My hand is cramping up, I don't write a diary and now I am trying to speed write two of the damned things. I mean, the first one was already there, it was just a birthday and homework reminder book, not a diary. Unfortunately, I hadn't been very fastidious writing it. Trying to recall or make up homework assignments for a whole year? Man, it's hard, this is my fifth night working on it too.

I don't know that this is the right way to do this. I want to tell my parents, or my sister I guess, that I'm gay but I really don't want to vocalise those words.

I had been waiting for Anne but it turns out she is an absolute idiot when it comes to her own feelings. Hell, I know she's gay. I have a feeling mum knows she's gay. Dad certainly doesn't so… maybe that's where Anne gets it from? Damn, forgot to change my pen again! It's so arsing difficult to make this thing sound and look real.

So, Anne makes doe eyes at her friends all the time. I caught her looking at her friend Heather's bum yesterday when she was bent down to tie her shoelace. Every one of her friends comments on how hot the actors are in the dumb old films she makes them watch except her. It's a wonder they haven't noticed. That said, I sometimes wonder if she's noticed!

Right, first diary down, for now anyway. Bugger, I just realised I need to update them daily! No, don't scream, dammit, I snapped my pencil! Urg!

Right, now, how else can I make this about Anne? I know deflecting mum's attention onto her is a devious underhanded nasty thing to do but you know what? I don't give a shit. She doesn't even invite me to her stupid party's, she doesn't come to my swim meets, she refuses to come swimming with me, or pretty much anything else I want to do. The least she can do is come out before me and take some heat!

Oh man, this diary is even harder to write than the last one. Trying to make up stories about boys. Trying not to mention kissing Marie in my bedroom when I was ten. Keep it short, little episodes, skip some days, rant about teachers.

Too hell with it, that's enough for today.

Well, mum can find the other diary, I don't give a shit about it my underwear drawer will do. Where should I hide the unfinished one though?

"Kelly!" Oh shit, that's mum, "Time to go!"

That's right, it's the swimming comp tonight. Damn, I could do without that. Why they have them on a school night is beyond me. Oh well, I'll just hide it in my favourite shoes. No way anyone would look in those stinky things!

"Hey Anne, you going to come to watch me swim?" I ask her on the way out.

"Nah, I've got homework, and wouldn't you stay home alone if you had the option?" She whispered the last bit conspiratorially as if I am ever given that option.

"Yeah. I guess so." Oh damn, that came out bitter as hell. "Have fun." Yep, the smile got her this time.

Hell, she's skipping off to do her homework! What the hell is wrong with her? Actually, perhaps she's not doing her homework? I must get her phone at some point and see if she calls someone for hours when we're not in. Perhaps she's not as clueless as she acts!

"Got everything?" Mum asks, even though she can see I'm wearing my swim costume and have my goggles on my head, I'm carrying the rolled-up towel I will be coming home in. No, please tell me what I forgot mum! Urg!

"No mum," I say meekly, without much sarcasm.

I hate these competitions, there are so many of us in them that you spend hardly any time in the water, you don't get to shower or change before or after and they are all the way across town so I spend even longer dripping wet and shivering.

Oh great, and the car is freezing too. And yay, dad has control of the stereo. Hotel California again. You know, I am sure that song was old when dad was my age!

"So, how was school? Learn anything cool?" He asks, trying to make small talk.

"Nope," I say, my normal response, get the hint, stop asking!

"What subjects did you have?" Really? He's going to keep going?

"PE, guidance, media studies. Boring stuff." Come on, just leave me alone!

"So, what are you studying in media studies?" Oh, come on! Now mum is ganging up on me?

"We are studying remakes. Today was Superman, we had to watch the new version. Next week we are going to be watching the old one." I am pretty sure this is what started my sister’s movie nights.

"Oh! Anne loved that when she was your age. I don't think that was the movie they watched though." Mum said into the rearview mirror.

"Yeah well, superman is like a million years old. It's going to suck!" Damn, I can see from mum's face that I shouldn't have said that!

"Hey! It was 1978, that's not so long ago! It's the year I was born!" Oh, come on! It might as well be a million years! Apparently huffing and looking out the window was the wrong answer too.

"I might have to ask Anne to include you in her movie night, that might give you an appreciation for the classics!" Yeah right, like that would ever happen mum! For one thing, they watch films I would never be allowed. It seems to me that I'm banned from watching anything with sex, violence or drugs in it, or even bad language. All my friends' parents aren't as strict. In fact, I'm pretty sure Anne was never restricted from watching stuff.

