: Hanky Panky

As soon as I got out of the car with Gareth that following Monday, I knew something was up. The group of Year 11 girls that hang out near the gates all turned to look at me, whispering and giggling, and John, Siân, and Beth began to walk towards me. Adam appeared, walking out of the quad, tossing an apple core into the bin as he passed it. Louis closely followed him.

But before either of those groups could reach me, I was enveloped in a bear hug. My attacker smelt of aftershave and body wash and Pete's favourite hat, and they swayed us side to side. I shoved them away, but they caught hold of my hand and laughed.

"Did I surprise you, sweetheart?" Billie asked, pulling a face of mock concern. "I'm so sorry if I did, I wasn't –"

"Billie," I growled, "What the hell are you -?"

"I'm just saying hello to my girlfriend," he said, a smile stretching wider. "Is that so wrong?"

"Girlfriend? I'm not your –" I began to shriek, before Billie placed one finger over my lips, effectively silencing me.

"Sweetheart, I know we agreed to keep it quiet, but..." He shrugged and smiled, placing his hands on my waist, "I just want people to...know, you know? I mean, I've liked you ever since France, and...Now I've finally got the chance to say I'm yours...I mean, I'm just ecstatic. Truly."

"Billie," I growled, "What the hell are you -?"

His grip tightened slightly. "Are you mad at me?" he implored, gazing at me and cocking his head to one side. "I couldn't bear it if you were, sweetheart."

Behind him, John and Siân were laughing. Beth swatted at them both and walked around us to stand behind me, while Adam stood a few feet away, hands in pockets.

"Billie," Beth said, "Maybe you should just, you know..." She pulled a face at me, shrugging helplessly.

"Get off me?" I suggested, eyes narrowing. "You know before I knee you in the balls –"

Billie actually laughed and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. "See, that's it, Nerys," he said in a soppy kind of voice, "That's what I like about you."

"Her kneeing-in-the-balls ability?" Beth said, looking confused. I could see the romantic side of her brain working overtime as she processed this particular reason for fancying someone.

"Well, no, not that in particular," Billie said. "More her...fieriness. The fact she tells me when I've pissed her off. So many girls in this place just...you know...giggle at me. It's refreshing."

I stepped back from him, and his hands fell from my waist. "Are you actually being serious?" I demanded, my voice going particularly high-pitched towards the end of the sentence.

He smiled cockily. I resisted the urge to smack him. Instead, I stood there with my hands balled into fists as he leaned down to whisper in my ear, "See you at the break." And then he turned, swaggering off into the quad, giving the Year 11 girls a little wave as he did so.

"You look a bit flushed, Nerys," Beth said, looping her arm through mine.

Gareth gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "Remember what Pascal said," he then snorted, ruining the moment of brotherly sympathy completely before he pranced off to find his friends.

"I hate him so much right now," I whispered. Adam walked over.

"Just so you're prepared," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "Billie's been telling pretty much everyone that you're an item. He's been saying it all weekend, like on MSN and Facebook and stuff."

"And," Siân continued, not laughing anymore, "I'm not certain which one, but I'd probably hazard a guess at Liam Wace, took a picture on his phone of when you two kissed and he uploaded it onto Myspace, and it's kind of Billie's profile picture. So that you know."

"We...but...That dick!" I jabbed a finger at Adam. "And you! I told you he was going to do something like this. I told you."

"You did," Adam agreed. "I didn't want you to be right, but I kind of felt like you would be."

He didn't look too bothered, and I knew why.

"Oh my God, you don't care because this is your little plan, and stuff," I growled. "You wanted this to happen –"

"I didn't want it to happen quite like this," Adam interrupted. "I just think it'll get Glyn off your back, that's all."

"Why the hell do you care so much about Glyn and me?" I demanded. And then, silence fell, and it just felt really awkward. My face got even hotter if that was even possible.

"I like you," Adam replied quietly, shrugging. Then the bell rang for morning registration, and Beth grabbed hold of my arm, dragging me away.

"Beth," I said in a low voice, "What just -?"

"I don't know," she said shortly. "I've no idea what just happened, Nerys, but I get the feeling that today is going to be a really weird day."

Tell me about it.

At the end of Maths – which was my first lesson – Billie magically appeared just a few feet down the corridor, pecked me on the cheek and then escorted to my next lesson of IT, which was basically my form room. He told me, as we walked that he'd just had Miss Moore for Business Communications, whatever that was. I met this with a stony silence and just pretended that he wasn't there.

