I honestly can’t believe that worked, it was just an idle ploy that I dreamed up a few weeks ago when I was feeling particularly peeved. The fact that it worked so quickly too!

But what is with my sister? Does she honestly never get aroused? It’s not like her hormones aren’t firing properly, she has way bigger tits than me! And what’s with her best friend kissing her? I somehow can’t imagine Abby playing with her like that, if it were me, now I would totally fuck with someone by doing that but Abby? If she is serious… wow, Abby is pretty and fun, a little bit flabby for my tastes but certainly sexy enough. To be honest, if I have somehow pushed them together well…go me?

I pull out the unfinished diary and write a few more entries to fill the gap, man it’s tedious. Actually, why am I doing this, there is actual juicy stuff I can write on today’s page.

I found out today that Anne read my diary. It turns out however that she is super weird. She admitted to me she has never masturbated! Not once in her life! That is weird, isn’t it? Anyway, it may have come back to bite her, she told some girl from school who suggested she sees what gets her off but then she told her best friend and that all went really sideways. Apparently, either Abby is a bit of a pervert or she’s messing with Anne. Either way, I am super interested in what happens.

I totally missed hanging out with Charlotte today at lunch, so I find English a little sleep-inducing, so what, its no reason to punish me. Becky had fun though. I am getting pretty strong vibes that she is not a lesbian, which at least means there is less chance she and Charlotte will hook up if they hang out without me. Honestly, I am crushing bad. She is so nice, and doesn’t make fun of the music I am forced to listen to. Here’s hoping.

Somehow I suspect people might notice the difference if every real entry fills the page and the fake ones are one or two lines! Perhaps I should put more effort in. In fact, perhaps I need to move the diary! If Anne found it the same day I hid it… actually, how did she find it? Holy crap, she either wanted to borrow my stinky old shoes or she was properly searching my bedroom! I suddenly feel really violated. Well, that’s it, I am totally searching her room next time she’s out. See how she likes it.

I quickly update the other diary, my results from yesterday and the homework I did today hardly filling a line each and then I put both diaries back where they came from. I’m too annoyed to think up a better hiding place just now.

I have a thought, what if Anne and Abby don't get together, or Anne decides she imagining the lesbian feelings? I'm back almost to square one. I sit staring into space, plans and possibilities going round and round in my head. I have the beginnings of an idea.

I pickup the home phone and dial Abby number (speed dial 3), it rings once before Abby picks up, "Anne, thank god, I wasn't sure if I should call you."

"It's not Anne, sorry." I still wasn't sure how I was going to play this. "It's Kelly, Anne explained what you did to her. She's really upset."

"Oh no… how much did she tell you?" I'm hoping she told me everything.

"Let's just say she told me about some pretty lewd suggestions from you and a very inappropriate kiss." I say, fishing.

"Oh. Yeah." She's pretty downbeat, good I can use that.

"She was pretty close to asking to join me at Hillcrest. I'm not sure she wants to see you again." There is silence on the other end of the phone. "Why did you do it Abby? Were you making fun of her?"

"No…" again the silence.

"So, you actually wanted to do that stuff? With Anne? You know it must have taken a lot of courage for her to tell you?" I think it's working, but I have no idea what it's doing! "I'm going to talk to her, ask her to give you another chance but… if you weren't serious about being interested in her… she honestly might not want to be your friend anymore." I think I'm laying on too thick but then I hear tears on the other end of the phone.

"I don't want to lose her." She sobbed, "I was willing to try, just so she wouldn't ditch me for someone else."

"So, you were going to pretend to be a lesbian?" Again the silence, this time with sobbing. "Abby? You know, unless you actually are attracted to her it wouldn't work." Oh god, I hadn't intended to be actually handing out advice! "Unless you can hand on heart say you are attracted to her and are at the very least bi-curious you would be better off letting her go."

She didn't talk for ages and I didn't feel like filling the silence. "Okay." She said at long last.