I don't answer her and blessedly they stop bugging me, they start talking to each other about Anne and her dumb film club.

They try to engage me in conversation a couple more times during the forty-minute drive. I get away with one-word answers, though mum tells me off for rolling my eyes. Finally, we arrive at the swimming pool and I peel myself off the leather seat. Ouch! Why dad can't have nice fabric seats in his car I don't know. I shut the door and hurry across the car park, the sharp stones digging into my feet and feeling pretty naked in my spandex outdoors.

Again I reiterate, I hate these things! Why can't I just use the damned changing rooms? I get in and go straight through to the warm poolside, not waiting for my parents. The swimming coach is there already, along with most of my swim class. I'm taller than them all, even though I'm the same age. It gives me an advantage the coach tells me. Better reach or something. Honestly, I just like swimming, to hell with all the competition shit.

I sit on the bench, beside my friend Becky.

"Hey." She says. I nodded and stowed my towel under the bench. It's warm in the room but I'm still freezing cold from the walk through the car park so I hug myself and shiver.

"Still ten minutes till we start." She tells me, there are still old people swimming in the lanes so I'm not surprised.

"Think they'd mind if I go sit in the sauna? I'm freezing!" She laughs, it's R16 and we aren't allowed to even use the pool before the competitions let alone the sauna or steam rooms. Yet another reason for me to hate competitions.

Eventually, they clear the geriatrics from our lanes and the coach tells us who is doing what. I have another few minutes before my turn at the hundred-metre sprints happens. In the meantime, I just have to watch the competition. There are some pretty girls in the other teams but they are all wearing swim hats and goggles so it's hard to tell. One of the hotter girls only has one leg, the other ends just below the knee. I find it amazing she doesn't use her prosthetic in the pool. I really like her swimsuit too. I find myself cheering her on even though she is competing against us. She won the heat too.

At long last I am up, I'm standing on the poolside up on the white plastic starting platform. As the signal goes we all bend down to hold the edge of the blocks and again I find myself amazed at the girl with one leg, she made doing this one-legged look easy but I can't even begin to think how. We do practices with tires and weighted balls, teaching us how to produce an explosive start, propelling ourselves into the water by pulling on the starting block and pushing with our legs at the same time and it was one of the things I always found hardest to get right.

I am pulled from my thoughts by the starter and I launch myself into the pool, this time it feels good, I cut into the water smoothly and kick through the underwater phase. As I surface and transition into the crawl I glance left and see I am in the lead, it gives me a confidence boost and I push a little harder. I nail the tumble turn at the end of the first length. It's an Olympic sized pool and I am totally not used to that, our local pool is half the length so I get to push off more and the distance between rests is showing, my initial lead is dwindling. I knuckle down and give a last little push, as I look down the pool I can’t tell if I was first or not. It felt good, perhaps the others are just better. Pulling myself out of the water I see mum giving me the thumbs up, hopefully, that means I’m through to the finals of this one.

I return to my seat on the bench, dripping water all the way.

“Did I win that one?” I ask Becky.

“Only just! You were way ahead at the turn but halfway back you slowed and they almost caught you. It was exciting.” Yeah, exciting to watch, nerve-wracking to swim!

The last two heats are finished and I get back up, hopefully, I will win this one, the next event is the butterfly and I don’t fancy my chances.

I end up standing on the starting blocks next to the girl with the missing leg, she’s taller than I am and she smiles at me and I smile back. Damn, she’s even prettier up close.

The starter goes and we are off, she gets ahead of me off the block, how the hell she manages that with one leg is beyond me. I find myself struggling to keep up but then I nail the turn again and I’m right there beside her, she’s fingertips ahead. I push myself hard and it seems like I’m catching her, I can hear the crowd cheering us on but can’t tell if it’s me or her they are cheering.

On to the last few meters, I catch her and I end the competition a fraction of a second ahead of her.

“Holy crap you’re fast!” I tell her, she smiles, panting.

“Not fast enough.” She holds her hand out over the lane divider and I shake it. “I’ll get you in the butterfly!” she threatens.

‘Yeah, easily!’ I think to myself.

We wait through the longer distances, I’m not competing in any of them and the water dries almost entirely off my body whilst I wait. My friend does pretty well in the four hundred meters, coming second overall and just pipped on the last length.

