Bored, Dad turned on the TV and the news clashed with the Christmas music playing.

  “Turn off that cheesy crap. God,” he snapped.

  Mum reanimated and did as he said, then, sensing the danger, muttered very quietly, “I’m just going to make a start on the washing-up,” and exited stage left.

  I knew I had to stay there for a while to show I wasn’t too sensitive.

  I couldn’t sniff, even though my nose was desperate to. And I couldn’t wipe away the snot, because that would annoy him too. So I just slid further down my chair, like the disgusting slug I was, and pretended to watch the television.

  I felt stupid for being excited about meeting Red Pen. Shamefully stupid.

  Why would anyone want to meet me?

  Should I even bother going? They’ll only be disappointed once they know who I am.

  Because I’m a boring, nothing slug with a boring, nothing life.

  Adam thudded down the stairs.

  “Right, everyone, I’m off.” He arrived on the threshold, lit up by the Christmas tree. There was a lot of black involved in his outfit. He’d gelled his hair differently too – swept down over one eye. “Mum, where did you put my coat?”

  Her head popped around the kitchen door. “Oh sorry, love. It’s in the cupboard under the stairs.”

  He smiled. “Of course. Couldn’t leave it hanging usefully near the door where I left it now, could we?”

  She put her dishcloth down. “I’m sorry, I’ll go get it…”

  “Oh my God, chill! I was joking. You guys are so…” He glanced around the room and, even though I looked away, he saw the state I was in and instantly knew everything that had gone down. I saw the question cross his forehead – a millisecond to make a choice. He could stay in and the evening would be saved. He could allow us to need him as desperately as we all did.

  He turned his gaze away from me. “Yeah, so, as I said, we’re going out for a few. Big catch-up. Don’t wait up.” He retrieved his coat, and jumped around on each leg as he tried to pull his black trainers on without undoing the laces. He shoved a black beanie hat over his new hair, then waved goodbye.

  I felt the house gulp as he left.

  I couldn’t blame him. Why would he stay and be our performing monkey when he could go out? It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he hadn’t once been home the whole term.

  I waited for further attack. Breath held. Heart berserking. Tears blinked back.

  I’m a slug I’m a slug. I’m a pointless disgusting slug.

  But Dad was bored now. There was nothing in the house that interested him, except maybe the television. Without speaking, he picked up the remote and turned the volume back up. And, when the next advert started, I took the opportunity to go upstairs to my room – glad he was blasting it so loud that nobody could overhear me cry.

  The next morning, for the first time in a long time, I worried about my appearance. I felt a novel urge to stand out. To be pick-out-able from a crowd.

  I yawned as I stared at my wardrobe’s interior, hoping the act of staring at it long enough would magic a suitable outfit into existence. I had nothing “nice”. Just jeans and tops. Otherwise there was one pair of shorts, for obscenely hot days, and an old dress I wore to my cousin’s wedding three years ago. I stared at the dress, wondering if it was too much if I dressed it down with tights. I pulled it on to find it sort of worked. I yawned again as I applied a bit of make-up. Adam had crashed in at gone two, giggling like a maniac, and then stank out the whole house by frying bacon, leaving the kitchen in a state. Not that anyone had woken up to it yet except me. It was seven thirty and I was getting ready, no matter how tired I was, and planned to be out the door by nine. Hoping against hope that at ten o’clock, Red Pen – whoever he was – would be where I’d asked him to be.

  It was freezing out, and I wasn’t the only one having an early start. Pre-Christmas panic laced the streets. Wild-eyed parents pushed buggies around, frantically grabbing gift sets off shelves without even checking the prices. All the till-workers were the unproud owners of a thousand-yard stare. I got to Nero an hour before Red Pen was due, keen to get a good table. I ordered a latte but the caffeine was a mistake. I was already so nervous and, after downing my drink, I felt like a wind-up toy that had been wound to the brink and then thrown out a window.