"Okay? Well. I will try to get her to listen to you. I expect she may be a bit pissed though." There was a little mmhmm and a resumption of sobbing on the other end. "Okay. Good luck, and do have a good long think before you decide to string her along." I hang up and smile, glad of having already convinced Anne to talk to her. I think perhaps Abby may be far more conducive to the idea of a relationship now.

After a shower and brushing my teeth, fully not prompted by mum shouting at me, I slip into bed. I am actually super tired and sleep comes really quickly.

What is with these dreams recently? I had this weird cyclic dream where I hid something really important and then someone found it so I would hide it in a more difficult place and every time someone, sometimes someone really random too, would find it. Somehow it ended with me hiding a golden iPod six feet deep inside a tomb raider-esq dungeon and my sister idly digging it up when she was planting a tree.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the most restful sleep I’ve had. I resolve myself to have stern words with Anne after breakfast. Obviously, my subconscious is telling me this is a big thing.

“Where’s Anne?” I ask when I get downstairs, the breakfast table was glaringly empty and I had passed her open bedroom door on the way down.

“She went out early to catch up with Abby. She must have been in a rush, she only grabbed buttered toast to eat on the way.” Mum said, then looked confused when I made a frustrated noise and stamped my foot. Damn my sister, somehow she manages to ignore me at the times which wind me up the most. It’s like she’s trying to piss me off.

I sit and munch my cereal, idly thinking perhaps Mr Kellog succeeded with Anne in his bid to stop masturbation through boring breakfast cereal! It’s odd, why breakfast? Perhaps I am unusual in this but by the time I have breakfast I have either already rubbed one out or have already got no interest in doing so. Actually, usually, I do it at night so perhaps cornflakes as a supper time snack would be more apt?

“What are you thinking so hard about Kelly?” I almost choke on the spoonful of cornflakes I am eating when mum asks this. I’m sure a small amount of milk actually came out of my nose.

Once I have recovered and wiped my face I say, “Nothing!” judging by the way mums eyes narrow I don’t think I got away with that one.

“Hmm. Coffee?” Oh god yes, brown nectar of the gods, I love you so. I hold out my cup nodding rapidly.

“So, what’s on at school today?” she asks and I almost answer ‘not much’ but then remember my frustrating conversation with Anne last night.

“Hopefully I’m going to get to hang out with Charlotte, she really likes your music by the way.” Way better, and I avoided the boring school shit at the same time!

“Does she now? A young lady with taste! I approve.” She smiled and I remembered the conversation yesterday morning.

“Did you know that ‘Be My Eiffel Tower’ is about a girl peeing on him?” I ask, trying to look innocent.

“...yes…” she said this with exaggerated slowness and I grin. She takes a deep breath, “This is possibly one of those moments I should be giving you ‘The Talk’”

“Oh god no!” I stick my fingers in my ears, “lalalalalalala.” I say as she launches into a way too long speech about deviancies I would rather believe didn’t exist. Fortunately, both she and I could pretend I heard none of it, even though every brain bleedingly damaging word was heard.

Honestly, mum, ‘golden showers?’ yuck!

Thankfully the ‘talk’ ended and we cleared up the dishes and headed for school. I was making an effort to actually say more than one-word answers. God, it was so tiring!

I was pleasantly surprised when Charlotte and Becky were waiting for me again. “Oh my god! Your Leiberman comment! Mum launched into a full-on graphic sex-ed talk!” Both girls laughed at my embarrassment, “Honestly, you would not believe the stuff she was saying. It damaged me, it truly did.”

“Yeah, my mum did sort of the same.” Charlotte seemed to be pleased that I had shared her torture. I found that couldn’t blame her, I was currently trying to think how I could trick Becky into the same mistake!

We chatted idly whilst we wandered the halls, I have no idea why Charlotte isn’t hanging out with her own friends but I am totally not complaining.

“I’m getting fitted for a blade this weekend.” I look at her in puzzlement for a second, assuming she meant something like a samurai sword and then I remember that she has a missing leg. “Oh! Like Oscar Pistorius?” I ask.

“Yeah, but less murdery.” She’s grinning ear to ear, I think this must be a huge thing for her.

“Cool, so does that mean you can compete in the running events in PE?” I remember she told me her current leg isn’t strong enough for a lot of the stuff we do in PE.