Then I’m up again, I amaze myself on the first heat of the butterfly, winning by a huge lead. Very unusual for me. My competition wins her heat handily too. She points at me laughing, a gesture I take to mean she thinks she’s going to beat me. I don’t doubt it, my winning the heat was a fluke.

Before long I’m up again, we are separated by two lanes this time but she gives me a nod as she hops past.

On the starter, she beats me again, and this time stays in front at the turn, amazingly I seem to be second but even then she is a couple of body lengths ahead. I push on, feeling completely uncoordinated in this stupid stroke. It feels like I am only halfway down the lane when she finishes, man she’s fast! I still finish well ahead of the pack and we give each other an ‘air high five’ in celebration.

As we get out of the pool I make sure to meet her, “That was awesome!” I tell her, “You were so far ahead I had no chance.”

“Yeah, the butterfly is my best stroke. Hey, mind if I lean on your shoulder a bit?” I let her lean but she doesn’t put much pressure on me, she’s actually pretty good at hopping. I guess you get used to it if you do it a lot. “Is that you done? I only do two events so that’s me spectating now.”

“Yeah, me too, our coach alternates us between sprints and longs.” I tell her, “I prefer sprints. My name’s Kelly by the way.”

She introduced herself as Charlotte, “Hey mum, I’m going to sit with Kelly for a bit.” she said grabbing her towel and her prosthetic leg at the same time. “Can you carry this for me?” she asked, holding out the leg.

Geeze it was weird holding someone else’s leg. It was oddly light, I was gripping it around the ankle and couldn’t help but stare at the painted toenails, they were five different colours.

“Yeah, I painted them at a sleepover about six months ago. It turns out the varnish sticks really well to acrylic!” She had obviously spotted me staring.

“Cool,” I murmured, not really knowing what to say. “This is my friend Rebecca, Becky for short.”

“Nice to meet you, Rebecca. I’m Charlotte, Chaz if you want to shorten it.” She let go of my shoulder and shook Becky’s hand. I rather missed the warmth of her touch.

She sat down beside Becky and I sat on the end whilst she pulled a weird sock thing over the stump of her calf. “Can I have my leg back?” she asked.

“Oh shit, sorry I forgot I was holding it!” Yeah, smooth Kelly. I hand her the leg and she slips it on over the sock and then stands up, doing a little shimmy which must have been to make it sit properly. She sat down and suddenly she was normal, her foot was part of her and it was as if she wasn't missing a limb at all, she was super coordinated and if it weren’t for the colour, you wouldn’t pick she had a missing leg.

“So, where do you go to school?” She asked us.

“We both go to Hillcrest,” Becky replied.

“Oh wow, me too. How come I’ve not seen you there before?” Charlotte asked.

I take a deep breath, knowing this is the clincher. “We’re first years, just started this term.”

“Oh yeah? I’m in second year. We should totally hang out sometime.” What just happened? Second-year students don’t hang out with first years, it just doesn’t happen.

My brain is still doing a reboot as Becky says excitedly, “Yeah! That would be cool.”

The next heats start-up and we have to pause our conversation to support the squad. It’s one of those rules that’s actually written down, the coach takes it very seriously too.

When the heat finishes Charlotte turns to Becky, “I saw your final in the four hundred backstroke. You were super unlucky with that last turn. If you had been slightly faster you would have won.”

“Yeah, I always have trouble turning when I’m doing the backstroke, I get it right about half the time and then I end up doing this weird tumble turn and ending up on my front every so often. It’s like I have a mental block.” More like mental deficiency I want to say, I don’t though. I really don’t want to spoil our chances of hanging out with the older girls.

Before I know it the competition is done. This one was just a short one, I’ve been to all-day events and they normally really suck. I somehow find myself wishing it was one of those this time, our new friend is cool and I totally want to spend more time with her.

“So, who’s the new girl you were sitting with?” Mum asks on the way home. I find myself babbling about her, that is until I notice mum’s grin. Then I shut up.

“Sounds like you made a new friend. Any idea how she lost her leg?” She asks, trying to keep me talking.

“Oh, yeah, like I’m going to ask her that!” I blurt, mums eyes narrow and I sneak out a quick “Sorry.” before following up with “But really, would you like everyone talking about that sort of thing?”

