Wildlife Read Online Free

when-in-doubt-stick-your-head-in-the-sand move. Nice work.
    And he thought I didn’t know what
pulchritude
meant? Naturally. It’s not like he would have noticed me in the Same Latin Class for the Last Three Years. Dud compliment anyway. It’s such an ugly word for
beauty
. Besides which, he’s the pulchritudinous one. He is the walking definition of boy beauty.
    And I have now kissed that definition.
    *     *     *
    There is no hope of sleeping tonight. My wakey-dial is stuck up on super alert. I’m freaked out about going to camp in the morning, and I’ve got the kiss footage on a loop. I hate this. I want a more obedient brain. I want the brain that says okay when I say it’s bedtime. Now, brain, sit! Roll over! Play dead. My brain says, get stuffed, I’m having fun. Tonight it is like one of those lab rats that can’t stop going back for cocaine even though it needs the food.
    Hmmm, food. An excursion into the parental worst-kept-secret dark chocolate stash, in the fridge, is definitely warranted. With a freezing-cold glass of milk.
    1:47 AM . Brain still disobeying owner. It happened. It can’t have been a dream: I haven’t been to sleep. How did it happen? A yelp of disbelief makes its way up from my solar plexus to the pillow I jam against my face.
    Holly almost certainly had something to do with it. She is the keen social engineer who has been trying to persuade me since year eight that I need a man in my life. (Defense strategy: eye roll, say no, thank you, no way, never, not even interested, before you get scorned, rejected, ignored, not asked.)
    No more than an hour after turning away, of ignoring him, of accidentally appearing to be unimpressed, I was kissing him.
    Sibylla Quinn and Benjamin Capaldi?
    You have got to be kidding.
    Sib and Ben?
    Surely not.
    Heads turned. He tasted of beer and smiles and popularity, smelled of freshly danced sweat, and didn’t seem to realize it was the first time I’d kissed anyone. At least, he didn’t mention it.
    So the earth must be spinning off its axis by now, plummeting headlong toward a new universe, oceans sloshing and spilling, ice caps sliding, trees uprooted Because somehow I’ve stepped over the line to stand with the popular girls. Only I haven’t. The line must have moved without me realizing. It’s disconcerting. And so was the way people looked at me post–kissing Ben. The look said
you?
Then it reassessed me. Shuffled the deck. And it was as though a different backing track started playing. I walked into the party with something like a
la-di-da
, but by the time I left it was more of a
ba-boom-chucka-boom-chucka
.
    A text erupts from my phone, which is packed inside a boot. Holly. Unless it’s—it couldn’t be—Ben? I dig it out, heart jerking, and remember: Ben doesn’t even have my number. Of course it’s Holly:
biaaatch, are you in bed with him?
    Me:
you are a freak.
    Holly:
as if you don’t love him.
    Me:
don’t.
    Holly:
then you’re crazier than I thought, and that is lots crazy.
    Me:
go to sleep.
    Holly:
perchance to…
    Me:
perchance to shut up.

6
    monday 8 october, 4 am
    No news is not good news.
    I know it.
    Anything might have happened, and the only true fact of life is death.
    It is brief. But it is nonetheless a third journal entry.
    The end.

7
    Sex education used to be called the Facts of Life. It’s kind of appropriate, the stern, newscaster tone, the headline vibe. It does loom large; it is some kind of major event on the horizon.
    If you read the statistics—our house is full of them—heaps of kids have sex super early, like early high school, but in my little middle-class world there are plenty ofkids, a lot more than half, who haven’t done the deed at sixteen, or even seventeen. I know that for an anecdotal fact. (I’m obviously one of them.)
    Despite that, at sixteen, whether you have, or have not, had sex can sometimes feel like the Great Divide. It’s not like friends who used to be close are gone,