“Yeah, and the other stuff like basketball and things, they're meant to be almost indestructible, unlike this one, it would snap like a twig if I tried to run on it." She waved her leg in the air whilst saying this, "I have to decide if I wear it outside of sports though. They did tell me it might help me get used to it but I kind of like that people normally forget I only have one leg.” She looks a little nervous, a complete contrast to a few seconds ago. “I was thinking I might get a haircut at the same time, perhaps go for a full-on pixie cut. That way it might distract people, draw their attention away from my leg.”

“You would look so good with a pixie cut.” I say enthusiastically, “I think it would highlight your cute freckles.” Then I had a thought, “Hold on, can you wear full-length trousers with a blade?”

“Yeah, mine’s going to be pretty short so my leg will fill out the trouser leg okay and it should fit over the blade.” She looked down at her current leg. “I might just keep using this one until I get used to the blade. Perhaps I can wear it outside school and get used to walking on it.” She gave us a little smile. “Want to hang out next weekend? Help me get used to it?” Hell yes! I’m in with bells on.

“Sure,” I say with a little more decorum, “We can do something new, what sports have you been wanting to try that we could do with three people?”

“We could invite the boys!” Goddammit, Becky! How am I meant to get close to her if you invite the whole world to our private get-togethers!

“Yeah, good idea, we could play something like five a side football. That would be cool, then you guys could come around for dinner?” Score! Hell yes, she’s into me, she has to be, why else would she be pushing seeing us separately? Shit, I think my heart is racing!

“Sounds great.” Yep, nailed it, made it sound casual. God yes, I am so excited about this. I just wish it didn’t have to be more than a week away!

The bell rings and again we have to hurry to get to our registration class. This time we are closer to class so we don’t have to run.

The morning drags on, religious education was pretty cool, we’re learning about Scientology, man those guys are nutjobs! Honestly, it’s something some sci-fi writer invented! It’s all really creepy too, people being married off and it being super hard to leave! I just can’t believe all these famous people are in it, these are educated people!

We move straight from RE into Guidance, yeah, what a pointless namby-pamby class this is. We are answering an online questionnaire which apparently is going to tell us what our ideal job is! Honestly, it’s as bad as those ‘which marvel superhero are you?’ ones on social media! I’ve done it three times now with completely different answers and every time it has told me I should be a brewer! Like brewing beer? What a load of tripe! This thing is meant to give us an idea of which subjects we should take when we do our selections for next year. I don’t trust it enough to let it decide what flavour of juice to drink let alone trust it with my future career! Brewing! Urg, I launch the developer console in Chrome and edit the field for ‘ideal-job’, setting it to ‘Internet Millionaire’ and press the print button and running off two copies. The teacher is a Luddite anyway so probably won’t even grasp the possibility I cheated.

As we file out of class for first break I can hear everyone chatting about their ‘ideal job’ as if it matters in any real way. One girl was crying because she didn’t want to be a civil engineer or some such twaddle.

“Whatcha get?” Becky asks me, we were forced to separate by the teacher on the first week of school because I was a ‘bad influence’. That’s fine though, I am working hard to corrupt little Joey who I am now sitting with.

“Internet Millionaire,” I say, passing her the printout with a straight face.

She looks at me with a pout, “I hate you.” Yeah, I bet you do Becky!

“Well, what bullshit did it tell you?” I ask, mainly to appease her. The printout she hands me says ‘Naval Gunner’, “Hey, that’s cool.”

“Yeah but they’re all gay in the navy.” I want to suggest in that case that perhaps we could both join but I bite my tongue.

“It’s a bullshit test Becks, it gave me the same result no matter what answers I gave. It probably just assigns a job from your name or something.”

She looks at me thoughtfully, that or she’s constipated. “You cheated, didn’t you? You did the whole ‘Kobayashi Maru’ thing?” Oh god, she’s such a star trek nerd.

“Yes, I cheated. It wasn’t exactly hard to do.” I admit, “And brewer? Really? Come on, let’s find Charlotte and I’ll buy you both a drink at the canteen with some of my internet millions!" Mum gives me money for a drink every day and I drink water from the fountain so I have quite a lot of money stashed away.