“No, I guess not, that’s very mature of you Kelly,” Dad says, turning around in his chair. “She was amazingly fast, especially for someone with one less foot, I would have thought it would be a major disability in swimming. I thought your foot did a lot of the propulsion.”

Now that he says it I realise he is right, “Yeah, it is kind of amazing.” I admit.

The music gets slightly better on the way home, at least dipping into the eighties and nineties. Nothing recorded since I was born though.

When we get home I race up to tell my sister all about my evening but I find she has gone to bed. Ug, selfish! I go and shower off the chlorine stench, the water feels so nice and warm after being practically naked and wet for so long. I use Anne’s shampoo and conditioner, yeah it might be out of spite but I am annoyed she didn’t support me and couldn’t be bothered waiting up to hear how I did.

When I get to my room I take out the new diary, this time I have something proper to write.

Dear Diary, why do people always start with that? It’s dumb, anyway, swimming comp tonight. I won the front crawl (I refuse to call it freestyle, it’s the bloody front crawl, people just call it freestyle because you can do any stroke in that and front crawl is fastest so obviously that’s what everyone uses). Anyway, I just managed to beat this girl Charlotte, then she thrashed me in the butterfly. She’s so cool. Really pretty too, she’s got the cutest freckles. I totally think I have a crush on her. She’s a year older than me and goes to my school. She says we can hang out together at school. She even likes Becky who was a total dork tonight. God, I wish I had this gaydar people talk about. How the hell am I meant to know if it’s safe to ask her out? Anne was a bitch tonight too. I mean, I get not going to my normal swim meets but this was a proper competition, she didn’t even wait up for me. Bitch.

I’ve run out of space. Shit, that’s the longest entry this diary has. I flick back and read some of the old entries, they do read okay, I don’t think I would notice they were written in the last week if I didn’t know. I write a few more to fill out the whitespace between them and today’s entry. Feeling bitchy I write again about Anne staring at Heather’s ass.

“Bedtime Kelly!” Goddammit, it’s not even ten. Well, I guess the sooner I sleep the sooner I get to see Charlotte again. Chucking the diary back in its shoe I slip under the covers and turn the light out. Then I drop the book and the Rubix Cube that I’m lying on out of the bed. Perhaps mum is right about needing to tidy my room.

I had weird dreams. They started out nice, I remember dreaming about a pretty girl with freckles which may or may not have been Charlotte. Then I started having dreams about having feet for hands and having to swim backwards. There was some bizarre stuff about driving home in reverse and having to sing Beatles songs to power the car too.

Honestly, I was glad when I woke up.

And of course, Anne got out of bed late and grabbed buttered toast on the way out the door instead of asking me how last night went. I give her the evil as she disappears.

I sometimes wish we went to the same school, then again, it would probably just give her more time to blatantly ignore me. Oh well, at least I get a lift to school, my bitchy older sister can wait for the bus in the rain without me.

I have a whole half hour to read my book waiting for mum to get ready. It’s funny she yells at me as soon as I am ten seconds late but when it’s her delaying our morning trip I have to just grin and bear it. Worse still, I was hoping to find Charlotte and hang out this morning.

Mum's car at least has the radio tuned to something modern but it is super bizarre. Apparently, the song playing as we pull up to the school is by Kvelertak. It’s some kind of hard rock grunge foreign music. I mean, I like it and I've heard it lots but I can’t sing along to it. Why my parents can’t just listen to normal music. I don’t think I could tell Katie Perry from Miley Cyrus. It’s embarrassing.

I open the door, letting the super loud music wash out over the kids hanging around the front of the school. As I get out I realise Becky and Charlotte are waiting for me, sitting on a wall a short way off. Mum waves at them before driving off.

“Was that Ramstein?” Charlotte asked, “Your mum lets you listen to that in the car?”

“No, its Kvelertak I think. It’s not my music.” I said, wishing I could crawl into my own shadow in embarrassment.

“Cool!” She was pulling a notebook from her bag, “kerveltak?” she asked.

“What are you doing?” I ask in bewilderment, is she actually writing down the music I was listening to?

“I’m going to google them when I get home, it sounded cool,” she explained, sounding no less insane to me.

“Well, I think it’s spelt K-v-e-l-e-r-t-a-k, I personally prefer Howl, at least they sing in English and listening to them doesn’t make me think they’re going to tear their voice boxes out.” She scribbled that down too. Holy crap, don’t tell me mum's music might not get me laughed at!

