Eighteen Kisses Read Online Free Page A

hour last Saturday because he wouldn’t stop talking to you.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said, taking a deep breath.
    James seemed lovely. I had high hopes for him and Colin. It would be great if they went out – Colin deserved a nice boyfriend, and lately he was always complaining about the fact that he’d never had one. James has curly blond hair and is a little bit taller than Colin. I thought they would make the cutest couple.
    ‘What should I say?’ asked Colin. ‘What says
I like you, but not a scary amount
?’
    I considered this carefully. ‘
Hey, James, I’m great, how are you? Yeah, sure, that sounds fun … smiley face
.’
    ‘You’re a genius, Jacki King,’ he said, his thumbs quickly tapping across the phone’s screen.
    ‘I try,’ I said with a laugh. ‘This is so exciting!’
    ‘I can’t believe I met someone as awesome as James,’ he sighed. ‘Isn’t it funny how you can just end up in the right place at the right time?’
    ‘Colin, you stalked him for six months. You made me visit that Matisse exhibition four times just so you could look at him!’
    ‘Whatever. It worked, didn’t it?’ he said and then turned his attention to the phone.
    I watched as he reread his text a couple of times before sending it. I considered telling him about Kayla Edwards and the case I was now working on, but I didn’t want to wreck his fun. He’d only start to worry. I’d tell him tomorrow – I’d have to. He was my self-appointed sidekick, after all, and he’d been such a support to me last year, when even I didn’t believe what was happening to me. I’d also have to tell Mum. They both knew that I’d met Detective Sergeant Lawlor when he’d first asked me to help the police, but they didn’t know that I’d heard from him again – or that I had met him that morning in Dublin as well.
    ‘I better go,’ said Colin, after he’d pressed Send.
    ‘OK,’ I said, jumping up to hug him. ‘Text me if he texts you.’
    ‘I will,’ he said. ‘Sweet dreams.’
    I grimaced. I knew I wouldn’t be dreaming anything sweet for quite a while.
    The next morning I found myself standing outside Miss Jennings’s office. I had no idea why I was there. I assumed I must be in some kind of trouble – that’s usually why people were summoned over the intercom to the principal’s office. I frantically got rid of any ‘customizations’ I’d made to my uniform. I rolled down the sleeves of my blazer, then took the Thin Lizzy badges off my lapels and stuffed them into my pocket. My skirt was at least five centimetres shorter than the required length, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. I pulled up my knee socks, trying to minimize the amount of flesh that was showing. Miss Jennings was equal parts pleasant and terrifying. I suppose you had to be if you were in charge of 500 teenage girls. I tried to figure out what I could have done lately that would land me here. I couldn’t really think of anything though. It was especially difficult to get into trouble in transition year – it was pretty laid back and we didn’t have exams. Maybe it was because I’d been a few minutes late to music class this morning. Or because I wore too much eyeliner. Or because I’d signed Emily’s petition protesting about the ratio of male to female authors stocked in the school library. Whatever it was, I hoped my punishment wouldn’t be too severe. I was supposed to be meeting Nick after school, so I really hoped I’d be able to talk my way out of detention.
    I listened closely, trying to catch what was happening on the other side of the door with whichever unfortunate personwas in there before me. I couldn’t really hear properly, only catching snippets of the conversation – ‘self-destructive behaviour’, ‘I promise it won’t happen again’, and so on. I distracted myself from the agony of waiting by looking at the photographs on the wall, some of which I featured in. There was a picture