We fail to find Charlotte, which saves me a few coins but makes me sad. The fifteen minutes flash past and we are off to physics. I like physics, it’s like maths with a purpose, it helps that the teacher is cool and we get to do stuff. Like today we have an air hockey table on which we are pushing weights around and smacking them together to try and calculate the forces transferred. Becky doesn’t get the same enjoyment from this but even she isn’t bored.

Lunch rolls around and Becky drags me off towards a table near the windows. I don’t see Charlotte but Becky seems to know the boys. I reluctantly sit with them, fortunately, Becky seems to get on well with them otherwise I would have felt really uncomfortable.

I get my sandwiches out, boring old cheese and ham. The boys all appear to have bought lunch at the canteen, lucky for some. That said, even the canteen seems to be having a push for healthy food, I don’t see chips or burgers anywhere. What the hell is the world coming to? One of the boys even has a leafy salad yuk!

“So, Kelly, you’re a swimmer too?” one of the boys asks from way down the table.“I’m trying out for squads this year too, might see you guys tonight.” He said, obviously assuming I went to the same pool as Charlotte.

“Yeah, my class was cancelled tonight though.” I have no idea why, probably to make way for old women doing aqua aerobics!. “You won’t see me anyway, I’m the competition!” I laugh, “I say that but it’s not mixed-gender races so you probably won’t even see me much, the competitions tend to be separate unless it’s a big one.” I’m not sure but I think he looks upset that I won’t be there. Weird.

“We might just have to have a swimming party sometime then, perhaps we can do a friendly race?” He suggested. I have this horrible feeling he is hitting on me!

“Hey, I’m always up for more swimming,” I say, then I jump as a hand lands on my shoulder.

“Me too! When are you thinking Drew?” Charlotte asks as she sits down beside me, she really crept up on me!

“We haven’t got that far yet, probably not for a few weeks at least. Let me get used to the schedule if I do make the team.” I assume the guy’s name is Andrew then? I feel oddly happy that Charlotte chose the seat beside me rather than the one way down beside Andrew.

The lunch break was fun, the guys are real gamer nerds though and it sounds like Charlotte has a PlayStation and plays online with them, this is probably why Becky likes them so much. I feel really out of touch and can’t follow half of the conversation, Becky obviously can, she’s talking about buying whatever game it is they play so that she can join them. I wonder if dad would buy me one for my birthday?

All too soon we are back in class, exceptionally too soon because we're back in English, I wouldn’t mind never being in this class. I don't know if it's the subject or just the teacher, I certainly don't like the teacher though, and not just because she keeps giving me detention.

Surprisingly, I manage to stay awake and curb my sarcasm for the entire lesson. Tom, the boy I sit with, even congratulated me on it when we left the class.

"I thought for sure you were going to mouth off when that boy suggested diarrhea could be a verb or a noun." I can feel the frown forming.

"To be honest I was trying to decide if it was an adjective when used in 'verbal diarrhea' I didn't want to sound dumb if it wasn't." I am totally going to have to look it up.

His eyes pinched as he thought that through. "I guess, if the noun is verbal? No, that doesn't make sense, the noun must be diarrhea otherwise it would be verb diarrhea."

I grab his jacket lapels, "Please stop saying diarrhea."

"I think the adjective must be something like diarrheic and the verb would be diarrheal?" I am going to hit him. "No, that's not right either. Perhaps that is a pronoun?"

"Do you want me to kill you?" I ask him calmly, still holding his jacket.

"Nope." He made a loud pop with the P and I let go of his jacket and smoothed out the wrinkles.

"Okay then. Let's go find Becks, enjoy the sunshine and stop talking shit." He cringed, I enjoyed that one immensely, it was mainly the lead up that cinched it for me. I walk away smiling like a lunatic.