“Cool, I’ve been listening to Till Lindemann but mum made me stop when she heard the ‘be my human Eiffel Tower’ song.” She leant in close and whispered, “Apparently it’s about a woman peeing on him!”

I couldn’t help myself, I snorted in laughter. “I wonder if my mum knows that, she listens to it on the radio all the time!”

We wander into the school, it’s almost time for the first bell so we don’t have long to hang out but it’s fun. If I hadn’t known Charlotte had a false leg I never could have told. She walks on it perfectly, even backwards on the top of a wall! Before I know it the bell rings and Becky and I are running full tilt down the corridors, we were quite a long way from class!

We breathlessly arrive at the classroom, only to be told off for running in the corridors, damned if you do, eh?

The teacher checks that we are all here and then goes through the boring announcements and then she kicks us out. What a pointless waste of time. You rush all the way across school, get counted and then have to walk all the way back! Some things just make no sense to me. For one thing, why send the kids all over the school? We could just stay in one class and the teachers could move around. Except for PE, and chemistry, actually all the sciences, and art, and home economics. Damn.

"Whatcha' thinkin' 'bout?" Becky asks me in the stupidest accent. I don't want to but for some reason my face betrays me and I smile.

"Jus' thinkin' about the whys n' the wherefores o' t'world" I reply, trying to mimic the accent. "That what seems dumb, summit' has reason methinks!"

She cracks up laughing and drags me along to the computing lab. Another mostly boring class. Today we are learning about arrays, I don't see why we need so much time for this. You push or you pop, you can nest and define data types. It's all pretty easy. By about five minutes in I have the code written that does what he wants. I'm wishing they would connect these old clunkers to the internet but in the end, satisfy myself by prettying up the input and output windows and making three different versions of my code with functions and subroutines and eventually a one-liner.

The teacher does seem impressed. Unfortunately, I learnt none of this in his class, dad has been teaching me coding ever since he bought me a raspberry pi for Christmas a couple of years ago. We've done some cool stuff with it and he says we are going to build a robot in the Christmas holidays. Which I guess is cool. I wanted to make a 3d printer though.

It turns out it isn't too long for people to learn that stuff. Becks is still struggling at the end of class, she seems to be missing the idea of syntax and closing parenthesis. I fix her ten lines of code in about thirty seconds and save it for her before we head for morning break.

We get a whole ten minutes to chat with our friends then we are off our separate ways. Apparently, she is better at English than me! Me, the author of two works of fiction already! Well, partial diaries of fiction. I laugh at my own joke and get odd looks from several people nearby. Philistines.

Oh god, English is boring. Who cares what a verb or an adverb is! And don't get me started on 'comprehension' I think, if you can read and write just stop and call it done. Hold on, perhaps that's why Becky is in the top class, perhaps she actually cares about this drivel. I seem to have nodded off, at least I assume that is why the teacher smacked the desk, waking me up.

"Am I boring you, Miss Stevens?" She asks sternly.

"No, not at all, I just find it hard to keep my eyes open when I find something so interesting," I murmur sleepily. Apparently, that slight sarcasm got me detention during lunch. Bugger. This hanging out with Charlotte thing just isn't going well today.

I nod off twice more during class, I'm so much better at the doing than the listening, and then I shuffle off to Mr Kuzinski's math class for detention. I don't even manage to find Becks on the way to explain to her.

We at least get to eat our packed lunch in detention whilst sitting quietly. Then of course I fall asleep again, this time the teacher allows me to sleep head tilted back and no doubt snoring and drooling with my mouth embarrassingly wide open. I'm pretty sure that's why he left me to sleep.

I wake to an empty classroom and somehow expect to either be having one of those dreams where you walk the halls naked or to have marker pen glasses on my face. Surprisingly it's neither but it was the bell that woke me. I groggily try to work out where I am and more importantly where I should be. Shit, geography!

I race through the halls, risking detention again. Trying to get to the other side of the school in a sum total of thirty seconds, I take entire flights of stairs in one jump and pivot myself around poles, occasionally bouncing a foot off a wall to arrest my momentum.

In the end, I needn't have bothered. The teacher was late, I was in my seat for five minutes before she walked in carrying a stack of photocopied handouts.

This class was pretty cool, we had to pretend to be a town planner and we had a map with an unfinished road, we had to group up and balance cost and efficiency for planning types of road junctions. One of the teams put four-way give way intersections everywhere, they did save the most money but I couldn't imagine driving through it! When we had drawn out plans the teacher put a map with the real planners' junctions up on the overhead projector. We weren't too far off.

