All Aboard

Part Eleven

Dan

Oh my God; thought Dan, cramming melted cheese and stuffed crust into his grateful mouth, pizza.

Kimberly

Kimberly sighed as she looked over her shoulder at the others, then turned back to her pizza (which was perfect – pepperoni, olive, and mushroom, and not a single onion. They were her arch nemesis of vegetables. Why would anyone want to eat something that makes you cry? she thought).

Great. Everyone was pairing up. There was some kind of bromance developing between Dan and Mikaela, and Nav had finally got the balls to talk to Chloe. That left Barney, and Kimberly would rather go water skiing naked than be anywhere near him.

She glanced at the others again, then ducked her head and took a small bite of her pizza. Eating alone. She'd got used to spending time by herself, but it still hurt to be unattached, to be a person on her own; to not hear the sound of her own voice for hours because she didn't have anyone to discuss last night's episode of The Walking Dead with.

Talking to Andre was what got her through the day. Even though she didn't actually speak out loud, being able to share her thoughts made her feel like she was part of the world.

Kimberly understood that there was a class system at school, and how you had to look to be in the favoured part of that system. She had learned that at primary school when girls had happily let Natalie play their games but when she had hovered at the side of their hopscotch squares, they had told her she couldn't play. She knew why.

One summer, she'd attempted to reinvent herself. She sweated buckets leaping around the living room doing her mum's celebrity fitness DVD and managed to lose some weight, and studied YouTube tutorials to do her eye makeup properly. She'd proudly unveiled the new her, walking tall and looking people in the eye, but instead of getting comments on how well she'd done, she'd got nothing but abuse.

Girls laughed behind their hands when she was checking her makeup in the loos, and someone posted a photo of her on Instagram with the hashtag #gingertranny. By the end of the day people were shouting it from the other end of the corridor. That night she'd sat in front of the mirror in her bedroom, and watched her tears spill black tracks down her face. She didn't wear makeup again after that day.

Kimberly couldn't tell Andre any of this. She didn't want him to know what a lonely place school, so she'd painted him an enhanced version of herself, to make herself less of a loser. She'd told him about some of her favourite TV shows, but only the ones that were socially acceptable (Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Big Bang Theory, but she'd kept Stargate and Xena secret) and he'd responded favourably proclaiming that he also loved those shows and was "such a geek". She told him that she was in the drama club (she wasn't), was planning a trip to Ibiza with her friends (what friends?), and she'd been to Signor's for the Wednesday band night loads of times, but he probably hadn't seen her there because it was so dark (she'd never been to Signor's and had no idea whether it was dark or not).

After they'd been speaking for about a month, Kimberly had decided that she would risk telling Andre about her obsession with wrestling. If it turned out he was also a fan as he was such a geek, great. But if he laughed at her, she would just lol as well and tell him she was obviously joking, duh. Luckily for her, he had gone with the former response and they'd chatted about their favourite wrestlers and classic competitions until the early hours of the morning.

That's when she started falling in love with him.

A shiver ran through her body as she thought about their conversations, their connection, and the intimate relationship they'd built. When she closed her eyes, she could feel him sitting next to her, so she wasn't sitting by herself for a change (although she did appreciate she was getting into the realms of sharing her lunch with an imaginary friend with that leap). The others might all think that she was just a loner at the front of the bus, but really, she had someone.