My good mood stays all the way through tech studies and I get a text as the bell rings, mum is off work super early so she is waiting outside. I wave goodbye to Becky and jog out to the car. I actually enjoy nattering to mum this time, not that I'm going to admit it to her. It was our turn to cook again, the arrangement is that dad cooks on the days I have swimming and we, or at least mum, cooks on the other days. I like dad's days, not because I shirk the work but mainly because we get tasty, unhealthy food. Today it's herb crusted chicken and couscous with quinoa. I purposefully pronounce quinoa phonetically. It annoys the shit out of my mum!

Everything is prepped and ready to go on when it's time. I'm washing my hands as I'm tackled by an excited Anne, my sister is unusually boisterous and didn't even let me dry my hands before pulling me up to her room. I throw mum an apologetic glance as I am manhandled out of the kitchen.

She sits me down on her bed and hops up beside me, crossing her legs, I surreptitiously dry my hands on her bedspread, "I kissed her!" She says quiet enough that I struggle to hear her.

My eyes bulge, bitch! One day thinking she might be a lesbian and she gets her first kiss! I do feel a swell of pride that it is absolutely my work that got her that kiss. "So you're definitely not moving schools!" I quib.

She just shakes her head and sits silently, looking at me with glassy eyes. “Come on, you have to give me more than this, go back to the start, you left early?”

“Yeah, I went to her house. She was still in bed, apparently, she was going to avoid me by not going to school.” I nod, made sense after last night's phone call.

“And? You jumped her bones then and there? What?”

“No, I told her how she had hurt me and that I wasn’t happy with her. She apologised. I think she had been crying so she genuinely felt bad.” I nod and make the ‘keep going’ motion with my hand. “Well, we hugged and she told me she was actually kind of interested in girls.”

“Did she? Interesting.”

“Yeah, well then she got ready and we caught the bus.” I ‘mmhmm’ trying to get her to continue.

“Well, I brushed her hair and stuff cos’ she left the house in a hurry. Then she said she regretted kissing me when I was all upset so I…”

Oh for fuck sake, “Kissed her?” I prompt. She just nods. I catch myself sighing and shaking my head. “And? Was it good, did it make your feet tingle? Did people see?”

“No! I mean, yes but…” She’s funny when she’s flustered. “Nobody saw us, we were at the back of the bus and people weren’t looking. The first one was nice, sweet, it made my heart skip a little.”

“First one?” I prompt.

“Well, my lips were a little chapped so I put on some Chapstick. Then I kissed her again, oh my god, that one was awesome!” Fuck I am so jealous right now.

“And that was it? Nothing since then? Just a kiss on the bus then nothing?”

“No, we held hands a bit when nobody was looking.” Oh geez, she is so going to get caught. "And then she kissed me goodbye." She bit her lip, looking inordinately smug.

"So you are a lesbian?" I ask, willing her to admit it.

"I don't know." She says with a puzzled expression.

"Oh come on! You kissed your best friend, multiple times, you liked it, you have to admit you like girls now." I want to beat it into her.

"Yeah, but I don't feel like I want to jump her bones, perhaps a nice long make-out session but… it's nice but not… horny?" Anne trails off.

Oh for christ sake! I consider pulling my hair out and look to the sky for guidance, "Well, it's a start.” I have an evil thought, “At least she's hot. And she shaves."

That earns me a punch to the shoulder, Annes a wuss though and puts absolutely no power into it, "When did you see my girlfriend naked? You pervert!" Her eyes went wild, I assume she just realised what she said, she bites down on her knuckles. "I said that, didn't I?" I nod, come on, admit it, please? "Oh shit. Ohshitohshitohshit. Are we? Should I ask her?" Her eyes were wide and panicked and she seemed about to pull out her phone.

"If you're not ready to come out, don't text her. Someone will see, guaranteed. I'm surprised it isn't all around school already with how you two are behaving!" Actually, why am I giving her advice! I want her outed!

"Yeah, yeah you're probably right. We should be more careful. Should I call her? Would that seem desperate?" She asks, but I’m done, she can do this on her own.

"Probably." I shoot, walking out of the door smiling an evil smile to myself.

As I walk down the hall I hear her call, "Probably what? Probably would seem desperate or probably should call? Dammit Kelly!" My smile widens.