Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss Read Online Free Page A

upstairs (in fact, it was probably more of a flounce, than a storm), pull down my suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and start stuffing random things in it. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, which is why I’m now camped out in Poppy’s spare room with only odd socks and a lot of empty CD cases.
    The girls came round after I did a four-way hysterical text thing in the cab over here. Atsuko reckons that my mum is having trouble cutting the umbilical cord ’cause I’m an only child. Whatever. I think she’s going through the menopause or else she’s inadvertently inhaled too many cleaning fluids in her time and it’s all catching up with her.
     
7th October
    I think Poppy and Grace’s mum believes that I’m actually her daughter that she mislaid for eighteen years. Every time I make noises about moving home she says, ‘No need to make a decision yet.’ This is probably ’cause being a guest I don’t give her any lip and always help with the washing-up.
    I think Mum
did
think I was staying at Dylan’s (which I thought about but realised that it would make a bad situation about a gazillion times worse – plus ick!, possible Carter encounters). She phoned today. Ostensibly to see if I had clean underwear but I’m sure it was to check up on me.
    Instead, we had part forty-seven of The Row, which started just after she begged me to come home, then became ‘You need to have a proper life plan for your gap year’ to the familiar soundtrack of ‘we don’t want you sleeping with
that boy
in our house’. I tried to explain that I was saving money to go to America next year (not mentioning the Dylan factor in that plan) and once again pointed out that I could just as easily sleep with Dylan in someone else’s house at which point my mum burst into tears and I slammed the phone down on her.
    Jesus! Why is she being so strange about this? I’m polite, I’m helpful (well, most of the time I don’t need to be reminded to put my mug in the dishwasher), I’m entirely funding my own gap year and road trip without asking them for a single penny and I’m having protected sex in a proper relationship with a boy I’ve known for over two years. Y’know, as teenage daughters go, they really don’t come much better than me.
     
11th October
    Life is all hissy and tense at the moment when it should be really good because there’s Dylan and my job, which is pretty cool apart from the huge quantities of chip fat involved, and the band and Poppy. Instead, I feel like I’m walking about with a big, black storm cloud directly above my head.
    It didn’t help that there was another Carter incident this morning. I was reaching up to get a mug out of the cupboard, humming along to the radio and generally trying not to think any Mum-related thoughts and there he was.
    He didn’t say anything sneery, but came and stood right next to me, then reached across me for the peanut butter and let his hand brush against my breast. I could tell by the way his lips quirked that it wasn’t an accident.
    It also wasn’t an accident when I picked up the kettle that I’d just boiled and splashed a tiny bit of very, very hot water on his evil, boob-groping hand.
    ‘Ow! Hell! Ow!’
    ‘Sorry,’ I trilled and then I turned round and gave him my best wide-eyed innocent look and he scowled and stomped out of the kitchen. I pretty much rock sometimes.
    So does D. Poor D. He doesn’t know what to do to make the whole Mum angst situation better, other than crawl under a rock but he does try. The trying consists of asking me if I’m all right a lot and the buying of many bars of sugary confection because Dylan optimistically believes that when it comes to girls and their problems everything can be solved by large quantities of chocolate. Oh, but if only it was that easy.
    Last night, I couldn’t sleep and I was sitting on his windowsill reading but mostly staring out at the street, when he sat up in bed.
    ‘Why are you still awake?’