I finally managed to meet Charlotte and Rebecca during the afternoon break. I apologised for getting detention but they just laughed.

"We hung out with Charlotte's friends, didn't miss you at all, in fact, I didn't even notice you weren't there!" Becks said with a smile on her face, I smacked her shoulder. "Seriously though, stop getting detention, that's like, ten times since we started high school! I thought they sent letters home eventually?"

"Yeah, but I can sign dad's name better than he can! As long as they keep avoiding parent-teacher night I'm fine. I have it on good authority that the office never calls people's parents!" They both look at me in disbelief, "Tom's mum works in the office!" That shut them up. "And my sister is in her last year, they have never been to a PTA night!"

"Yeah, but your sister is a straight-A student!" She doesn't seem cowed by my death glare. Damn her.

"I can get good grades. If not, I can falsify documents." My glib answer seems to have stalled my so-called friend.

"Or you could just study and not get detention?" Et tu Charlotte?

I clutch my heart, "You wound me!"

They laugh and we spit from Charlotte to get to class. Chemistry! I have made it my mission to make something explode this year. Unfortunately, this has necessitated me actually studying way the hell ahead, trying to find reagents which we will be using that I might be able to make react violently. I even downloaded and read the anarchists cookbook, which gave me lots of cool ideas but no help with my chemistry project. It also probably put my bedroom neighbors whose internet I steal on some government watch list!

We get to class and Mr Clasper is waiting, lab coat on and hands crossed in front of his desk. The bell hasn't even rung. I'm sure when he went to school in the sixties he would have been the squarest of squares.

"Afternoon Mr Clasper." No sense in being impolite.

"Miss Stevens, Miss Wright. You may want to get yourselves a Bunsen burner and goggles before the rest of the class arrive."

We meander to the cupboard and get said equipment, fire isn't quite as good as explosions but it's better than anything I've done so far today. Of course, I know what's coming as I read the book, endothermic and exothermic reactions. I need severe exothermic reactions but there is nothing in use today which would do that!

After setting things up and getting our books out we chat for a few minutes, it turns out Charlotte's friends are mostly boys. I don't know what to read into that but it excites Becky in a way which makes me very disappointed. She apparently would quite like an older boyfriend.

Once everyone arrives the teacher goes through the reaction on the board, we are treated to one of those, this is how it works but you don't need to know it lectures. It went along the lines of 'both these reactions have a reaction energy barrier called a transition state, the energy graph looks like this but you don't need to know this until your A-Levels!' it was all pretty cool and interesting but ultimately the hour twenty lesson boiled down to learning Latin. Exo = out, Endo = in. I think back on my introspection from the morning registration class and realise that this was mainly an exercise in measuring and using a bunsen burner.

When the end of the day finally comes I find myself doing my homework in the gym, I am there in part to watch Becky’s netball practice but in actuality, I have to wait for mum. There are pros and cons to going to a different school from Anne, for one I don’t have to wear a dorky school uniform. I find that one especially satisfying. Secondly, I get to hang out with Becky, we’ve been friends forever. Erm… yeah, those are the only pros I can think of. Cons of course include having to wait until mum picks me up. I do sometimes get to go to Becky’s house to wait, she only lives around the corner from school now since she moved last year, and she has a PlayStation.

My phone pings, mum is outside so I wave to Becky and pack up. Mum works at a law firm downtown so it’s fairly random when she finishes work each day. Occasionally dad picks me up, those are the days I usually end up at Becky’s so I don’t mind much. Today she’s early, I haven’t even gotten my homework done which is unusual.

I jump in the big people mover and cringe at the volume of the music, another Scandinavian death metal band but this time one I don’t recognise, embarrassingly, mum is headbanging and singing the foreign lyrics badly but loudly. I hunker down and try to ignore her, at least nobody is here to see.

We manage the drive with a minimum of dumb conversation about class. Mum manages this far better than dad does, he just has to try and natter. Almost the moment we are in the door Anne storms in, she doesn’t say a word to us, just thumps up the stairs to her bedroom. Nice to see you too Anne.

I am stuck helping mum with the prep work for dinner, peeling and chopping vegetables mainly. Mum seems stuck on this health kick, veggie frittata tonight, with salad!

