My heart is thumping. I have had a million crushes on cool boys, but never, ever, has a boy liked me. Boys always seem to like the confident, popular girls, girls like Kirsty McRae. They never see me as interesting, attractive. Except possibly Scott Pickles who used to live in the flat downstairs, and that doesn’t count because he is only seven, and pretty short-sighted.
Shay is different. He is way, way out of my league, but I am pretty sure his eyesight is OK. And he is looking at me intently, with an ocean-coloured gaze that takes my breath away.
Shay loads me up with branches and logs from the woodpile by the gable end. I end up with twigs in my hair, and he picks them out, gently. ‘You’d better tell me everything,’ he says, smiling. ‘Your whole life story, from start to finish. Then I’ll tell you mine, or play the guitar for you . . . deal?’
‘Deal,’ I whisper.
I think I would tell Shay Fletcher anything, any time, always. I would carry logs for him, to the ends of the earth, and wear twigs in my hair every day just so he could pick them out again.
Shay grabs an armful of logs himself, and leads the way down the lawn towards the party, the bonfire. People turn as we approach, so many smiling faces, and I’m smiling too, because my heart feels full of hope that this is really where I’m meant to be – this is the place where I belong.
‘Hello, Cherry! Welcome to Kitnor! We’ve heard so much about you . . .’
‘It’s great to meet you at last . . .’
Charlotte appears through the crowd of strangers, smiling. ‘Cherry! Has that wretched dog been hassling you?’ she asks. ‘He just ran through here with half a quiche in his mouth . . .’‘I think I stepped on him . . . I dropped the tray . . . I’m sorry!’
‘No, no, Fred’s a brute, I should have warned you . . .’
I’m right beside the bonfire, in the middle of the party, with the fairy lights flickering overhead. Shay lets the logs and branches slide out of his arms to make a new woodpile, and I do the same, watching the flames light up his face with flashes of orange and gold. He steps in behind me, his fingers brushing my arm, and his touch burns right through my sleeve and into my skin, like fire.
Skye and Coco are in front of me, grinning, and a girl who looks exactly like Skye only glossier, somehow, and minus the floppy hat and the funny, trailing dress. Her clothes are a dozen different shades of pink, and she moves gracefully, like a dancer. I remember that Skye and Summer are twins, but I have never seen two girls so alike and so different, all at the same time.
‘It’s OK,’ she says, laughing at my confusion. ‘I’m Summer . . . if in doubt, remember I wouldn’t be seen dead in droopy hats and jumble-sale dresses!’
Skye swats her with a red-checked napkin, rolling her eyes.
‘So, I guess the only one of us you haven’t met yet is Honey . . .’
The eldest Tanberry sister is sitting on a fallen tree trunk, a glossy blue guitar at her side, waist-length hair the colour of sunshine tumbling around her shoulders. She is chatting to a bunch of teenagers, laughing.
Dad said she was six months older than me, but Honey Tanberry might as well come from a different world. She’s pretty, a whole lot prettier than Kirsty McRae. She could be a model or a singer or a teen movie star, with her little blue-print dress and her polka-dot hairband. She could be anything she wanted to be.
A prickle of anxiety runs along my spine. Girls like Honey, like Kirsty, never like me, no matter how hard I try. They are the popular girls, the cool girls, and I don’t fit into their world. Honey isn’t going to be my friend, though – she’s going to be family.
That’s different, surely?
I hope.
Honey glances over, and her smile fades. She stands up slowly, her smoky-blue eyes looking me up and down, unimpressed. I cannot work out why she’s so frosty, but I know I’m not imagining it. When her lips curl into a grin, I shiver.
Shay drops my elbow and steps away from me, as if I have suddenly become contagious.
‘I’m Honey,’ the girl says, and her arm snakes round Shay’s waist, reeling him in and holding on tight. ‘You’ve met Shay then? My boyfriend?’
I look at Shay, and his gaze slides away from mine, guilty, awkward. I am invisible again.
‘Looks like it,’ I say.
‘OK,’ she says, fixing me with an arctic glare. ‘Good.’
Dreams of family, dreams of friendship, dreams of love – abruptly, they all crash and burn, falling in little pieces around me, sharp and bright and painful, like broken glass.