And after IT, he hunted me down in the quad, sacrificing his Head Boy duties to do so. "You should just wait outside your classroom," he told me, putting an arm around my shoulder. "That way, I don't have to find you. I can just walk you to your next lesson like any good boyfriend should."

I shoved him away, but he didn't get the message. Or, more accurately, he did get the message; he just pretended it didn't exist.

And so it went on. He walked me to PSHE, and he even ventured into the PSHE room to talk to Miss Treharne about his RE coursework, and somehow, the conversation managed to get round to me and him, and she's smiling in an 'aww isn't that cute' kind of way, and she says to Billie, "Well, Nerys is one of my star pupils. Don't distract her from her schoolwork, young man!" And he grins at me cockily and tries to drop a kiss on top of my head before he leaves, but I duck out of the way and fall off my chair. After that lesson, he walked me to History, which is the one lesson on the whole timetable where I'm basically just stuck with all of Adam's mates, minus Adam, and he hung around for ages while we were lining up outside and even tried to kiss me, so I gave him a pretty pathetic slap on the cheek.

Unfortunately, the History teacher, Mr. Kinsey, saw just as he walked up to unlock the classroom door and gave us both a massive lecture – first on 'hanky panky in the school corridor' and secondly on 'pointless violence'. It left Billie highly amused and me highly embarrassed, and some of Adam's mates nicknamed me Hanky Panky.

Which, you know, I thought was bloody brilliant.

Naturally, Billie met me outside History and walked me down to the dining hall. And then, to our intense surprise, he took a seat at the end of the table, where Adam had sat the other day, and got out a packed lunch. I suspected that the packed lunch was just so someone else wouldn't steal the seat. God, he was well prepared, I thought.

Adam arrived with his pasta and his apple and took the seat opposite Billie. When Louis arrived, about three minutes later, he looked a little put-out – I don't know why he was only sat with us because of Adam – before he pulled a chair over and stuck it on the end of the table.

"Okay, okay, this is weird," Beth said, biting her lip. "Adam, Louis, why are you still sat with us? I've met Danny now."

Adam pointed his fork in her direction and flicked a bit of tomato sauce at Ann as he did so. She pulled a slightly disgusted face and took a defiant bite out of her sandwich.

"You shouldn't assume," Adam said, "That because I'm considered quite popular that I won't want to sit with any of you. I had fun on Saturday. More fun than I've had with any of them –" he now jabbed his fork at his usual table – "in a long, long while. Even if the movie was kind of shit."

"So the movie was shit?" Billie asked, interestedly, leaning forwards.

"Yep," Louis answered.

"You told Nerys that you'd pretend the kiss never happened," Adam then said, ignoring Billie's question. Billie looked momentarily uncomfortable, and then he smiled.

"I realised, late on Saturday night, that the kiss meant more to me than I realised," he said, his grin sweet as he turned to look at me. He chucked me under the chin, and I pulled back, glaring. "I just couldn't throw away the opportunity."

"Oh, cut the crap, Billie," I growled, putting down my chocolate bar. "You are not interested in me –"

He held a hand over his heart, palm down. "You wound me," he said dramatically.

John and Siân looked amused (you'd think that Billie was the next John Cleese, the amount of time those two spent laughing at him). Adam, however, looked mildly irritated.

"I was wrong," he said to me. "Billie is definitely not the ideal guy to get Glyn to back off. I would have been better. You just want to dick about with her, and that's...that's a bit annoying if I'm honest."

I felt uncomfortable. John's eyebrows had practically vanished into his hair.

Billie cocked his head to one side, looking curious before he shrugged and picked up his sandwich. "Careful, mate," he said lightly, "Or I'll think you have a thing for my girl."

I spluttered over my bottle of orange juice and slammed the bottle down, hard, on the table. Then I rose, grabbing Billie's arm and dragging him out of his seat as I did so.

"Can I have a word, Billie?" I said through gritted teeth. He grabbed his drink – an Innocent smoothie – and allowed me to drag him out of the canteen, into the assembly hall and out into this yard around the back where all the minibusses park and where all the bins are.

"Yes, sweetheart?" he smirked, backing me into a wall and leaning his arm above my head, so he towered over me. He sipped his drink, and I reached up and snatched it from him and chucked it in the nearest bin. "You can pay for that," he frowned, but I ignored him.

"Quit it with the 'sweetheart' act," I snapped, placing a hand on his chest and shoving him backward. "There's no one around right now, Billie. You don't have to pretend you're my boyfriend. Oh, actually, come to think of it – you don't have to pretend at all –"

"I'm just helping you."