By the time dad arrives dinner is ready and mum calls Anne when there was no answer she went upstairs. I thought she was going to tell her off but apparently, no, Anne is allowed not to have boring frittata because Anne is upset.

She didn’t come down after dinner either so I sit and finish my homework, then I watch some TV. By the time it’s eight o’clock I start to wonder what’s wrong. I sneak up and peek through her door, she’s curled up in the fetal position in the dark. I turn on the light and sit on the edge of the bed. It appears she was asleep, judging by the start I gave her. It looks like she’s been crying too.

“Want to talk about it?” I’m interested, and bored so what’s the harm in asking?

The dual thud of two shoes hitting the floor startles me slightly.

“No.” She says, sounding like a petulant child.

"Did you get into a fight?" I ask, trying not to sound condescending.

“No.” Oh god, is this how I sound to mum and dad? I may have to start saying more than one-word answers! “I don't like you being the adult." She really does sound like a sulking child.

She gave this big disgusting snot-filled sniff and I grimaced. “Come on, just tell me. I won’t judge.” Well, not out loud. I have to stop myself from smirking at my private joke.

"I think I might need to move schools." Now, this caused me to smile in amusement, perfect Anne did something so embarrassing she doesn’t want to show her face at school? Fortunately, she can’t see because she’s hidden her face in the pillow.

"Something embarrassing?" I ask in a light tone, all the while chanting ‘please, please!’ in my head.

“I read your diary,” she mumbles into the pillow. “Sorry.” Now I am glad she isn’t looking because I am sure my smile turned evil. I haven’t even finished the thing and it caught her!

“Ah,” I say, not entirely sure how to tease this one out of her.

“I didn’t know.” I make an ‘mmhmm’, noise, “It made me wonder if you were right.”

“What do you mean Anne?” She takes her face out of the pillow, new tears streaking her face. Fortunately, I had my face under control.

“I’ve never considered… being a lesbian,” she whispered the last part. “I always just assumed, you know… boys…” I make another encouraging noise, slightly confused now, is she saying she isn’t a lesbian or that she didn’t know she was a lesbian?

“Well, I talked to a girl at school who is gay. She gave me some advice.” I pause for a second, she doesn’t sound like she is going to continue.

“What advice, Anne?” Come on, get to the juicy bits!

“So, she asked what I think about when I'm erm...you know.” I nod, fully understanding the rationale, “Well, I told her I didn’t know because I don’t and she told me to go home and… masturbate!” again she whispered the last word, I couldn’t help but laugh, more at her inability to say the word out loud than anything.

“And how did that amount to you having to change schools?” Come on! It’s like pulling teeth!

“Well, I might have told Abby.” Abby is her best friend, I know she didn’t out her to the school or anything so I just raise my eyebrows questioningly. “She… suggested we do it together. Then when I didn’t want to… she kissed me.”

“Hold on, hold on. Can I just get this straight?” I say, something just having clicked. "So, never? Not once?" I ask, baffled.

"Don't you start!" Anne said and threw the pillow she had been hugging at me.

"Sorry, sorry. Just, you know. Surprised, you're four years older than me. Hell, I do it most Sundays!" Oh damn, I had not meant to say that! This sharing is dangerous.

"After swimming meets?" Anne asked accusingly.

"Well…" Fuck you too Anne, so I know what gets me off and it’s seeing girls naked. I shake my head and force myself to continue, "She's been your friend for years, you trust her, don't you? Perhaps give her some dues? She may actually be attracted to you, your rejection might be hard on her too."

"She likes boys." Oh god, could you be any more naive?

"Some people… swing both ways." Honestly, how is she so dense!

Anne sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Since when are you the mature one? And how come you know so much about this stuff?"

"Turns out I've been dealing with this longer than you. And there's books, and the internet." Or at least, there is the internet if you sit at the bedroom window with your tablet just so and catch the edge of the neighbour’s unsecured wifi. No fucking way I’m looking on our wifi! Dad runs a transparent proxy with glasswire on it, he can see everything!

"Oh Kelly, I'm sorry, I made this all about me. I had started out wanting to be able to give you advice!" She sits up and hugs me, it felt odd, "You're so grown up. When did that happen?"

"When you weren't looking, obviously." I laugh, thinking how mad she would be if she knew I had engineered this.

Anne drags herself out of bed, "Thanks for the pep talk. I need to do my homework though."

"So, not moving schools?" I quip as I leave, perhaps getting her to come out might be easier than I thought.