Over the Moon. Jean Ure

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      I couldn’t. I just could not identify the Mrs O’Donnell that I knew with the girl in the photograph. Altogether it was a sobering experience and made me reflect on what time does to people. But it also renewed my flagging spirits. In spite of Hattie and her bullying ways, I’d almost been on the point of giving up. I mean, three lots of history homework in one week, I ask you! It was the photograph of Mrs O’Donnell at Founder’s Day with her beau that did it. That’s what she called him: her beau! In other words, Mr O’Donnell, dressed to kill with all his hair. They had been young and beautiful once, just like me!

      Mrs O’Donnell said, “Those were the days …” She told me to make the most of my youth while I had it, “Because once it’s gone, it’s gone.” I get really uncomfortable when old people start talking like that. I don’t like to think of myself all lumpy and shapeless and saggy-bummed! As quick as I could, I got her off the subject and asked her, instead, how she’d managed to get enough merit marks.

      She said, “For Founder’s Day, you mean? I’ll tell you the secret: I knuckled down. True as I stand here … I worked hard, I played hard, and I resisted temptation.”

      “Was it a struggle?” I said.

      “Nearly killed me! But I was absolutely determined to be chosen and that was for one reason and one reason only: so that I could ask Jack O’Donnell to come as my partner.” She nodded at me, and winked, like it was the two of us in some kind of conspiracy against the opposite sex. “Never knew what hit him, poor man! How about you? Who are you planning to ask?”

      I told her that I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

      “Come on!” she said. “You expect me to believe that? A pretty girl like you? You could take your pick!”

      I always used to preen when people said things like that to me, I really basked in admiration. Now I find it quite embarrassing; I am nowhere near as vain as I used to be. But what Mrs O’Donnell said started me furiously thinking, so that that night in bed I lay awake making a mental list of all the boys I knew, scoring them out of ten, trying to decide which one I would pick if I ever got to be selected.

      Jason Francis – not bad. Six or seven.

      Martin Milliband – yuck! Two would be generous.

      Aaron Taylor – OK, but a bit of a dork. Five at the most.

      Christopher Pitts – the pits. Zero. Double zero.

      Wazir Mohammed – probably wouldn’t come. But five or six.

      Carl Pinter, Mark Aller, Ben Sargent … I think I went through every boy in our year. I’d been out with quite a few of them and I wouldn’t have wanted to invite a single solitary one. I knew who I’d like to invite. I’d known it the minute I started my list – the minute Mrs O’Donnell asked me. The one boy who made my heart beat faster and turned my insides to jelly …

      There was only one problem: I didn’t know his name. I’d never even spoken to him! But I made up my mind, right there and then: I was going to be selected, and he was the one who was going to come with me!

      This is the first entry in my diary which mentions the Gorgeous Mystery Boy:

       Mrs Wymark said to me today that she was really pleased with my progress this term. She said, “There’s been a marked Improvement, Scarlett. Keep it up!” She said she wasn’t the only member of staff to have noticed. They all have! So maybe I was right when I pictured Miss Allen singing my praises in the staff room …

       I really began to feel that all my hard work might be starting to pay off at long last. I said this to Hattie, who said, “I told you so!” Adding rather grimly, however, that it was no excuse for slacking. “You need to keep it up, you still have a long way to go.”

       Honestly! Hattie is so bossy, I’m sure she’ll end up as a head teacher. Either that, or prime minister. I don’t know what I shall end up as. I wouldn’t mind being a fashion model, or a TV presenter. If I was a TV presenter and Hattie was prime minister, I could invite her to come on my show! But we wouldn’t talk politics, cos politics are BORING.

       Gorgeous Mystery Boy at the station this morning. He got on the same train as me, but it was so crowded there was a huge wodge of people between us. Really annoying! I wonder if he’s there every day? If he is, then going by train won’t be so bad!!!

      We were four weeks into the winter term when I wrote that. Dad had proved so unreliable about getting me to school on time that now I just got him to drop me off at the station, instead. When I was at Juniors, Mum used to drive me in, but the minute I hit Year 7 she said that I could get there under my own steam.

      “There’s a perfectly good train service. Why not use it?”

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