Still the One

Chapter One

"Please Lord, let somebody...anybody ask me today! Please, please, please!"

"Claudia, we'll be late!" A voice called up to the desperately praying fourteen-year-old.

"Coming, Mum." She got awkwardly to her feet and quickly neatened the edge of the bed she had rumbled while praying. Fingers crossed one of the boys in her class would finally ask her to the dance today. She was the only girl who hadn't yet been asked. Up until yesterday it had been two of them, but brainy Isaac had finally built the courage to ask the equally brainy Amelia to the dance, leaving Claudia like the cheese that stood alone.

"I asked God for someone to ask me to the dance today," she told her mother as she fastened her seatbelt.

"That's good, honey. God always answers sincere prayers."

Claudia pressed a button and Anita Baker's distinctive voice filled the Range Rover. She and her mother sang along to the Rapture CD, neither giving Anita any real competition but having fun as the vehicle covered the fifteen-minute journey to the school. After her mother parked in the teachers' car park, they held hands and walked into the school building together.

"Good luck, sweetheart." Her mother gave Claudia's hand a squeeze before she let it go.

"Thanks, Mum."

It was a surprise that no one had asked Claudia to the dance yet. Although overweight, she was one of the most popular girls in the class. She was a tomboy and the boys regularly asked to join in if they were playing a game and were one player short. Her mother, the guidance teacher, as one of the best loved teachers in the school.

There was a lull as soon as Claudia entered the classroom and she sensed that her classmates had been talking about her. She smiled brightly and squeezed herself into her seat at the front of the class. As she felt tears prick her eyelids, she dove into her pocket and pulled out the small Cadbury's Fruit and Nut bar her father had sneaked under her pillow when he had come up to kiss her goodnight the previous evening. She quickly broke off a piece and popped it into her mouth. It melted on her tongue and she immediately felt happier.

Who wanted to go to the stupid party anyway?

The day dragged on and on and she was sure that every eye was on her the entire time. By the start of the last period she began to feel self-conscious, and despondent that God hadn't answered her prayers.

"Claude?"

"What?" she snapped, without looking around. She couldn't understand why her classmates insisted on calling her that name. She was a girl not a boy!

"N-never mind." A soft, hesitant voice answered.

She turned and looked up into the embarrassed eyes of Tyrell, one of the shortest boys in her class.

"I'm sorry, Ty." She reached out and held on to his sleeve as he turned to walk back to his desk. "Did you want something?"

"I wanted to know if you...you would like to be my date for the dance?"

At first she thought that it was a joke, that maybe the class had set him up to ask her so they could die of laughter, but as she looked around the class she realized that everyone was looking on curiously as though they too wanted to know the reason he had come over.

She looked back up at Tyrell, about to politely refuse and something in his eyes made her reply instead, "Why not?"

He smiled, went back to his seat and continued reading his book on electronics. At fourteen he could dismantle pretty much any electrical or electronic device and put it back together in perfect working order. But not only was he short, he was quite thin. Puberty seemed a long way ahead of him. He and Claudia would make the oddest couple at the school dance—she: tall and plump, he: short and thin!