Oh, but we were going to have one-on-one. I'm so bad at that," I added innocently.

The golden-haired girl looked at me, deadpan. "I'm really good," were her words. There it was. I wanted to catch my breath. Even the look in her blue eyes, as of one taking and responding to a hint, was hers.

And her tone...! The words intended to terrify me with the possibility she was just as good she said she was, but the heavy seriousness so obviously fake as to keep me guessing. It had to be her.

TO BE CONTINUED