: Kiss, Antal

Our school had a special unit where non-English speaking students were taught. What that means is, there was a special unit where they would be taught English (I assume, I'm not an expert). They would then gradually be introduced into the normal school timetable. It had been that way since the end of my Year 8. We had a variety of pupils of other nationalities – Polish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, and Hungarian. It was halfway through Year 9 that most of these students began to be introduced into the normal timetable. It wasn't, however, till the end of Year 9 that people in my year began to show a real interest in them. The reasons, I think, were quite simple: they were different, they were interesting, and to top it off, most of the girls were quite pretty and most of the boys were quite good-looking.

Naturally, there were students that stuck out more than others. Tomasz Borkowski, for instance, was known because most of the girls fancied him, and he'd been at our school the longest. Although he was in the same year as me, he always looked as if he could be in college – he stood about a foot taller than nearly everyone else, taller even than some of the teachers, and was just generally bigger and broader than most boys our age. He was also a really good football player, so the boys would often invite him to play football with them at breaks and dinner.

Then there was Kasia. She was Polish, but ignored any other Polish students apart from Tomasz and his friends; she was incredibly popular amongst the rest of the school, and everyone knew who she was because she was so pretty – to most people, at least. I never saw it myself. Well, I saw the obvious – she had a nice face, I suppose, with lovely, glossy black hair and a permanent golden tan. She was slender and had a nice figure. Personally, I thought she looked a bit plain sometimes, but you know. The rest of the population of our school disagreed, so I stopped voicing that opinion after a bit.

And then there was Antal. Antal Kiss. He was one of only four Hungarian students, and he had a sister, Bianka. To be quite frank, he was the male version of Kasia: gorgeous, the sort that girls followed with their eyes as he walked down the corridor. Now, this one I saw. I didn't fancy him, but I knew where they were coming from. He was quite tall – not Tomasz tall, but tall enough – and quite slim. He had a handsome face. Remember me saying that Billie Winters should have chiselled features? Well, I suppose Antal had the sort of face Billie ought to have. His hair was a toffee brown and quite shaggy, hanging in his eyes. I guess you can tell I certainly looked at Antal quite a bit.

Nearly all the girls I hung around with swooned over Antal. Some even went as far as befriending Bianka (that was Siân, if you're wondering. It didn't really help her). But, even though I admitted it – he was pretty cute, or hot, or fit, or whatever word you want to use, I just didn't go that far...

Until my first Spanish lesson of Year 10.

Before I go into that, I'll tell you, briefly, what happened for the rest of the day after meeting Glyn in form time. Glyn followed me around school, all day. He even ate with us, despite John and Siân making it quite clear he wasn't welcome by talking quite loudly in Welsh. He'd rubbed them up the wrong way, you see, as he seemed to have a habit of doing. Within minutes of meeting John he demanded to know if John was gay before proceeding to rant about homosexuality (a definite homophobe), and within minutes of meeting Siân he'd denounced her as a slut. Which, you know, for Siân, may not have been too far from the truth if you're going to get all horrible about it – but we won't go into that right now, it's not important – but she was still a friend. Siân never takes too kindly to people calling her a slut or any variation on the word, and John absolutely loathes people asking him if he's gay.

But Glyn didn't get the message, and continued to follow us. At the end of the day, Siân really lost her temper and told him to go forth and multiply. What she actually said, of course, was much more rude, but he took the hint, threw a mini strop, and the next day, he began to follow Gordon around. There's no accounting for some people's taste. Anyway, I mentioned a while ago that that particular pairing didn't last too long – honestly, it never really began. Not long after, Glyn returned to clinging on to me. But Glyn's not really relevant to this part of the story.

So back to Antal, or Spanish class.

I loved Spanish. I'd taken it since the start of Year 9, fell in love with the language, and had proceeded to take it as one of my three options along with History and Drama. Also in my GCSE Spanish class was John, and then there was Gwen, and two other girls she was quite friendly with, Evelyn Awbrey and Linda Folland.

So, anyway. On the Friday after we came back, I left my previous lesson of IT with John and went towards my most eagerly anticipated lesson of the new school year. The queue outside Mrs Brooke's classroom was quite small, only about nine of them minus us. Amongst them were Louis, Stuart and Rick, and then there was one of Louis' friends Jake East, Cassandra's friends Kerry Mully and Jessica Leigh, and two girls called Sarah Hill and Annette Walker. Completing the class was a boy named Damien Redwall, and a Portuguese boy called Tadeu Antunes. Tadeu had joined our school from London, and he was pretty much fluent in English. I knew all the people in my class – I'd had classes with all of them before.

And we all filed into Mrs Brooke's familiar classroom with her Spanish posters and heaps of textbooks. Mrs Brooke did the register, and were given fresh new exercise books and then we revised Spanish basics, most of which we already knew, but it didn't really matter. The lesson was going quite well.

Then Mrs Brookes asked me to go on an errand and deliver a note to Mr Rixon about a Year 8 trip she was organising or something like that. Shrugging on my blazer, I bade goodbye to John (who threw his pen lid at me for 'abandoning him with the ruffians of the Spanish class') and left the room –

Slamming straight into Antal. I bet you didn't see that one coming (I certainly didn't).

With an 'oof' sound I fell backwards, landing hard on my bottom, while he seemed barely jostled by our collision. Instead, he kind of leaned over me; dark eyes concerned, and I stared up at him and promptly blushed.

"Um – um – I'm s-sorry," I stuttered, scrambling to my feet. "So sorry!"

"It is okay," he smiled. There was a light accent on his words. "I do not mind."

He rested a hand on my shoulder briefly before walking around me and putting his hand on the door handle to Mrs Brooke's room.

"You take Spanish?" I blurted.

He stared at me, and shook his head. "No. Yes. I do not know. I am meant to be following Jake's timetable, but I could not find Jake. Mrs. Oake told me to come here."

Mrs. Oake worked in the unit where I presumed Antal had spent most of his lessons before starting a normal timetable.

"Is Jake in this classroom?" he asked me, letting his hand fall from the door.

"Uh – yes – yes, he is," I replied, nodding quite a lot. My face was still bright red. I guess I must have looked a bit too eager because he laughed. What he said next surprised me slightly.

"You have a funny voice," he told me, and then he opened the door and went into the classroom, leaving me stood there developing a complex over my slightly high-pitched Welsh accent.

I frowned and then realized that the note for Mr. Rixon was now a crumpled mess in my hand. I unfolded it the best I could and then began to walk down the corridor.

And that was when I began to develop the same kind of crush on Antal Kiss as nearly every single other girl in the school. Of course, me being me, that crush wasn't going to be simple, and it was probably going to cause me a lot of trouble to boot. But then – at that point, walking to Mr. Rixon's classroom in the English department, I was not because my crush on Antal Kiss was going to become an issue shortly. I just thought that he had nice eyes, and wondering just how much Siân would murder me if I vocalized my newly realized crush upon Mr. Kiss.

I simply can't blame anything on Antal, though. Any problems that occurred that were connected to the Hungarian boy were, quite simply, my fault, so Antal isn't to blame, and I can't even try and pin it on him. Which, you know, is a shocker, as I've been doing a good job at blaming things, haven't I?