  I sat and slurped and vibrated as an endless cycle of coffee-drinkers came and went like waves crashing upon the sand. A wave of mums rode in, ordering babyccinos and whining loudly about how little their husbands did in the build-up to Christmas. They were promptly replaced by an eager group of what must’ve been Year Sixes, all on a “grown-up” trip. They bulk-ordered drinks that came served in tall glasses, topped with foam and syrups, and took a bazillion group selfies. Then their wave spilled and was gone – replaced by two old men sipping builder’s tea and grumbling about how busy everything was and how stupid drinks were now. I watched and drank, and worried and waited, and checked the time on my phone every two seconds to see that only two seconds had passed. I kept an eye out for anyone from school, but had chosen Nero as it was not the place to go. Everyone went to Costa for the upstairs bit with squishy sofas. Sweat poured under the armpits of my dress. And the voice in my head kept asking me, What are you doing? Nobody’s going to come. If they do, they’ll think you’re a slug anyway, and—

  Then a boy was walking towards me.

  Elijah Jones was walking towards me.

  Scanning the tables. A tiny espresso cup in his hand.

  Elijah Jones from Lower Sixth spotted me, smiled, and headed right for me and I almost laughed because of course it was Elijah Jones. Of course, of course, of course.

  Here is what I knew about Elijah Jones through the osmosis of school gossip. Elijah Jones didn’t dress how everyone else dressed. He came into school every morning wearing a long red chequered coat over a different daily assortment of “wacky” shirts. Hawaiian, paisley, neon green, pink and stripy. Nobody knew where anyone could buy one shirt that weird, let alone what seemed to be a never-ending carousel of them. He always teamed them with tight dark jeans, posh-ish leather shoes, hair gelled like he was an inventor who’d just blown himself up, and a necklace of noise-cancelling headphones. The official diagnosis, from St Benedict’s point of view, was Elijah was eccentric at best, very weird at worst. He hung out by himself in a stand-offish alluring way, rather than a loser way. His good looks meant he dodged a lot of judgement. And he was always reading – which should’ve given me a clue, though he wasn’t often in the library.

  He had the neon-pink copy of Stargirl in his other hand. His smile got wider as he reached my table, pulled out a chair and didn’t even say hello, just:

  “Oh my God, this book was SO good. Thank you for introducing it to me.”

  I spluttered my response. “You’re…umm…welcome.”

  He widened his legs, plopped the book down between us, and then threw his head back to down most of his coffee like a sambuca shot.

  “Ms Gordon looked highly impressed when I borrowed it. Surprised too, I guess. Although who is she to think it’s wrong for a seventeen-year-old boy to read a bright pink book with the word ‘girl’ in the title?”

  “Er… Yeah.”

  He bashed his cup down, grinning, then picked the book up again and flicked through it to where my note was. “And this quote! Congratulations. You sifted it for the best paragraph. You’re an amazing book sifter.”

  “Sifter?”

  “That’s what I call it. Essentially, the way I see it, the whole of any story can be condensed into its very best sentence. It’s my hobby to try and find them. I’ve got good at it…you have the gift too I see.”

  “I…I…”

  Of course it was Elijah Jones. Of course, of course. It was like I’d always known it. Now he was sitting in front of me, hyper and open, weird and wired, it made the most perfect of all sense.

  He seemed to remember that complete strangers usually greet one another before rushing into deep conversation.

  “Sorry, I’m Elijah,” he said. “I would shake hands but we’re not adults so that would be a bit weird.”

  I laughed, still coming to terms with the shock of him, and half waved back.

  “Yeah, a wave. That works. I’ll wave too.” We sort of just waved at one another over the cluttered coffee table. He smiled an even warmer smile.

  “So, you’re Paige, right? I wondered if it could be you. You were on my shortlist.”

  I almost spat out my cold sip of coffee. “You…know who I am?”

