As I approach the classroom, I realise that the door is open, and nobody’s waiting outside. I walk towards the door as slowly as I can, praying I’m not the first one to arrive. It’s always so awkward when that happens. Each of us is totally aware of the other’s presence, yet hesitant to make the first move. In my case, I’m just incredibly shy. In his case…well, I think he sort of senses how I’m feeling and the last thing he wants to do is encourage me- a girl well-known for her overactive imagination.

Just my luck- I am the first one. Serves me right for being so eager to get to class. I have about a split second to compose myself before sauntering in gracefully, and dumping my books on my desk with a loud thud. I sit down, making sure I make a lot of noise with my chair- my way of letting him know I’m there. He knows perfectly well that it’s me, because any other girl would’ve said something by now.

It really should be me that makes the first move, I suppose, but I can’t help it if my mouth (the very mouth that had screamed ‘ Oh, that’s it, Alex- you are DEAD!’ less than ten minutes ago when I was fortunate enough to have a handful of grass shoved down my shirt by a dear friend of mine) appears to have been coated with sandpaper so that I find it hard to speak without sounding like I spent a day at Luna Park- on the roller coasters. As far as I can tell, he’s been aware of my presence for about thirty seconds now.

Finally, he glances up ever-so-casually and says ‘Hi, Anita’ in the most deceptively innocent voice I’ve ever heard. He even has the nerve to smile slightly, showing off his perfect smile, complete with dimples. I respond equally coolly, with a toss of my long silky, dead-straight hair (a mere shadow of its out-of-control former self, with a little help from my good friend the straightener) and a flutter of my heavily mascara-ed eyelashes.

As usual, an awkward pause follows our “conversation”. I open my exercise book, flicking through the pages loudly just to remind him I’m there. As if he could forget. I turn to a blank page and start doodling- flowers, hearts, flowers with petals shaped like hearts. Pretty much anything that pops into my head, really.

The rest of the class starts arriving, mostly in twos and threes, and he finally puts away that huge teacher’s folder-thingy he was writing stuff in and smiles at the giggling, blonde latecomers- is it just me, or does his smile look a little more…relieved?

He’s smiling some more now- laughing, joking, teasing- if he were six or seven years younger I’d call it flirting. Fortunately, he’s twenty-four and I happen to know he already has a girlfriend. I can’t help wondering why I have so much competition, though. He is definitely not a good-looking man. Even my mum said he was rather ‘odd-looking’ at parent-teacher interviews- he’s tall, and kind of skinny.( But I know for a fact he’s got muscles-not very big, but they’re most definitely there. You learn so much at swimming carnivals!)And he’s got black hair just like mine, except it’s short and covered in gel. That doesn’t sound particularly shocking, but I left out one (literally) humongous detail- the Nose That Could Sink a Ship. Well, that’s what my friends call it when they want to annoy me. It works, though, because it’s the truth. He has a nose that can only be described as HUGE, just sitting there in the middle of his otherwise handsome face. Well, I think so anyway. My friends think I’m nuts, but I think if you shrank that nose, you’d find a Johnny Depp look-alike underneath.

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?