"Helping? Helping? Christ, Billie, you're not helping anything! Nearly half of my school year –" Okay, that was an exaggeration – "have nicknamed me Hanky Panky, because of you! You've made things between me and Adam kind of awkward, and you know, I have to work with him in drama!"

"Do you like Adam?" Billie questioned. "As in, like, like?"

I paused. Did I? No, I decided quite quickly, thinking of Adam. I mean, sure, he was good looking, and he'd been quite nice to me as of late (or whatever adjective you'd use to describe his behaviour towards me). He was somewhat supportive and had tried to help me find away to deal with Glyn, as half-baked as his idea had actually been.

"No," I said confidently, "I don't like him, not like that."

"Then what's the problem?" Billie asked.

"Because he's a friend?" I suggested as if it should have been obvious. I guess, to me, that it was. "Just be thankful he's not John, Billie. Otherwise I would have hit you by now."

"I'll take your word for it. Personally, I think you're overreacting."

And maybe I was, but that didn't lessen my anger in the slightest.

"Look, Freckles." He ran a hand through his hair. "The way I see it, I'm doing you a favour. Has Glyn talked to you today?"

I bit my lip. "No."

"And is this the first time in ages that he hasn't tried to ask you out?"

I didn't answer.

"Well, there you go. I've actually helped."

"What are you getting out of this, though?" I demanded, hand on hip. Billie's face lit up as he grinned in response.

"I get a laugh," he said. "It's pretty funny for anyone watching, Freckles, trust me. I don't think anyone seriously believes that I and you are together, but hell, they all find it funny."

"I don't," I muttered.

"You've made that quite clear. But look – you get Glyn off your back for a while. If I were you, I'd go with it." Billie shrugged one shoulder and turned around, walking through the door.

I shouted after him, "Fine, but you can stop with the whole walking me from lesson to lesson stuff!"

He didn't.

Immediately after dinner, I had Spanish. Mrs. Brooke told us almost as soon as we got into the classroom that we'd be heading down to the language department's computer lab to play on Spanish games. Now, normally, I'd partner up with John (there is never enough computers in the language department's computer lab), but he betrayed me by agreeing to be Louis' partner. I let him know of my disapproval by throwing a pen lid at him, to which he just grinned.

But my ire (well, slight annoyance) swiftly evaporated when Antal Kiss approached me and asked, in that sexy Hungarian accent of his, if I'd like to be his partner.

So obviously, I said yes.

We were sat in the computer lab, waiting for the seriously ancient computers to boot up, not talking at all. In fact, Antal was looking somewhat worked up about something.

"Is everything okay, Antal?" I asked, resting my chin in my hand.

"Hm?" he looked at me, curiously, and then sighed. "Nerys, I have heard this thing today."

"Oh?" I prompted.

"Yes. I am friends with Gary Waites. He told me today that you are...how would you say it...with that boy, William?"

"Billie, you mean?" I made a weird noise, halfway between a laugh and a choke. "No, no, I'm not...with Billie."

"That is not what people are saying," Antal said softly. He had nice eyes, I thought. They looked like melting chocolate. Mmm.

Anyway.

"It's..." I paused, struggling in what to tell him. "It's difficult. We're not...together, as such. I don't really like him. But he's...he's helping me out. That's all. There's nothing...like, romantic about it, or anything."

"No?" Antal looked somewhat happier. "I am happy, Nerys. I would not like it if there was anything romantic about it."

I just smiled, but inside, I was dancing.

At the end of Year 9, I remember having to choose my GCSE options. I chose Spanish, Drama, and History, and those choices were quite easy. So was choosing all my PE options – netball, aerobics and rounders. But choosing my Science option wasn't so easy.

We had a choice, you see – Triple Award, Double Award, or BTEC. There was also a Foundation class, but I don't really think that was a choice. At the time when I was choosing, part of me really wanted to study Biology at college or some science, but I was deliberating over whether to choose Triple or Double. Both had their merits, but one would be significantly harder than the other.

So what do I go and do? Yeah, I choose the hardest. Triple Award.

On that particular Monday, then, I find myself sat next to Ann, and Sharon on her other side – they were the only other two out of our group to choose Triple – in Dr. Goodwin's lesson. I mean, this was nothing new, but it's a really crappy way to end a Monday.

Dr. Goodwin was one of those teachers where you weren't really sure whether you liked her or not. On the one hand, she was a bit crazy in the sense that she wore gypsy skirts and lots of bangles and looked more like an art teacher than a science teacher, and she dyed her hair bright green and somehow got away with it. On the other, she could be brutally strict when she wanted to be and had this thing about respect. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for respect, but she goes kind of overboard with it.