  “Yeah, of course. You write for the paper, right?”

  “Umm, yeah.”

  “Well I read your stories. You get the front page a lot. Very impressive. I sometimes toy with the idea of doing the paper but then I remember I’d have to talk to a lot of people I don’t like and pretend I find their lives interesting when I really, really don’t.”

  It was unimaginable to me that anyone, anyone, would know who I was. Especially from the Year Above. Especially Elijah Jones.

  Elijah’s eyes registered my surprise. “I hope I didn’t insult the paper,” he said. “What you write is really good. I’m just not sure I could do it.”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’m not mad. I guess I’m just…well, this is all a bit weird, isn’t it?” I was so unused to making conversation that I felt like a toddler taking their first wobbly steps.

  Whereas Elijah was clearly relaxed. He leaned back and crossed a leg, balancing one foot on his knee. “Is it? Yeah, I guess maybe it is. Doesn’t feel weird though, does it?”

  And, despite my nerves, he was right. There were a hundred and ten reasons why this should be weird and yet it wasn’t.

  “But I still can’t believe it’s you. Finally! I found my first of your I exists last year, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. And I was like, Oh my God! Someone else who writes in books. But I had no idea if you were still in school, or alive, or where else to find your messages.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe it. The odds seemed so small, and yet here we were. I’d written out all those messages in multiple margins of multiple books, but I guess I’d never thought what would happen if anyone read them.

  Elijah, way less cosmically flustered than me, tapped the book. “Anyway, this book. THIS book. I loved it. Where did you find it? I don’t normally read teen fiction but woah am I stupid.”

  I laughed openly. “You are. It’s one of my favourites. It sums up school so well! Anyway, don’t you get scared Ms Gordon will kill you if she sees what you do to her library books? Like, you REALLY annotate them.” I swirled the leftover remnants of my coffee around my cup, watching loose grains climb up the side of my mug.

  He laughed. “She probably would. But then I’d explain it to her and hopefully she’d get it.”

  “Explain what?”

  “How this is the only way to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Read.” He paused. “Live,” he added.

  A smile had been quietly sneaking up on my face and, at this, it crept up further. “What? Scribble all over it?”

  He nodded. “To some degree, yes. Life’s a blank page to be filled and all that.” He tipped the dregs of his tiny coffee right to the back of his throat. “But, the way I see it, a book is someone out there in the world telling you a story – their story, right? And that’s great. Everyone has a right to tell their story, but it’s theirs, not yours. They can tell you a story, but you don’t have to agree with it.” He leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through the dark curls of his hair. “So my scribbles in the margin are just me disagreeing with it. I don’t have to fully accept someone else’s story, I’m entitled to put my own take on it.”

  “I’m sure Ms Gordon would argue you could disagree with it quietly in your head…or in pencil,” I added.

  He laughed so widely he fell further back in his chair. “Ha! True. The red pen is probably just me being dramatic. Attention-seeking. But then aren’t we all attention-seeking all the time?”

  “I’m not,” I found myself replying to my empty cup.

  “What was that?”

  I put my drink down and made myself look at Elijah Jones.

  “I said, I’m not.”

  “Sure you are,” he said, nonplussed. “Everyone is.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I am.” Even talking about it made my arms retreat up their sleeves. “I try to keep myself to myself.”

  “True.” Then he pointed at me. “But then you’re also doing the school paper. Getting the front page loads.” I had literally never had anyone smile at me the way Elijah Jones smiled at me. So warm you needed SPF applied. “Don’t be upset. It’s not a bad thing – it’s human. All of us need to be noticed. Even when we pretend we don’t, it leaks out in other ways.”

  Just like his red pen, the words coming out of his mouth felt like medicine – like swallowing two paracetamol specially created for the headache of life. I shook my head to try and dislodge my overwhelm. Nothing about this coffee shop seemed real. The world seemed fuzzy around the edges.

