She's Just A Skater Girl

'He normally goes for blondes.'

There was a loud chorus of 'oohs,' and a bunch of wolf whistles. I smiled (well, grimaced) as Jake wiggled his eyebrows.

"So you guys better make sure you respect her, okay?" he asked seriously, squeezing my hand again. Wow, this is getting uncomfortable. Most of them mumbled 'yeah' and turned away, while Devin snorted.

As soon as most of the boys went back to skating, I ripped my hand away from Jake's.

"That was supposed to be a small catch?" I hissed, motioning between us. "That is not small, Jake! I can't beli-"

"I could just tell them we broke up." he intervened, shrugging. "But you wouldn't be able to skate here afterwards." I scowled at the dilemma.

"Fine. But no more of the hand-holdy stuff, okay?"

"We have to make it realistic!" Jake protested, punctuating his sentence with a wink.

I snorted derisively. "Please! They're teenage boys, what would they know about realistic!"

"Trust me, you'd be surprised. Ollie's like the relationship guru of all of us." Jake explained, motioning over to a tall, lean boy with sandy brown hair and a beanie.

"Right. Well if you excuse me boyfriend, I need to get home!" I said, before grabbing Hawk and dashing out of the skate park, my mind whirring. Why did I just agree to that? Oh right, to skate at the skate park of my dreams.

***

"Psst." A voice cut into the silence of the Biology lab. "Psst!" Surreptitiously, I glanced around the room, wondering who was making the annoying sound, and whose attention they were trying to catch. This Features of Life worksheet was hard enough without any distractions. "Psst!"

My head whipped around, realising the noise was coming from behind me, where Jenna sat. I shot her a questioning look. "What, Jenna?" I whispered, shaking my head. Biology wasn't my favourite subject, but I'd started focusing on it more recently, ever since that horrible experience I had, aptly named 'summer school.'

She mouthed something indecipherable. "What?" I hissed. She mouthed the words again, this time slightly clearer. The only words I could make out, however, were 'you' and 'Jake.' Words which (together) didn't exactly help calm my frazzled nerves.

She rolled her hands at my shoddy lip-reading, and leaned over the lab bench a bit more. "I heard about you and Jake." she whispered from about a foot away, a bewildered expression on her face. My face drained completely of colour as I took in her words. Seriously? Now this is just getting surreal.

I sighed, and cast my eyes over to the door, in the universal signal for 'I'll tell you later.' I so can't wait until 'later.'

'Later' turned out to be as soon as we stepped out of the Bio lab and into the corridor full of students hurrying to their next classes.

"Explain!" Jenna demanded as we squeezed through the heavy throng of secondary school students - from the superior sixth formers - to the lowly Year Sevens.

"Explain what?" I asked, playing dumb. Recently, it felt like all I did was explain things to Jenna, and most of them were better kept private, for her sake more than mine.

Jenna pouted, putting both hands out in front of her like a puppy. "You know what, Riley! I really wanna know!" she pleaded, wringing her hands together and imitating a beggar. However, I knew that underneath the cutesy, pleading act there was a whole lot of determination to find out the whole story, and nothing but that. That meant, of course, the only rational thing was to turn the tables on her.