Dr. Goodwin started out the lesson by giving us a presentation on the subject matter – I'm not sure what it was, exactly; something to do with batteries – and then gave us a worksheet to work through for the remainder of the lesson.

The thing about sitting next to Ann is that you find yourself just talking. She is, primarily, a listener, and then a giver of advice. She rarely interrupts (unless she's annoyed), and she doesn't exactly judge you either.

Which was how I found myself telling her about how weird my day was, and how annoyed I was with Billie and so on. I left out the parts with Antal.

By the time we got to question three on the sheet, I could tell that something was up with Ann.

"Are you okay, Ann?" I asked, raising one eyebrow. Ann turned to look at me, and behind her, Sharon signaled a 'don't go there' by dragging a finger across her throat. I ignored her.

"I'm fine," Ann said curtly. "A bit sick of you complaining, but otherwise, I'm fine."

I felt slightly taken aback. "What's up?" I asked, my brow furrowing.

"Most girls wouldn't complain about having three boys fancying them," Ann said after a few moments of silence, viciously dotting and 'I' in her book. "Which, they clearly do. Or that's the impression everyone's getting after today. You've got Glyn – which okay, you might not be so happy about – but then you've got Billie, who is like, universally adored by everyone but you –"

"He doesn't –" I tried to interrupt, but she plowed on as if I'd never spoken.

"And then you have Adam." She was glowering now, flicking through the science textbook as if she wanted to rip the book apart. "The boy who most girls would give their right arm to have him fancy them –"

"Don't be so –"

"But of course, he'd never fancy a girl like me, so why am I complaining?" Ann said, her voice getting slightly louder. She placed the book down and sat back slightly, eyes closing, before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Sorry," she said quietly, not opening her eyes. "I just..." She didn't finish her sentence.

I looked at her. Now I felt bad. I knew she thought Adam had a nice arse, but...maybe it was more than just his arse she liked. Maybe Ann was more like the other girls at our school than she liked to let on. Of course, I wouldn't know, because she never really talks about herself...But I don't see why she'd think he wouldn't fancy her. She's prettier than me. She's quite tall – I'd say only an inch or so shorter than Adam himself – and she's very slender and willowy. Her hair is auburn; quite a few shades darker than Adam's bright copper locks. And she has a nice face – full lips and large hazel eyes. Like me, she has freckles, but they're nowhere near as copious on her body. If it weren't for the glasses that perch on her nose, most boys would certainly look at her twice. Not that I've got anything against glasses – I don't think they make her look any less attractive, myself, but I get the feeling that most people would.

So, going off looks, then I think Adam would fancy her. Personality? I would. I mean, she's very clever, but she doesn't go on about it. She never starts reciting random bits of mathematics theorems or whatever. In fact, if it weren't for her marks in lessons no one would really think of her as being particularly intelligent. When you get to know her, she's kind of sarcastic, very quiet and quite good at dealing with difficult people. And she's a good listener and can be really nice when she wants to be.

"Ann," I said quietly, "I don't want Adam to fancy me. I don't like him like that. He's a nice lad and all, and I could see myself being good friends with him, but nothing more."

Ann didn't respond; she just underlined something in her book with her ruler.

"And if I were him," I continued, "I wouldn't fancy me, I would totally fancy you instead. Not that I'm a lesbian or anything. Oh, God, and not that there's anything wrong with being a lesbian because there's not –"

Ann snorted. "Nerys, just be quiet," she said, a tiny smile quirking up the corners of her mouth. "Let's just pretend that this never happened, okay?"

I left it at that, and by the end of the lesson, Ann was acting like her old self again. Pretty much.

But as I left Science, I found not only Billie waiting outside (despite my request, he hadn't stopped with the waiting thing) but Adam as well. He was lolling against the wall opposite to Dr. Goodwin's classroom, no apple in sight but chewing quite clearly on bubblegum.

"Nerys," he said, pushing himself off the wall. People were watching, and I felt self-conscious and all-too prepared to just bustle off down the corridor as if he hadn't spoken. "Wait for me, after form," was all he said, quite clear and loud enough for everyone in my Science class, Billie and anyone else nearby to hear. "You're in Miss Moore's form, yeah? Just wait for me outside there, and I'll come and meet you. There's something we need to talk about."

He turned, sauntering off up the corridor, leaving me feeling kind of worried and everyone else feeling confused. I think.

Oh, God. What did I have to deal with now?