  “You say scribbling in books is the only way to read,” I started. “And I get that. Well, I think I do…but how does that relate to life too?”

  He shrugged. “Easy. Alongside people being obsessed with telling you THEIR story about who they are, everyone’s also obsessed with telling you the story about who YOU are.” He stretched his hands above his head, fingers interlocked. “And you’re totally entitled to disagree with it. In fact, the only way to stay sane is to always argue with somebody else’s story about who they think you are. Oh my God. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Are you okay?”

  He leaned over and put his hands on top of mine. It was the first time anyone other than Aunty Polly had physically touched me in years and I flinched and ripped them away.

  “Sorry,” I managed to get out. Wiping under my eyes, dying of embarrassment. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying. Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Ignore what I said. I say a lot of things. My mum’s always telling me to just shut the hell up, but I’m incapable.”

  I wiped and gasped and tried to get myself under control, utterly hating myself. The first chance I’d had to make a friend and, within minutes, I’d ruined it by blubbering like a whale.

  “I’m fine. Not sure what’s happening. Bear with me.”

  “If I just stare at you intensely until you stop crying, will that help?”

  A laugh pushed its way out alongside my sob.

  “Ahh, see it did help.”

  He continued to hold direct eye contact, grinning away, and I was giggling within seconds.

  “Stop staring at me.”

  “But it’s working so well.”

  “Literally, you’ve not blinked.”

  “It’s my sacrifice for you.”

  My gurgles of grief morphed into gurgles of laughter and, within moments, we were laughing together, shaking our cups with hysteria. I wiped away the last of my tears.

  “Sorry again,” I said. “I…umm… I’ll understand if you suddenly receive a fake phone call telling you your house is burning down and you need to leave immediately to rescue the dog.”

  Elijah raised both eyebrows. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because I just started crying like a train wreck…”

  He waved a hand. “So?”

  “Well…okay then…umm…?”

  The mental muscles required to ask questions and respond to them were weak, and had wasted away from my aloneness. Not being able to hide behind my detached reporter mode was pretty tricky too. It was especially difficult because this was Elijah Jones I was making small talk with. Elijah Jones. The sort of person in school who always got referred to by his full name.

  “Do you want another coffee?” Elijah asked. “Or we could go somewhere else?”

  The shocks kept arriving. The fact he’d come at all. The fact he was Elijah actual Jones. The fact I’d showcased such a staggering display of emotions and it hadn’t fazed him. The fact that he still wanted to spend time with me.

  “Where can we go around here? Everywhere is crammed.”

  “Well, sifter extraordinaire, why don’t we go to Leaker’s bookshop, and see what you’re made of?”

  “Leaker’s?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sacrilege! Oh my God, it’s going to rock your universe. Right, that’s it. It’s decided. We’re taking you there immediately.”

  I shrugged my coat on and followed Elijah Jones outside, the cold air hitting me like a smack.

  “Woah, it’s freezing,” he said, mirroring my thoughts and wrapping his long coat around him. “Don’t worry. It’s not too long a walk.”

  We set off through the now-manic high street. I was still trying to figure out how there was a place in town I hadn’t heard of. I mean, it’s not the biggest place…but then again, I spent most of my time holed up in my room. The town was cupped gently in a dark grey mist and the Christmas lights blurred in it, as frantic people panic-bought last-minute presents.

  “Do you like Christmas?” I asked as he led me through the dankness.

  “I like the Christmas story,” he said. “Totally crazy when you think about it. That every kid in this country knows it, gets taught it, has to act it out. I mean, every kid in this country knows the words ‘frankincense’ and ‘myrrh’ before they can even spell their own names. How weird is that?”

  “I still don’t really know what frankincense and myrrh actually are.” I reflected on my own nativity play as we dodged passing shoppers. I’d played what every indistinguishable child plays – a sheep. Ruby managed to scrape the part of angel number three. Guess who Adam played…